Trump seemed positively enthusiastic about his being indicted by Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg. At  home and alone with Melania (who in general avoided like the plague having to spend alone time with her husband), he was all smiles. Shouting and carrying on, “How could they dare? I’ve been doing what I want for 35 years and it’s only now that they decide to do something? This is persecution! They think they’re being smart. This is the best thing they could ever have done for my campaign. You can start calling me Mr. President again.”

“Yes, dear. You certainly are right, dear. As always… Please excuse me. I have an urgent call,” she said as she made her way to the bathroom. But to no avail, Trump stood outside the bathroom door shouting and carrying on.

That evening, he issued a statement whose content was completely expected.  “From the time I came down the golden escalator at Trump Tower, and even before I was sworn in as your President of the United States, the Radical Left Democrats – the enemy of the hard-working men and women of this Country – have been engaged in a Witch-Hunt to destroy the Make America Great Again movement,” he wrote. It went on from there. And on some more. And some more.

Trump’s supporters ate it up.

Trump’s NYC Indictment
The following Tuesday, Trump reported to Manhattan for the formal arrest procedure. He was greeted by rapturous crowds chanting “Trump, Trump, Trump!”

The sign the lone Trump opponent was carrying. He escaped with only minor injuries that only required a two day stay in the hospital.

A lone – and somewhat foolhardy – individual stood off to the side with a sign: “Lock him up.. Throw away the key!” but he didn’t last long once the Trump supporters noticed him. Fortunately for him, an ambulance was standing at the ready right down the street.

Trump bravely made his way through the parted throngs, waving his fist a la Josh Hawley on January 6, 2020. Again, the crowd ate it up, although one commentator did take note of the fact that Hawley’s fist waving salute was followed by his sprinting across the hall and down the stairs to avoid that exact same mob.

The mug shot taken of Trump at his indictment

The indictments were unsealed and there were no real surprises. A long list of criminal business practices was revealed. Bank Fraud. Tax evasion. Election law violations. Obstruction of justice. Quite a few of the charges were serious. This only added to the outrage of the Trump supporters, who were already worked up into a frenzy. “You would think the president (that’s how they still referred to Trump) was a criminal!” one of them commented. 

The news commentators were full of themselves, analyzing whether this would help or hinder Trump’s election campaign. The professional comedians – Steve Colbert and his crowd – were in Seventh Heaven. They were celebrating late into the night. “This is going to give me unbeatable material for at least the next six months!” Colbert said to his wife over dinner.

Jordan Klepper asks some uncomfortable questions. Cameras taking photos of him running for his life were destroyed.

Trump’s next campaign rally – a return to Oklahoma City – was his largest and most “enthusiastic” ever. Jordan Klepper arrived and started asking his usual difficult questions – the type of questions that made the Trump supporters look foolish – but this time the Proud Boys (well, at least somebody thought it was them) were ready for him, and Klepper barely escaped unscathed.

Georgia investigation
Next up was the investigation in Fulton County, Georgia. Or at least it would have been but for the fact that the state Republicans hurriedly pushed through a state law allowing the governor to remove any county DA he liked if he didn’t believe that DA was carrying out their job properly. Fulton County DA Fani Willis was soon offered a well paying job as a commentator at CNN or MSNBC or several professorships at different prestigious universities.

So the possibility of those charges fizzled.

But then the federal investigation came into view. Trump had been hoping that those charges could be put off until he made his way back into the White House, but it was not to be. By December he was indicted and called in to Washington DC to face the charges. And they were most serious, among them obstruction of justice on several counts. Also, it turned out that all Trump’s former loyalists were just more interested in saving their own skins. Mike Pence, Bill Barr, Mark Meadows – they all had given testimony that Trump had actually said that he wanted the January 6 mob to storm the capitol and prevent the certification of the election. Not only had he said it, but he’d been in communication with the Proud Boys among others, through Mark Meadows. This was becoming serious.

Trump’s crowds had been growing, and becoming even more fanatical. He held a rally in Selma, Alabama – scene of a police riot against civil rights protesters in 1965. Not only did the Trump supporters come from thousands of miles away, they rioted once again. They marched through town and any business which didn’t have a Trump sign had its windows smashed. A section of the rioters marched through the black part of town and dared the residents to show themselves. One black man came out onto his porch holding a shotgun. He was met by twenty or so Trump supporters all pointing AR 15’s at him. One was actually holding what appeared to be a machine gun. Another used a flame thrower to set alight a tree growing in this man’s front yard.

