CAN YOU IMAGINE how
desperately Donald Trump wants
a war right now? How badly he is
gunning for a full-on fight with
a fresh enemy of the people, real
or imagined, that could galvanize
his limp (and getting limper)
public support, stop people fake-
newsing about the catastrophic
failure of TrumpCare, remove the
asterisk from his Glorious Victory
against Hillary, and take the
media spotlight o≠ the dark web
of Russian collusion that has dogged
and—let us pray—will ultimately
end his Brief and Terrifying Reign.
He needs something to distract us from
all these distractions. And there is one thing
that always works.
Is there still time for a war? Because if
there is, I believe Trump and Steve Bannon
would love to bring it to us.
War, I am sorry to promise you, or wild
and reckless military actions, will be the
next game plan—that is, if Trump can start
a fight faster than Congress can muster the
will to repeal and replace him. And we all
know how fast and furiously this man can
start a fight. Along with his skills at serial
bankruptcy and gold-plating entire hotel
lobbies, it is, perhaps, his greatest gift.
Besides, surely this is what He has always
dreamed of, The Donald as military hero.
Correction: I mean, if he actually dreams
instead of merely twitches. Can’t you see
him sleep-twitching maniacally at night,
in a bedroom very separate from Melania’s,
his hands groping the darkness in front of
him while he grunt-moans like Peter Boyle
in Young Frankenstein.^1
But it’s getting harder to dream in
Trumpland, and all that’s left is to turn the
empty Great Again gloats of his campaign
into the nightmare they were always meant
to be. Looking for wars—only the best wars,
of course, really terrific wars—was always
part of the Plan. Almost certainly shunted
to the front of the line now. Because as every
petty tyrant knows, every casual reader of
Machiavelli or The Art of the Deal can tell
you, escalating conflict is, and has always
been, the quickest and surest way to consol-
idate power. For a man obsessed with poll
numbers, threatening war, waging war, also
happens to be the fastest way a Loser can
redeem himself in the public’s mind.
And so I await, in the coming weeks and
months, more bellicose banter and general
weirdness with weird-ass North Korea.
Hawkish threats to China over the South
China Sea. Saber-rattling at anyone with
a saber. Maybe our own little Falklands.
That would be cute.
What I really worry about, what keeps
me up at night, is where war under Donald
would take us as a country. Not so much mil-
itarily as democratically. Because:
We already know Trump’s dictatorial dis-
position, his romantic a≠ection for thugs
and violent strongmen, his zero-level inter-
est in democratic institutions. And so, yes,
I flat-out worry that he will relish, seize,
and exploit any martial opportunity to dis-
tract the masses, assume more powers, and
blunt all opposition—much the way his BFF
Vladimir Putin did in 1999. Do you knowthis story, the Origin Story of Vlad? There
is a chilling lesson in it, so let me retell it
before it happens in real time.
That year, as GQ originally reported,
Putin, newly installed in o∞ce and su≠er-
ing anemic poll numbers, seized upon a
crisis surrounding a series of suspicious
apartment bombings in Russia. The result-
ing military-police action, dubious at best
and overkill at every step, soon devolved
into an excuse for a war with Chechnya.
More to the point, it turned Putin from an
unpopular ex-KGB hack into a full-fledged
dictator-hero. Having “crushed” what he
claimed to be a terrorist cabal, he became
beloved as Protector of the Russians, the
dashing despot with pet tigers whom we
all love and fear.^2
Soon he was free to do whatever he
wanted: dismantle or arrest the opposition,
strangle the free media, and (my lawyer is
advising me to place the word “allegedly” in
here) allegedly allow goons to poison and
murder anyone who dared cross him. It’s
staggering. When you see how many Putin
critics have died mysterious deaths in recent
years, it really makes you marvel, and won-
der: How does he (allegedly!) find the time?
That is the grim fable we must avoid at
every cost. So please don’t be surprised if
the next chapter of It Can’t Happen Here
happens here.
It still can’t happen here.JIM NELSON
EDITOR-IN-CHIEF1.Wait. Let’s be fair and consider whether he’s psycho-
logically fit enough to dream. In which case: What does
Donald Trump dream of? Himself, of course, 72 feet
high and stalking the land, giant boner-shaped missiles
shooting ballistically from his crotch. Or the small little
pleasures of the executive branch: Bannon laughing like
a jackal at his Paul Ryan jokes. Nah, probably just weird,
Eyes Wide Shut–y sex parties with Slavic pole-dancing
rooms and willfully masked chatte grabbers, scenes of
wordless debauchery in which Ivanka suddenly shows
up, disturbing and complicating the opportunities.
2.The original GQ story, “None Dare Call It Conspiracy,”
by reporter Scott Anderson, was deemed too dangerous
and held from digital distribution when it ran in 2009,
but it is now, finally, online. I highly recommend it. ERIC RAY DAVIDSON> Repeal
and Replace
18 GQ.COM MAY 2017
LETTERFROMTHEEDITOR