Trixon

What if Trump’s first interview as president were taken as found poetry and read as a libretto? And what if it were spliced with John Adams’ opera, Nixon in China?

Dramatis Personae:

CHOU En-lai
KISSINGER, Henry
MAO Zedong
MUIR, David
NIXON, PAT
NIXON, Richard
TRUMP, Donald

ACT 1

CHORUS: 
 Soldiers of heaven hold the sky,
 the morning breaks and shadows fly.
 Follow the orders of the poor,
 your master is the laborer
 who rules the world with truth and grace.
 Deal with him justly, face to face…

MUIR:
I want to start — we’re five days in.
I know today you plan [to] sign the order,
build the wall.

TRUMP:
I want to build the wall.
We have to build the wall.
We have to stop drugs
from pouring in.
We have to stop [the] people
pouring in-
to our country.

NIXON:
There’s no reason why you should trust us.
I’ll never say I’ll do something I cannot do,
and I’ll do more than you can know.
but since you do not know me,
please don’t trust me.
Wait. These may be lies.

TRUMP:
We’re going to take care of everybody.

CHORUS:
The people are the heroes now.
Behemoth pulls the peasant’s plough.

TRUMP:
We’re going to have a very strong
border.
We’re going to have a very solid
border.

MUIR:
You brought in congressional leaders,
spoke at length about the election,
telling them you lost the vote
[the popular vote]
because of millions,
three million,
five million,
illegal votes.
That would be
the biggest fraud
in American history.
Where is the evidence?

TRUMP:
So let me tell you first of all:
so misrepresented.
Supposed to be a confidential meeting.

MUIR:
But you tweeted
[of] the millions
of illegal…

TRUMP:
Let me — sure.
And I do
and I’m very
and I mean it.
Just so you know, it was
supposed to be a confidential meeting.

MUIR:
But three to five million illegal?

TRUMP:
Well, we’re going to find out.
It could well be that much.
There are millions of votes
in my opinion.

MUIR:
When you say in your opinion
that is something fundamental
to our functioning democracy:
a fair and free election.

TRUMP:
Sure. Sure. Sure.

MUIR:
You say you’re going to launch
an investigation.

TRUMP:
Sure.
Done.

MUIR:
I want to ask about something bigger here.

TRUMP:
There’s nothing bigger.
There’s nothing bigger.

MUIR:
But it’s important.

TRUMP:
Well let me just tell you,
you know what’s important?
Millions of people
agree with me.
They’re very smart people.

PAT NIXON:
You won at poker.

NIXON:
I sure did.
I had a system.
Five Card Stud
taught me a lot about mankind.
Speak softly and don’t show your hand
became my motto.

MUIR:
You’re the president.
You’re sitting across from me right now.

NIXON:
You’d never think to look at him
that he’s James Bond.

CHOU:
And all the time
He’s doing undercover work.

TRUMP:
That’s true.
That’s true.

MUIR:
Do you think that your words matter more now?

TRUMP:
Yes,
very much.

MUIR:
The press secretary
summoning reporters to talk —
the inaugural size —
does that send to the people [a message]:
more important
than pressing issues?

TRUMP:
We had a massive crowd of people
— we —
we had a crowd.

NIXON:
My feet are firmly planted on the ground,
like yours, like you I take my stand among poor people.
We can talk.

TRUMP:
I looked over that sea of people
and I said to myself
Wow.

And I’ve seen crowds before.
Big, big crowds.
That was some crowd.

We had the biggest audience in the history
of inaugural speeches;
they like what I’m saying.

NIXON:
No one who heard but could admire
your eloquent remarks, Premier,
and millions more hear what we say
through satellite technology
than ever heard a public speech before.
No one is out of touch, telecommunication
has broadcast your message into space.
Yet soon our words won’t be recalled,
while we do what we can to change the world.

MUIR (voice-over):
When we come back, what the president revealed to us
about torture and waterboarding.

ACT 2

TRUMP:
I love Chicago.
I know Chicago.
Chicago is great.
It can be great.
It can’t be great if people are shot
walking the street for a loaf.
It can’t be great.

MAO:
We know the great silent majority
will bide its time.

KISSINGER:
There you’ve got me. I’m lost.

CHOU:
The Chairman means the dead.

TRUMP:
I will tell you
I have spoken
to others in intelligence
and they are big
believers in
waterboarding.

MUIR:
You did tell me…

TRUMP:
Because they say
it does work.
It does work.

MAO:
We’ve more than once led the right wing forward
while text book cadres swung back
into goose-step, home at last.
How your most rigid theorist
revises as he goes along.

MUIR:
Mr. President…

TRUMP:
Now, personally…

MUIR:
You told me during [a] debate
that you would bring back waterboarding.

TRUMP:
Yeah I would do
what I would do.
I want to keep our country safe.
I want to keep our country safe.

CHOU:
You’ve said
that there’s a certain well know tree
that grows from nothing in a day,
lives only as a sapling,
dies just at its prime,
when good men raise it
as their idol.

MUIR:
What does that mean?

NIXON:
Not the cross?

TRUMP:
When they’re shooting,
when they’re chopping
off the heads
of our people,
and other people;
when they are chopping off the heads of people,
we have to fight!

MAO:
The Liberty Tree. Let it pass.
It was a riddle, not a test.

MUIR:
Let me ask you:
after the oath of office
they give you nuclear codes,
“the biscuit.”
Sobering moment?

