Since the onslaught of news about the Charlottesville attacks, Trump’s poll numbers have bottomed out at unprecedented levels. We’re talking a serious, drunk-like stumble here, with the percentages dropping out like my gaming guild does when school starts back up. What can be done? Here at Paste, we thought Our Shining President would keep up big wins among his most reliable supporters that weren’t white-supremacists—I mean the huge CEOs. Chief Executive Officers, also known on Facebook as “America’s Sweethearts,” have been the subject of sexy photoshoots in every men’s magazine worth mentioning: Bloomberg News, Tiger Beat, The Wall Street Journal, Yahoo Business, Business Yahoo, Maxim, Maxim Business, Minimum Security Prison Sugar Quarterly, and all the other big names.
But Trump has been seeping out CEO support, losing them left and right like so many ketchup packets on Big Mac night. Which, in the White House, is every evening. One by one, a lot of captains of industry are slipping through his atom-sized fingers. The company presidents are leaving him for a more popular crowd, and their burn book is already chock-full of Trump rumors. It’s absolutely tragic to watch; I will be scribbling about this in my emotion-journal for weeks. According to NPR:
After a string of executives quit President Trump’s manufacturing council over his controversial remarks about Charlottesville, Va., violence, the president declared he is disbanding two economic advisory panels that included the heads of some of America’s largest companies. Trump said in a tweet that he is ending the Manufacturing Jobs Initiative and the Strategic and Policy Forum “rather than putting pressure on the businesspeople” that made up those groups.
I tell you, you’ve got to know when to hold them, know when to fold them, and know when to shallowly cover up your own Manhattanite white supremacy before busting loose a couple of days later. I haven’t seen a wealthy guy so ambivalent about white nationalism since Henry Ford was killed by old age and shame.
But let’s focus on the topic at hand: Trump is suffering. All photos of our engorged commander show that the winter of gout is soon to be upon him. Without friends for his Business Lunches, who will he share his big pies with? Well, I don’t know about the rest of you, but I am concerned about our child-king’s well-being. I have scoured high and I have burbled low to find high-rollers—serious contenders—superfriends—to support our President. I can assure our nauseated friends in the Executive Branch that these human gentlemen have been probably vetted and vaccinated against every communicable plutocrat disease known to man, and in many cases their smell is agreeable.
In short, these men are the rude clay from which the President can form his new, even better, more tremendous, top business council.
Charles Montgomery Burns
A long-time thought-leader among the blobular, yellow denizens of Springfield, Burns is the original haver and taker, and has done in one week what Trump claims do have done in his seventy years of going bankrupt. Blocking out the sun. Hitting Bart with a car. Spawning a three-eyed fish. Refusing to return Smithers’ affection. Wearing a gorilla vest. Sexually harassing Marge. He’s a natural fit with Team Trump! Burns made shells for the Nazis, Trump makes excuses for them. It’s a match made in the Trump family’s version of heaven, which I assume is a steakhouse where people eat gold. Some haters will no doubt object that Mr. Burns was far more likable and innovative during the first eleven seasons of his evil, and since May 2000 it’s been on a downward slope. To which I say, not even Trump could ruin The Simpsons; they did that on their own. And Burns was part of it. What crime could be bigger than that?
Dick Jones
Dick Jones goes on our list as the most most of all of these CEOs. Dick Jones is not an official CEO, but if that snooping Robocop had not interfered in his character growth, I feel that Dick Jones—a man who felt comfortable around Clarence Boddicker—would have made a completely lovable executive for the running of old Detroit. Jones is who Gordon Gekko wishes he could be; a cutout of sincere, grotesque evil so flagrant that Detroit seems noble and idyllic by comparison. If you’re not feeling my argument, remember that Richard Jones, Senior President of OCP, is the father of the highly lovable Enforcement Droid series 209. It’s a cute robot that makes pig noises! If you love the Internet, which is technology combined with cute animal noises, then by the force of your own logic, you must love ED-209. It’s almost written in the Magna Carta, for God’s sake. Why do we celebrate this so-called “Robo”-cop, when Dick Jones, an amoral sociopath, is clearly the most machine-like creature in the entire film? Let’s give credit where credit is due, and add this bleeding-edge job-creator onto the Biz Council.
Vince McMahon
Another top fictional bad guy along the lines of Mr. Burns, the CEO of Wrestling was first imagined in a West Virginia outhouse in the year 1905. Passed from storyteller to storyteller during the Appalachian Trail in the years since, McMahon, like Sauron, has assumed many forms: first as a billowing cloud of Clorox-flavored smoke. Then, as a flaming mound of garbage fire who announced wrestling matches. Then he took his third metamorphic shape as a meme wrestling bad guy during the Attitude Era of pro wrestling, which coincided with the slow asphyxiation of network TV. Seinfeld went off the air at roughly the same time McMahon continued to live, and I don’t think there’s any coincidence about this. By acting as a wrestler’s best friend—a steady supply of money for painkillers—McMahon has maintained a humanoid shape for several years now, and as of yet, has not mutated into his final form, a sentient slime mold. While he is in bipedal shape, he is a natural fit for Team Trump’s Business Council. Stay moist.
Lex Luthor
“Wait, wait. This is a supervillain!” you say.
Sure.
I get that.
I get it, libs.
But check it out.
The sun causes cancer.
The sun feeds Superman.
Maybe I want a President who puts America first. America only has two planets, Earth and the Moon. Of those two planets, the most tremendous, the splashiest and classiest one, is Planet America aka The Earth aka Our Place.
There’s going to be an eclipse soon. Already, people are making excuses for it.
What about Earth? Why aren’t we celebrating Earth every day?
Maybe the President needs to take the threat of the Sun seriously.
Maybe the President needs an ally who fights all the people who are receiving aid and comfort from the Sun.
Luthor tries to kill Superman.
I think that’s check and mate.
Federal Convict #A113404-27, Formerly Known as Martin Shkreli
Photo courtesy of Getty Images
Martin isn’t actually a member of the council. He’s the sacrificial victim, who the council members will use to summon their final member. In this way, each of the members of Trump Business Council 2.0 will be able to dodge the unpleasant associations of hanging out with Pharma Bro.
I can hear your voices: “Jason, what is the point of this exercise?” Let’s move onto the far more important—and frankly, more appropriate—question of “Who will they be sacrificing Shkreli to?” Why, look no further than the final participant in this new business council:
His Royal Highness, The Prince of Darkness, Satan
Already a close personal friend of Donald Trump, who has referred to him as a “beautiful spirit” and “an absolute confidant,” the cloven-hoofed one has been tempting buyers for several billion years now, and brings to Trump Business Council 2.0 a sense of style and panache that makes onlookers scream “Miami” before rolling over and suffocating in a field of burning pitch. While Lucifer is already well-known for his command of absolute evil, the horned absolute beast is less famous for his collection of illegal scrimshaw and his collection of flamboyant scarfs. As a CEO of the Underworld, Satan was the first to institute “Casual Friday,” when the damned inhabitants of his many pits were only required to wear their most casual sins around their necks as they drowned slowly in a lake of their own lifetime excrement.
Speaking openly here: who needs the CEO of Merck when these innovators are on the team? I feel as if the job of getting America on track again will be safe in the hands of these giants, and that Trump will feel much more at home among these cutting-edge stallions of achievement than he ever did among his old peers, the relatively mundane ringers of Wall Street. More importantly, Our President will feel safe and secure knowing that he is no longer absolutely the worst man at the table. For now.