THE MYTH OF KING TRUMP AND THE GOLDEN TOUCH
A Friday Funny — A Satirical Parody for the Ages
"In the land of MAGA, where the steaks were well-done and the ties were long, there ruled a king whose love of gold was matched only by his love of mirrors — and himself."
"In the land of MAGA, where the steaks were well-done and the ties were long, there ruled a king whose love of gold was matched only by his love of mirrors — and himself."
BOOK I: The Favor of Mamdani
In the glittering, slightly-tacky kingdom of MAGA — a land of gilded escalators, spray-tanned sunsets, and golf courses that stretched to the horizon — there ruled a great and tremendously large-handed king named Trump of Mar-a-Lago, First of His Name, Lord of the Covfefe, Protector of the Tariff, and Undisputed Champion of the Electoral College (he would remind you of this unprompted).
One golden afternoon — they were all golden afternoons in MAGA — the king's Secret Service detail discovered a disheveled old man wandering through the Concrete Rose Garden Bar & Grill, muttering about Medicare for All and free college tuition, his white hair wild as a nor'easter, his finger perpetually raised at an invisible crowd.
It was Silenus Bernie, the ancient, grumbling sage of Vermont — companion and mentor to the great god Mamdani, Lord of the Outer Boroughs, Deity of Rent Control, and Divine Patron of the People's Feast.
Silenus Bernie had wandered off from a campaign rally somewhere in New Hampshire, gotten turned around at a Denny's, and ended up, inexplicably, in the Rose Garden, where he sat down uninvited at a table and began loudly explaining to a potted fern why billionaires should not exist.
Now, a lesser king might have had him removed. But Trump, recognizing an opportunity for tremendous hospitality — the best hospitality, people were saying — welcomed Silenus Bernie with open arms and a full spread of Big Macs, KFC buckets, McRibs, and a tower of Diet Cokes so tall it required its own Secret Service detail.
For five days and five nights, they feasted at the Concrete Rose Garden Bar & Grill. Silenus Bernie ate the fries (reluctantly, noting the workers weren't paid a living wage) and Trump talked about himself (enthusiastically, noting he was the greatest king who ever lived).
On the fifth day, Trump personally drove Silenus Bernie back to the god Mamdani in a golf cart with his name printed on the side in letters just slightly too large.
BOOK II: The Wish
Mamdani, god of the people, appeared before Trump in a flash of progressive light, wearing a blazer and carrying a tote bag that read "THE FUTURE IS PUBLIC."
"O King Trump," said Mamdani, "for your hospitality to my companion Silenus Bernie, I shall grant you one wish. Choose wisely."
Trump did not pause. Trump did not reflect. Trump did not, as scholars would later note, think about it even a little.
"I want everything I touch to turn to GOLD," he declared. "Beautiful gold. The best gold. 24-karat. Tremendous."
Mamdani opened his mouth. Closed it. Opened it again.
"Are you… are you sure you don't want, say, wisdom? Or perhaps the ability to listen? Or even just—"
"GOLD."
Mamdani sighed the sigh of a god who had seen this before, granted the wish, and quietly updated his LinkedIn to reflect "Deity — Not Responsible for Subsequent Events."
BOOK III: The Blessing (Brief), The Curse (Extensive)
At first, it was, as the king himself would tweet at 3 a.m., AMAZING.
Trump strode through the White House — which he had long ago redecorated in what interior designers charitably called "Louis XIV Meets Atlantic City Penthouse" — and touched everything in sight.
- The Resolute Desk? GOLD. ✨
- The Lincoln Portrait? GOLD. ✨
- The drapes? GOLD. ✨
- The drapes that were already gold? More gold. ✨
- The Constitution, framed on the wall? GOLD — and frankly, he'd always felt it was more of a suggestion anyway.
He touched the Rose Garden and it became a gleaming golden wasteland, every concrete slab and plastic flower frozen in metallic splendor. Landscapers wept. Bees died. Nobody cared about the bees.