TRUMP:
When they explained what it represents,
the kind of destruction —
it’s a sobering moment.
It’s very, very,
very scary,
in a sense.

MUIR:
Does it keep
you up at night?

TRUMP:
No.

ACT 3

MUIR:
Is this the Muslim ban?

TRUMP:
No
it’s not the Muslim ban,
but it’s countries
that have tremendous terror.
And it’s countries —
people are going to come
and cause tremendous problems.
Our country has enough.

MUIR:
Which countries?

TRUMP:
You look at what has happened —
I’ve a list.
You will be thrilled.
People that come,
in many cases,
in some cases,
with evil intentions.
I don’t want that.
They’re ISIS.
False pretence.
I don’t want that.

PAT NIXON:
Let the expression on the face
of the Statue of Liberty change just a little,
let her see what lies inland:
across the plain one man is marching,
the Unknown Soldier has risen from his tomb,
let him be recognised at home.
The Prodigal. Give him his share:
the eagle nailed to the barn door.
Let him be quick.
The sirens wail as bride
and groom kiss through the veil.

TRUMP:
I think Europe has made
a tremendous mistake
allowing these millions of people to go
into Germany
and other countries —
all you have to do is look.
It’s — it’s
a disaster
what’s happening over there.
So look, look,
our country has problems,
believe me.

MUIR:
Are you at all concerned it’s going to cause
more anger among [the] Muslims?

TRUMP:
Anger?
There’s plenty of anger.
How can you have more?
Look, look,
David, David,
I mean, I know
you’re a sophisticated guy.
The world is a mess —
as angry as it gets.

What, you think this is going to cause
a little more anger?

The world is an angry place.
The world is a total mess.
The world is a mess.

We should have taken the oil —
You wouldn’t have ISIS.

MUIR:
You’ve heard the critics who say
that would break international law.

TRUMP:
Can you believe that?
Wait a minute.
Can you believe that?
Who are the critics that say that?
Fools!
I don’t call them critics;
I call them fools.
We should have kept —
excuse me —
We should have taken
the oil.
And if we took [it]
you wouldn’t have ISIS
and we would have wealth.

ACT 4

MUIR:
Could you hear the voices — the women’s march?
We know there were more than a million,
And you are their president now.

CHORUS OF THE RED DETACHMENT OF WOMEN:
Young as we are,
we expect fear,
every year
more of us bow
beneath the shadow
of the next blow.

TRUMP:
It’s true.

LAO SZU:
Oh, what a day!
I thought I’d die!
That luscious thigh,
that swelling breast,
scented and greased,
a sacrifice
running with juice
at my caress.
She was so hot
I was hard put
to be polite
when the first cut
— Come on, you slut! —
scored her brown skin
I started in,
man upon hen!

MUIR:
Could you hear them from the White House?

TRUMP:
No.

But the crowds were large.
You’re going to have large
on Friday too,
mostly pro-life.
And I’ll say this —
didn’t realize,
but was told —
you’ll have a large
crowd of people.
I don’t know,
as large or larger.

MUIR:
I don’t want to compare crowd sizes again.

TRUMP:
No, you shouldn’t.
But let me just say,
what they do say is
the press doesn’t cover them.

MUIR:
We saw the marches around the country
And you are their President now.
Do you sense the responsibility?

TRUMP:
Well, I do,
but have to say:
We just had an election.
And they voted in many cases,
and some cases, didn’t vote,
I imagine.
We did have an election.
That being said,
I have responsibility
to everybody
including people that didn’t
vote
for
Trump.
Totally.

LAO SZU:
This is the fate of all who
set small against great.
Leave it to rot.

ACT 5

TRUMP:
This is the Oval Office,
one of the great spaces.
And I bring people in:
General Motors,
Ford,
the biggest people.
I bring in the labour leaders.

LAO SZU:
I’m here to liaise
with the backroom boys
who know how to live.
And me, I contrive
to catch a few crumbs —
the ringleaders’ names
the gist of their schemes —
loose change.

MUIR:
What moves you the most about this room?

TRUMP:
Just the history.
The importance.
What’s happened here.
Andrew Jackson
who a lot
of people, they compare
the campaign of
with the campaign of —
you have to go back
to 1828
but that seems a comparison for
…you know…
certain obvious reasons.

CHOU:
A bankrupt people repossessed
the ciphers of its history
and not one character could say
whether the war was over yet
or if they’d written off the debt.

TRUMP:
Adams versus Jefferson,
they say,
this was the most vicious campaign
ever fought for president
until this.

MAO:
Founders come first
then profiteers.

MUIR:
The Dow hit 20,000 today.

TRUMP:
I’m very proud of that.
Very proud.
First time in history.
I’m very proud of that.
Now, we have to go
up, up, up.

MUIR:
Mr. President.

TRUMP:
Thank you, David.

MUIR:
Thank you.

===== Notes on Production =====

This work was produced by extracting text both from the ABC Trump interview and the Nixon in China libretto. Any text inserted into the interview is presented in square brackets [ ] and is provided for clarity or cadence. The word order of the interview has not been changed. Words and sentences have been elided to remove unwanted repetitions and create, or highlight the absence of, concision. The Nixon in China libretto text is differentiated from the ABC interview by italics and indentation. The full transcript for the ABC Trump interview can be found here and here. (The transcript used for this work was that produced by Fortune as it includes the White House tour.) The full text of the libretto is available from Boosey and Hawkes; a copy can be found here.