“I think he wears lifts,” remarked my old Choate classmate Pumphrett as we churned across the Tidal Basin in a rented paddleboat.
“What are you gibbering about, Pumphrett?”
“You know, lifts. Elevators. Cuban heels. The sort of thing they hawk in the back pages of Guns and Ammo and Soldier of Fortune. Of course,” my companion continued, suppressing a smile, “perhaps he’s taking flamenco lessons.”
We had been discussing his boss, retired general and budding eschatologist Michael Flynn, the new National Security Advisor. I tend to dismiss such Pumhrettisms out of hand, but now an image of Trump’s chief foreign policy adviser leapt unbidden to mind. Was there a hint of Jimmy Hendrix in Flynn’s footwear? I couldn’t be sure. Still, comments of this sort were a dangerous tangent for my companion, whose job tenure remains precarious, so I administered a sharp tug on the snaffle.
“Don’t be ridiculous, Pumphrett,” I scoffed. “Flynn’s not a short man—almost average in height from the look of him. He has a couple of inches at the very least on Priebus. And where’s your loyalty? Don’t you work for Flynn?”
Pumphrett dismissed this with a gesture.
“It was Washington loyalty, Cushy. And I didn’t know things would all happen so rapidly. You remember that Bannon had tried to enlist me in the effort to grease Flynn’s passage back to lobbyville but told me it couldn’t be done quickly. Well, that was before Flynn sat down.”
“What do you mean, he ‘sat down’?”
“They were all in the Oval Office for Trump to sign some diktat Bannon and his coven had cobbled together about banning Muslims on a strictly non- discriminatory basis. Bannon had been told the senior staff were to remain upright behind Trump with adoring expressions. But no sooner had they filed in than Flynn plunked himself down in a chair smack in front of the desk while the rest of them, including Bannon, were forced to stand around like flunkies in that crossed-hands-protecting-the-genitals pose. I’m afraid that got Bannon’s Irish up.
“Later, after the daily damage control meeting, Bannon muttered I should come to his office when no one was around. Then he gave me a knowing wink.
“Well, as you can imagine, Cushy, I blushed like a maiden. But it turned out to be a conspiratorial wink, and when I oozed in later, all smiles and aftershave, he was glowering over how he been sandbagged by Flynn and that pudding, Priebus. Nobody did that to Steven K. Bannon.
“So saying, he beckoned me near and confided that it was time to put a hitch in Flynn’s getalong. Was I willing to leak a tidbit or two to my friends at the Post and the Times? I sensed a trap and denied having such friends, but he just gave me that evil clown smile of his and said if I followed his orders, I would have plenty of them. Remind them, he said, about Flynn’s smuggling his lunk-headed offspring onto the staff, and let drop that Flynn is a pedantic blabbermouth who’s getting up everybody’s nose. I should say, he informed me, that I was speaking as a concerned friend.
“He asked me if I could manage an expression of shocked dismay. I showed him the one I employed after lights out most nights during our first year at Choate. He smiled; somewhere glass broke. Yes, ‘use that,’ he said.
“When those stories hit the press, Flynn went berserk. Luckily, he didn’t suspect me. No one ever does; I seem to have been born, unwillingly I can assure you, with a kind of Harry Potteresque invisibility cloak. Instead, he said he detected a right-wing fascist nutcase in the woodpile, and ordered me to contact the same media jackals who had written the nonsense about him and tell them—on deepest “wink-wink” background—that the former editor of a skinhead blog site was trying to take over national security from a retired three-star general who would have been a four-star general had it not been for jealous superiors and disloyal subordinates. On second thought, he said, leave off that last part.”
“Don’t they have Spicer and Kellyanne for that sort of thing?
“Spicer’s usually sobbing in his office with the door closed. Kellyanne has begged off on the grounds of a strained cheek muscle. Anyway, they are both too well known. Both Bannon and Flynn think no one will suspect me, Cushy, and so far, no one has.”
“Were you the one who leaked that business about how Trump has the emotional age of a five-year old?”
“No. And we’ve all been ordered to deny that with a straight face.”
“I could see his distress and was moved to warn him that he was treading on suspect terrain. “I can only counsel you,” I told him, “to keep in your heart the motto of that ivy covered incubator of greatness that spewed us forth upon the world. Our motto, Pumphrett. Do you remember it?”
“Dear old Choate. Of course I remember it.” The paddleboat listed dangerously basin-ward as he half rose, assumed a stance and jabbed an index finger decidedly skyward. “Fidelitas aut Integritas”, he intoned.
“No, no,” I scolded, clinging to a gunnels. It’s “Fidelitas et Integritas.” Fidelity and Integrity. Not Fidelity or integrity. “
Pumphrett favored me with an indulgent smile. “You know, Cushy, I don’t think you’re quite up with the fashion of the times. I may not remember my Latin exactly, but I do have a very firm grip on what it will take to make America great again.”