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The cover of Make Russia Great Again, by Christopher Buckley, 2020.
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Author Christopher Buckley.
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The popular assumption throughout the disaster that has been
the Trump presidency is that Donald Trump is beyond satire. Donald Trump would
seem to be made for satire, since he’s devoid of humor and changes his opinions
as often as a butterfly changes direction. But because Trump lacks any kind of
even the most basic self-awareness, he’s already a parody of himself.
Fortunately for us, Donald Trump finally has the satire he deserves:
Christopher Buckley’s new novel
Make Russia Great Again.
Buckley admits in an interview with Andrew Ferguson of The
Atlantic that he found politics in Washington, D.C. to be so self-satirizing
that he left it all behind in his most recent novels: The Relic Master and
The Judge Hunter, historical fictions set centuries in the past. But after
years of resisting going after Trump, Buckley gave in to the temptation and he says:
“I think Trump is fair game for ridicule. Why do I think this? Because it
drives him nuts.” If Trump actually read Make Russia Great Again it
would drive him up the wall.
Make Russia Great Again is ostensibly the memoir of
Trump’s 7th White House Chief of Staff, Herb Nutterman, a long-time manager
of Trump’s resort, but a newcomer to politics. Herb is fundamentally a decent
fellow who doesn’t want to insult people. Here’s his description of White House
staffer Katie Borgia-O’Reilly, who is superbly gifted at putting anything Trump
says in the best possible light: “Katie was sexy in a—I don’t want to say ‘creepy’—certain
kind of way, as if you might discover after sleeping with her that she was in
fact an android or an Albanian assassin sent to murder your grandmother for no
clear reason.” (p.34)
Herb’s status as a somewhat innocent outsider allows Buckley
to crank up the satire. When Vladimir Putin suddenly loses an election to the
head of the Communist Party, thus triggering a runoff election, it’s revealed
to Herb that the election was meddled with by a secret U.S. government AI
project, called “Placid Reflux.” The premise behind “Placid Reflux” is that it
was triggered when the United States didn’t respond to Russia’s meddling in the
2016 Presidential election. The program assumed that because there was no
response by the U.S., the country must be operating without a leader, and so it
responded by attempting to throw Russia back into Communism, a scenario more
favorable to the United States, since the U.S. had defeated a Communist Russia
before.
Buckley’s Trump is, well, just like the real-life one. Trump
says of Stalin: “He didn’t fuck around, Stalin. You gotta give him that.”
(p.21) Well, I suppose. Much later in the novel, at a rally, Herb describes
Trump’s actions: “’Oooh,’ Mr. Trump said, trembling and shaking his arms
the way he does when he mocks people with degenerative muscle disease.” (p.247)
Buckley’s Trump also throws Diet Coke cans at the squirrels on the White House
lawn.
In Make Russia Great Again, Trump is blackmailed by a
Russian oligarch thanks to sex tapes, 18 of them in all, showing Trump in
various stages of intimacy with the finalists in the 2013 Miss Universe
competition, held in Moscow. What does it say about Donald Trump that this
scenario is frighteningly plausible? Trump’s reaction to the tapes is quite
subdued: “This is not porn, Herb. This is Donald Trump making it with the most
beautiful women on earth. And by the way, performing like a fucking stallion.”
(p.146) In other words, exactly what Trump would say in reality.
In Make Russia Great Again you’ll be introduced to memorable
characters such as Senator Squigg Lee Biskitt, Republican from the Palmetto
State of South Carolina. Biskitt had nothing good to say about Trump—until
Trump was elected President. Now he’s one of Trump’s strongest backers in the
Senate. Buckley describes Biskitt thus: “He always made himself available for
an on-the-fly interview, scampering on little feet across the polished floor of
the Capitol Rotunda. One observer likened his gait to ‘a penguin on an ice floe
trying to escape a sea lion.’” (p.80) Is Senator Biskitt modeled on any real
U.S. Senator? Probably not, there’s certainly not anyone like that currently representing
the Senate from South Carolina. Certainly no one who used to be, say, John
McCain’s best friend who has now turned into the biggest apologist for the Trump
administration. That would be ridiculous.
One of my favorite asides in the novel was the bit about the
“Ever Trumpers,” who volunteer to have Trump shoot them on Fifth Avenue, in
order to fulfill his infamous pledge that he could do such a thing and not lose
any voters. As Herb says, “Here, certainly, was a cult of personality taking it
to a whole new level.” (p.108)
Christopher Buckley’s very first novel, published in 1986,
was The White House Mess, another memoir by another fictional Chief of
Staff, also named Herb. Buckley has described the two great themes of all books
written by people who have worked in the White House: “It Wasn't My Fault and
It Would Have Been Much Worse if I Hadn't Been There.” Herb Nutterman would
certainly agree with those two points.
If you’re looking for a good laugh about the state of
politics in this monumental election year, you’ll find much to amuse you in Make
Russia Great Again.
