Donald Trump is waiting for Putin in his gold-plated hotel room. Putin shows up 30 minutes late, and with his dog, which doesn’t bode well for the meeting.
T: Vlad! Glad you could finally make it!
P: Donald, I’m not going to mince words. You’ve been a huge disappointment to me, and something needs to be done about it.
T: What do you mean?
P: I’ve told you over and over again that you need to grow some balls and be a real strongman. Put Hillary in jail, shut down CNN, and get rid of Mueller. Instead, you just whine and do nothing.
T: It’s not that easy. America isn’t Russia, you know.
P: Stop saying that! No one said it was supposed to be easy. You’re a strong man, right? Look at Erdogan–do you think he had it easy? He managed to shut down his opposition, even in an allegedly democratic state.
T: America is just different.
P: Try being like MBS. Now there’s a man after my own heart! Even I never thought of killing and dismembering opponents in a government building overseas. Talk about sending the right message!
T: The American people don’t support that.
P: You’re supposed to be a strong man. What do you care about the people? Tell them what they need to hear, and they’ll obey. What do you think Fox News is for? Why else did you make Whitaker your acting AG? That’s the one thing you did right.
T: I thought we were supposed to talk about Ukraine.
P: There’s nothing to talk about. Ukraine is ours. I don’t tell you how to deal with Mexico. You can’t tell me what to do with Ukraine.
T: I am the US President, you know. We have the biggest economy and the best military on the planet. You can’t talk to me that way.
P: I don’t give a damn about your military. You don’t have the balls to use it. Anyway, I have WikiLeaks, and you don’t. They can tell the American people plenty about your dealings with us.
T: Assange is my friend. He wouldn’t do that to me!
P: Don’t kid yourself. He doesn’t love you–he hates America. He thinks America is just too powerful and unaccountable, as I do. He’ll leak stuff on you just as he did on Hillary.
T: What do you want me to do?
P: I told you. Suck it up, shut down the opposition and the investigations, get rid of the sanctions, and be the real strong man you keep saying you are. Otherwise, I’ll give up on you, and bad stuff is going to start happening.
T: And if I do as you say?
P: There’s plenty of land in Moscow for that new Trump Tower.
T: I’ll see what I can do.
P: You had better. He stomps out of the room with his dog.