“I’ve cooled on Steve,” confided Pumphrett, my old friend and fellow Choate “Wild Boar” as we sipped our lattes on the bottom step of the Lincoln Memorial. I had been glad when he suggested meeting on this spot, thinking he might take inspiration—as I always do—from the words inscribed on the marble walls flanking our greatest President: “With malice toward none. With charity for all.” Perhaps my friend would return to the current occupant of the White House with news that he had gotten this admonition precisely backwards. But it transpired that Pumphrett had suggested this meeting place because the bustle of tourists made intercepting our conversation difficult, “even for the Russians.”
That he had transferred his loyalty from White House chief strategist Steven K. Bannon—who, bare weeks before, had commanded Pumphrett’s total, and it seemed to me unwholesome, affections—was hardly surprising. Frailty, thy name had often been Pumphrett at Choate, where he would invariably attach himself to a “tough of the week” only to have a sideways glance and a whiff of musk lure him elsewhere. But I sensed his disenchantment this time had deeper roots, and so gingerly inquired what had caused his change of heart.
In answer, he related the following tale: It seems that Bannon had asked Pumphrett to accompany him as notetaker to a meeting with the new President in his private White House rooms. “It was late,” Pumphrett related. “The place was deserted, the only sound the distant snoring of a Secret Service agent. Our knock was met with the sliding of bolts and rattling of chains, then the door was flung open and a presidential arm waved us inside.”
“Why the secrecy?”
“Bannon wanted the President alone. He confided to me that the “others,” as he called them, were spreading stories about him.”
“What sort of stories?”
“Well, basically, that Bannon is a florid-faced screw up. (The phrase they’re actually using is more alliterative than that, Cushy, but manners forefend). They’re saying, if I may paraphrase, that he’s an inept, ideologically addled bungler who’s constantly treading on his…well, on his man parts; and if the President doesn’t show him the door, he’s going to bring the whole rickety tent show cum goat rope crashing around our ears. Or words to that affect.”
“And Bannon wanted to counter these accusations?”
“Not exactly. He was on the attack. He wanted to lay out our strategy to convince the President that despite appearances we actually know our fundament from our lateral epicondyle, if you get my drift. (Right there, Cushy, I sensed the atmosphere growing frigid. Even I know there’s no “we” in Trump).
“Anyway, Bannon prattled on for twenty minutes until Trump cut him off, saying it was the best strategy any President had ever had, absolutely the best, and he would give it a lot of thought, but right then ‘Fox news was coming on’ so if we didn’t mind—and with that he jerked a thumb at the door. We got up to leave. But as we were headed for the egress, Trump beckoned me back with a little finger.”
“He cocked his little finger at you?”
“Actually it was his index finger, but they’re all extraordinarily small, you know. In any case, Bannon shot me a look, huffed out the door and I was alone with the President. It was the first time I’ve seen him close to.”
“What was your impression?”
“I admit I was flustered. All I remember is the cantilevered plumage, that pouty mouth, and a great mass of subcutaneous tissue. He asked my name, and I told him Pumphrett. Then he started out on how great a strategist Bannon was, certainly the best strategist of any Administration, and that all his appointments were the best, and so on. This went on for some time, and I had begun to wonder why he had kept me behind. But then he pulled his chair a little closer to the couch where I was sitting and laid a small hand on my shoulder.”
“’Pomfrites’, he said, ‘you work for Bannon, right? Tell me: What the hell does the deconstruction of the administrative state mean?’ Well, Cushy, that knocked me back on my haunches. I was all confusion, but Trump bore in. ‘And while we’re on the subject’, he continued, ‘what was this about the Fourth Turning and our core being more important than our fringe? And why does Bannon keep saying Winter is Coming?’—which, he didn’t mind telling me, was getting on his nerves.
I was overwhelmed. I stuttered and stammered and, finally, the only thing I could think to say was the truth.”
“Oh, no, Pumphrett! You didn’t.”
“I’m afraid I did. ‘It’s all piffle,’ I blurted. ‘Purest piffle.’
The President seemed startled. But I was committed at this point, Cushy, so I didn’t hold back. It was gobbledygook, I told him, so much pseudo-intellectual bunkum. I sensed his eyebrows rising under that mono-bang he affects, but that didn’t deter me. It was, I concluded with a flourish, in the common parlance, complete horse……,” but he interrupted before I could finish the phrase. This, I admit, spared my blushes. As you know, normally I abhor the vulgar, but I had raised a full head of steam.
“What was his reaction?”
“He seemed to muse thoughtfully—or as thoughtfully as he ever muses—and then he said it was a coincidence because that was exactly what Jared had called it. I was gratified at this. But was it a trap? I decided to test the waters. So, I ventured, ‘Jared said it was piffle? And Gobbledygook?’”
“No,” he said. “He called it horse…”, but, just at that moment, Ivanka broke through the door with news that Bannon was downstairs shouting about resigning. She was surprised to find me there, but the President told her I was Pomfrites and I was just leaving so I scuttled out the door. The next day Spicer was in the briefing room telling the press that everything was fine with Bannon, which is the worst sign of all, of course.”
(Now you, dear reader, may be surprised that as timorous a man as Pumphrett would have blurted out so condemnatory a description of the elevated sort of flummery that had transformed Steve Bannon from a wolf of Wall Street into a swivel-eyed crank. There is, however, a simple explanation. You see, piffle had been the chief object of Pumphrett’s studies at Choate, where he had not only majored in political science, but in his spare time read the great pifflemeisters: Gentile, Derrida, and even Heidegger, whose Nazi sympathies had not erased his name from Choate reading list—quite the contrary. By our fourth year, Pumphrett had taken to quoting indecipherable excerpts on inappropriate occasions until finally beaten into silence by the less tolerant of our classmates. That trauma had lasting effects, so that now, as a hunting dog whines in the presence of game, so Pumphrett reacts to obscurantist twaddle. This trait is counter-indicative in the present political climate, but, as he’s often confessed under oath, it’s one of many personal quirks beyond his control.)
We two sat in silence beneath Lincoln’s stony gaze for a moment, sipping. Off to the side, a booth selling black-and-white flag-like remembrances of nonexistent POWs in imaginary Asian jungle confinement was doing a brisk business. As long-time readers will know, I fancy myself a mentor to Pumphrett, and have, in fact, several times testified to that effect in court. My protective instincts were now aroused again.
“Pumphrett,” I counseled, “If you stay at the White House, you have to be prepared to deal not only with piffle, but with hokum, hogwash, and hooey, not to mention idiocy, gibberish, claptrap, and sudden, inexplicable nocturnal emissions.”
“You mean trumpery, Cushy?” he asked, meekly, the barest, tattered remnant of hope lingering in his tone. It had to be crushed!
“I’m afraid so, Pumphrett, old cheese,” I retorted, handing him a “Free the POWs” button. “Most of all with trumpery.”