Overjoyed by the effectiveness of his new toy, this same individual then set a store alight. The store had a “lock him up” sign in its window. This set off a conflagration on the entire block. Several people barely escaped with their own lives.

The true nature of his supporters, revealed through this riot, actually led to a reaction, including mass protests – many times the size of the Trump rallies – throughout the nation. The cases in which Trump supporters dared to show themselves were few and far between. In one instance, a small vigilante group tried to ride through a largely black and Latino immigrant neighborhood in Detroit. The drug gangs, who had been arming themselves for months, greeted them with a hail of gunfire, and the Trump caravan beat a hasty retreat. The media was outraged at this action, but there was celebration in the streets throughout the nation. Even African immigrants in Paris celebrated.

This mass mobilization completely swung the general mood, such that by the time Trump had to appear in court in Washington to face those charges his confidence was really shaken. He was accompanied by his usual Secret Service agents, led by the ever faithful Tony Ornato. On the day he appeared, his supporters were few and far between. Chants of “lock him up!” drowned out all else.

The media and the Democrats warned that Trump was innocent until proven guilty and calls for locking Trump up were entirely premature and out of place. The day

One of hundreds of smashed up TV’s found in the street after the talking heads all stressed that Trump was innocent until proven guilty.

after this message went out, smashed TV’s appeared in the streets of several neighborhoods in several northern cities. A woman in Oakland was furious. “Do you know what my husband did?” she said to her co worker the next day. “That idiot actually took a baseball bat and smashed the TV when CNN said to give Trump the presumption of innocence. Now, we have to get a new TV! Just wait till he wants a new computer or cell phone.”

When Trump walked into the court to be fingerprinted, he didn’t seem quite so confident. In fact, the policeman (who was quite sympathetic to Trump) had to keep reminding him to please stop shaking his fingers.

Trump was released on his own recognizance. He left the fingerprinting procedure and headed for the airport where he got on the Trump plane, which took off for Mar-a-Lago. Maybe because of thunderclouds gathering on the course to Florida, the plane diverted to fly over the ocean.

Then a strange and worrying thing happened. All electronic contact with the plane was lost. It had simply disappeared. Coast Guard and Navy boats and even helicopters rushed to the last known location of the plane, but not a trace was found. Hours went by. Two hours. Three hours. Not a trace of the plane.

Trump strolling down the red carpet after he’d fled to Moscow

And then, mysteriously, the Trump plane descended out of the clouds at a completely unexpected location. The plane rolled up along the tarmac and came to a stop along a red carpet that had been rolled out. Trump regally descended the stairs with a band playing, crowds cheering… and Vladimir Putin waiting to greet him.

Trump had fled to Moscow!

The US media went wild. There was all sorts of speculation on how Trump’s Secret Service team could have allowed this to have happened. It was revealed that there had been a whole series of messages passed between Ornato and his Russian counterpart. The Secret Service tried to erase those messages, but they were too late.

And so, Trump settled in to his Moscow home, planning to live his life out shuttling between there, Riad, Tel Aviv and even maybe Sevastopol – if only those pesky Ukrainians would only accept their fate. Unfortunately for Trump, they did not. In fact, not only did they drive the Russian troops out of Eastern and coastal Ukraine, they made a march on Crimea.

At that point, all hell broke loose in Russia itself, Putin somehow found himself too close to a window one night and his body was found lying on the street the next morning. Putin’s entire regime started to crumble, endangering Trump’s status there. Israel hurriedly made Trump an honorary Jew and invited him to move to Israel. Trump gathered his entourage, Ornato and all, and his plane headed for Israel, where he planned to settle. However, those responsible for fueling the plane were so corrupt that they’d been siphoning off the fuel for weeks and replacing it with god knows what. No sooner was the plane air borne than it developed engine trouble and made a forced landing in… Kiev of all places! There he, Ornato and his entire entourage were promptly arrested and shipped back to the United States. Trump was put in prison without bail, the Republican Party collapsed in infamy, and with no competition to the Democrats, millions of US workers started to consider an alternative.

Putin was dead. Trump was in prison for life, and everybody lived happily ever after.

The End

(Note: This is filed under “fiction more real than fact)