Sources report that while hurricanes were ravaging Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands, President Trump spent the time in seclusion, deeply immersed in study of the chess strategies of famous champions such as Mikhail Tal, Ruy Lopez and Gary Kasparov. “I’m not officially a grandmaster yet,” claimed Trump, “but I am already better than most of these foreigners ever were after only a few hours of study—and by the way, if they were alive they would be scared to play me, and anyway I wouldn’t let them into the country.”
The President is reportedly contemplating issuing an executive order that will abolish the National Football League and replace it with a new form of speeded up, high-impact chess, incorporating mandatory body contact, a twenty-four second clock, and several elements of cage fighting. “I govern by distracting people and appealing to their most feral, mean-spirited instincts,” confided Trump to Sarah Huckabee Sanders, “and pro football just doesn’t hack it any more. The players and even the owners don’t follow my directions any more than my cabinet does, and they have ruined the game by acting like pussies with their rules to prevent players from having concussions and otherwise maiming themselves.”
Chess players are something else, according to the leader of the free world. “ A great American player like Bobby Fisher not only has a killer instinct but a megalomaniac personality out of touch with reality and a knack for generating media attention. That’s a combination I and my base can really relate to.”
“I’ve instructed my attorney general, if he wants to keep his job,” reads a draft presidential press release, “to free up our great U.S. players to headbutt every time their opponent castles; eye gouge whenever someone says, ‘Check;’ and use the business end of a bishop to sucker punch any adversary who gains a tactical advantage. No helmets. No padding. No protecting the quarterback or penalties for unsportsmanlike conduct.”
“Just you wait,” Trump told his secretary of state, Mike Tillerson, upon being reintroduced to him, “as chess players get beefed up, so will my rating and the profits at my casinos.. And who will care about not having health care, undergoing floods and famines because of climate change, paying unfair taxes so the rich don’t have to, and having their friends, neighbors and co-workers deported when they see me face off over sixty-four squares against a random Muslim, Mexican or Kim Jong-Un?”
“ And you can rest assured that the pawns, like so much else I touch, will be poisoned for real,”promised the President of the United