He touched Air Force One mid-flight. The pilot had questions.
He touched the Oval Office bathroom — and here, dear reader, we must pause, because the Golden Bathroom Disaster of MAGA would become the stuff of legend, whispered about in hushed tones by plumbers, historians, and the three remaining journalists with press credentials.
The golden toilet. The golden toilet paper. The golden plunger. The golden everything. The White House plumbing, already strained by years of executive fast food, simply gave up. The Roto-Rooter bill alone would have funded a small nation's healthcare system. Silenus Bernie would later cite it in three separate Senate hearings.
BOOK IV: The Cabinet of Gold
Emboldened, Trump turned his attention to governance — or rather, to the people who performed governance while he watched cable news.
One by one, he summoned his Cabinet members and Congressional sycophants to the Oval Office. They came eagerly, as they always did, wearing their best suits and their most practiced expressions of total, unconditional agreement.
He shook their hands.
He patted their backs.
He pointed at them and said "you're doing a great job" — and they turned, one by one, into solid gold statues, frozen in poses of eternal nodding approval, their golden faces locked in the permanent expression of someone who has just agreed that yes, the crowd size was the largest in history.
The Secretary of Yes stood gleaming by the window.
The Senator of Absolutely Right, Sir posed magnificently near the fireplace.
The Congressman of You're A Genius, Actually was particularly well-cast, his golden hand raised in a perpetual thumbs-up.
Trump surveyed his collection with tremendous satisfaction.
Then he had a tremendous idea.
BOOK V: The White House "Grift" Shoppe
Within 48 hours, the East Wing had been converted into the Official White House GRIFT Shoppe™ — "Where Democracy Meets Retail."
The golden Cabinet members were displayed on velvet pedestals with small placards describing their "limited edition collector's value." The gift shop also offered:
- 🥇 Golden Sycophant NFTs — "Own a piece of history (terms and conditions apply)"
- 🥇 Signed Golden Gavel Replicas — "Slightly less functional than the original"
- 🥇 The Golden Press Secretary Bobblehead — "Nods continuously. Battery not included. Batteries not necessary."
- 🥇 Commemorative Golden Constitution Fragments — "Decorative purposes only"
- 🥇 The MAGA Gold Card — "$5,000. Does nothing. Sells out immediately."
Tour groups were charged $299 per person. Foreign dignitaries were charged more. Much more. The gift shop generated more revenue than the Treasury Department, which was itself now made of gold and therefore non-functional.
Economists called it "unprecedented."
The king called it "beautiful."
BOOK VI: The Feast That Was Not
On the evening of his greatest triumph, Trump sat down alone at the long golden table in the golden dining room of the golden White House, before a golden bucket of KFC and a golden tower of Big Macs, and reached for a golden nugget.
It was, in fact, a golden nugget.
He bit down.
He cracked a golden molar.
He reached for his Diet Coke.
It was a golden cylinder of solid metal.
He reached for the ketchup — his beloved, sacred ketchup — and it was a golden bottle, cold and immovable, the ketchup inside frozen in a state of eternal, metallic uselessness.
He sat in the silence of his golden kingdom, surrounded by golden walls, golden furniture, golden sycophants, golden fast food, and one golden toilet he could no longer use, and he experienced, for perhaps the first time in his long and tremendously successful life, a feeling he could not immediately brand, merchandise, or blame on a Democrat.
It was called consequence.
BOOK VII: The Touch That Ended All Touches
And then, as the golden sun set over the golden Potomac, Trump did what Trump always, inevitably, inexorably did.
He caught his reflection in the golden mirror on the golden wall.
He smiled the smile of a man who has always believed his own reflection to be the finest thing in any room.
He reached out — slowly, lovingly, with the reverence of a man greeting his oldest and most faithful companion —
And he touched himself.
