‘You’re the most intelligent guy our military has got, general. If I ask you to do the right thing, will you?’

‘Am not quite sure what you are hinting at, sir.’

‘A  four year term flies by like nothing. You can’t accomplish anything.  The media, the liberal crybabies, save the trees, give every illegal  migrant a house, if little Johnny doesn’t like his wiener, give him  hormone therapy at 12 and don’t tell his parents! Do you like seeing  this country go to hell? Lose everything that used to make it great?’

‘No, Sir, I do not, Sir.’

‘If  you give the order to lock up all the elements hostile to our great  nation, will all units follow? If Congress gets disbanded and reformed  on our terms what do you think will happen?’

‘It’s hard to say, Sir. You’re talking about dismantling our institutions, about banning all other political parties.’

‘No, am not. Only the crazy ones. The anti-American ones.’

‘You won in 2024, can’t your VP become the next president?’

‘The  guy’s weak, he is very weak, he’s a pushover, really, I mean he’s good  in some ways, but he’s not presidential material. Maybe he wins, you  know, the Democrats have a lousy, lousy ticket, it’s a joke. I mean,  Clooney and AOC, it’s just a joke, absolutely ridiculous.’

‘So there you go, your party will win again next year.’

‘My  problem isn’t next year. My problem is 2032, when people will have seen  how weak Vance is, you know, never shook off his hillbilly mentality,  underneath all the bravado there’s just a weak kid, you know. His book  starts out with him saying he’s never accomplished anything. So weak.  The Democrats will win in 2032. They will do a lot of damage. This isn’t  the way to run a country. Imagine the US is a patient with a horrible,  horrible disease, for four days a physician administers the correct  medicine, it starts working, and four or maybe 8 later, a quack takes  over and gives the patient poison and takes him off the drug. That’s our  country. Cure, poison, cure, poison, cure, poison. We need to keep  treating the patient the right way till the patient is cured. Tell me,  doesn’t that make sense to you?’

‘It does, Sir, it does.’

‘So you’ll send out the order?’

‘Sir,  you have some very convincing arguments, but am afraid many unit  commanders would balk. There is a long standing tradition that the US  army doesn’t get involved in politics.’

‘But our first president was a general, wasn’t he? George Jefferson.’

‘Washington, Sir.’

‘And Grant? And Lincoln? And Eisenhower? And Kennedy?’

‘Lincoln and Kennedy were never generals, Sir’

‘I  didn’t come here for a history class. That’s all talk. The liberals  love talk. Am talking action. Are you ready for some action?’

‘Am  just saying, Sir, that the US military has a long of tradition of  respecting the political process. Even in the midst of a Civil War there  was a presidential election. Even the Confederacy respected the will of  their president, Jefferson Davis, till the very last moment.’

‘Are you a history teacher or a general, son?’

‘A general, Sir.’

‘Cause  if you wanna teach highschool kids who George Jefferson was, I can find  me a real general, you know. Somebody who wants to put his ass on the  line for his country and doesn’t only lecture people about history, but  makes history.’

The  next morning at 4 am tanks started rolling through the streets. It  looked like  Trump would easily dispose of his opponents, weak as they  were in every way, but the general knew history. Too many army units  went against their orders.

The  Republican forces, or the Loyalists, seized all installations, forts,  military equipment and gobbled up all units in Texas, New Mexico,  Louisiana, Alabama, Georgia, Florida (where bloody street battles were  fought), North-Carolina, South-Carolina, Virginia, Maryland,  Pennsylvania, Kentucky, Tennessee, Arkansas, Missouri, Colorado, Idaho,  Utah, Montana, Wisconsin, Wyoming, Oklahoma, Alaska, parts of Ohio,  Indiana and Illinois. The rest fell to the Democratic forces or the  Union forces as they were called. Some states tried to be neutral, but  they were quickly invaded by both sides. Washington DC is basically  burned to the ground. Officially the loyalists establish their capital  in Montgomery, Alabama, though Trump prefers to lead from his home in  Florida. The Union forces establish their capital in Los Angeles. Hawaii  was taken over by an indigenous movement and declared its  independence. Mexican drug cartels manage to annex parts of Nevada, New Mexico and Arizona and are at war with both the Loyalists and the Union forces. Canada erects a wall along its border with the former US. Americans try to illegally pass into Canada. They are put in cages if caught. 

The  division spread like wildfire and countries all over the world either  recognized Trump or Clooney as the legitimate government of the US, some  recognized neither and demanded a restoration of the former US, some  backed a US government in exile, established in Kiev, which lasted until  Russia took over Kiev.

The  most popular illegally published novel in the year 2042, after the US  has lost 9 percent of its population, is a novel with an alternate  history of the US. In it the democrats select Bernie Sanders as their  candidate in the 2020 election and win by a landslide. So many reforms  are pushed through that benefit the people economically that Trump never  manages to stage a come-back, he goes back to being the host of the  Apprentice. In one episode Sanders participates and everyone has a good  laugh, Bernie most of all, when Trump fires him. On the show and only on  the show.