Cute piece from today's Palm Beach Post
News item: Donald Trump said this week he is "absolutely thinking about" running for president of the United States. Trump's admission comes after a story about a poll in New Hampshire that asks voters if they'd support a Trump presidency.
Trump said he had nothing to do with the poll, but he is interested in running.
"I'm totally being serious because I can't stand what's happening to the country," Trump said.
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Here's a future dispatch from the end of President Donald Trump's first term:
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President Trump, spending time at his Mar-a-Lago presidential compound, spoke briefly to reporters to defend the installation of gold filigree on the iron fence around the White House.
"This was an amazing opportunity," Trump said before teeing off at the 72-hole Trump International Golf Course and Casino in West Palm Beach. "I got an incredible deal on the gold from South Africa."
President Trump was in South Florida to oversee the final construction of the casino complex, which was built on land that used to be the Palm Beach International Airport, a facility he closed by presidential decree as a security and noise risk to his winter home in Palm Beach.
Trump, buoyed by approval ratings up to a comfortable 64 percent - and 99.9 percent in the White House's own internal poll - said he and Vice President Regis Philbin are looking forward to being elected to a second term.
"It's been an incredible presidency," Trump said. "Better than Lincoln. That's what I'm hearing from people. I'm totally being serious."
Things weren't always so rosy for President Trump. His early attempts at trimming the federal budget were widely unpopular, in particular the attempted merger of North and South Carolina. And his simplistic approach to solving the country's immigration problem went nowhere.
The American people weren't ready for the idea of redefining citizenship as club membership. And few illegal aliens had enough money to pay the $30,000 initiation fee into what President Trump called "Club America."
But President Trump was far more successful in other areas, especially foreign policy.
By turning most of the Pentagon into the world's most powerful law firm, Trump was able to create a foreign policy based on a constant state of litigation, rather than endless military conflict.
Under the Trump administration, half the world's nuisance lawsuits are now filed by the U.S. government. And the hallmark of his tenure has been the hostile takeovers of uncooperative countries by lawyers rather than tanks. Perhaps his boldest foreign policy initiative has been in his handling of America's crushing debt to China. Rather than coddle the emerging superpower, the Trump administration sued China, saying that its products are inferior and defective, and that the Chinese can take "3-cents-on-the-dollar for all their junk" or face years of litigation in The Hague.
The most popular initiative of the Trump years has been his decision to hold weekly televised cabinet meetings. The meetings, which run every Thursday night during prime time on all the major networks, end each segment with Trump firing one member of his cabinet.
This winnowing process has led to some innovative appointments, none more popular than Department of Homeland Security Secretary Dog the Bounty Hunter.
Trump's tenure hasn't been without scandal. The three Democrats remaining in Congress say they plan to investigate a story published in the online blog, The New York Times, that says that the president's gambling operations have been kept afloat by federal workers being paid in poker chips.
"That blog will be out of business in a year," Trump predicted last week during an appearance on televangelist Glenn Beck's show.
After President Trump's Palm Beach visit, he will be flying to Slovenia, where, as a birthday present to the First Lady, he has brokered a deal to rename that country Upper Melania.
"It'll be the top country in Eastern Europe," Trump said. "Everybody's excited about it. That's what I'm hearing. I'm totally being serious."