(Historians note this was not, technically, a new development.)
There was a sound like a thousand gold coins dropping simultaneously onto a marble floor.
And King Trump of MAGA stood frozen — a magnificent, 6-foot-something, slightly-orange-tinted golden statue, one hand raised, tie blown back in an eternal golden wind, mouth open mid-sentence about something that was, by all accounts, very unfair.
He was, objectively, the most gold he had ever been.
He was also, objectively, not breathing.
BOOK VIII: Melania and the eBay Listing
Melania, Queen of MAGA, First Lady of the Concrete Rose Garden, and a woman who had, over many years, developed the spiritual composure of someone who has made peace with absolutely everything, walked into the Oval Office, looked at the golden statue of her husband, and stood very still for a long moment.
She tilted her head slightly.
She looked at him from the left.
She looked at him from the right.
She picked up her phone.
She opened eBay.
She typed: "Vintage Gold Statue. Heavy. Unique. One owner. Selling AS-IS. No returns."
She paused. Added: "Tremendous conversation piece."
She photographed him from his good side — he had always insisted it was the right — and posted the listing with a starting bid of $1.
Within four minutes, there were 847 bids.
Within an hour, a bidding war had broken out between a Slovenian art collector, a hedge fund manager in Greenwich, and a man in Ohio who simply wrote in the comments "I just want a piece of him" — which Melania found, in its own way, deeply relatable.
She carefully broke off his right hand — the one perpetually raised in a thumbs-up — and sold it separately as a "Buy It Now" for $4,200.
The golden tie went to a museum in Berlin.
The golden cufflinks were auctioned at Christie's.
The golden hair — which had, in golden form, achieved a kind of terrible majesty — was purchased by a private collector who declined to be named but whose initials were, reportedly, E.M.
Melania kept the golden mirror. She felt it was only right.
BOOK IX: The Washing of the Hands (That Never Came)
In the original myth, Midas journeyed to the River Pactolus, washed away the curse, and learned humility.
Scholars of the MAGA Myth note, with some delicacy, that no such river journey occurred.
Partly because the king was a golden statue.
Partly because, even if he hadn't been, the concept of washing away a curse through self-reflection and humility was, as one historian put it, "structurally incompatible with the source material."
Mamdani, god of the people, was consulted. He looked at the eBay listing. He looked at the Golden Bathroom. He looked at the row of nodding golden Cabinet members in the gift shop, each priced at $12,999 (plus shipping).
He closed his laptop.
He went back to the Outer Boroughs.
He said nothing for a very long time.
Silenus Bernie, reached for comment at a Denny's in New Hampshire, simply said: "I've been saying this for forty years" — and raised his finger at the horizon.
EPILOGUE: The Moral (Several, Actually)
The Myth of King Trump and the Golden Touch endures as one of the great cautionary tales of the modern age, offering the following timeless lessons:
| Lesson | Classical Version | MAGA Version |
|---|---|---|
| 🥇 Greed corrupts | Midas starves amid gold | Trump can't eat his KFC |
| 💛 Love is priceless | Daughter turned to gold | Melania opens eBay |
| 🌊 Humility redeems | Midas washes in the river | No river. No washing. No humility. |
| 🪞 Know thyself | Ancient Greek wisdom | He touched himself. Knowingly. |
| 🏛️ Power is fleeting | Kingdom falls to ruin | Kingdom becomes gift shop |
The golden sands of the River Pactolus, historians tell us, were enriched by Midas washing away his curse.
The golden sands of the Potomac, MAGA historians tell us, were enriched by the gift shop's quarterly earnings report.
It is, in its own way, a kind of legacy.
FINIS "He came. He touched. He gilded. He sold." — Inscription on the base of the golden statue, East Wing, White House GRIFT Shoppe™, currently on clearance, 40% off, all sales final.*
Happy Friday. May your weekend be golden — but not, you know, literally. 🥂
