An Imagined Debate Between Donald Trump And President Whitmore From ‘Independence Day”

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WOLF BLITZER, MODERATOR: Hello and welcome to the first presidential debate of this, our country’s first election after the devastating alien attack on July 4. I’m Wolf Blitzer, your moderator. Please welcome to the stage our candidates, President Thomas J. Whitmore and Mr. Donald Trump.

[audience applauds, candidates shake hands and move to their podiums]

WOLF BLITZER, MODERATOR: President Whitmore, we’ll start with you. Your first term saw a great deal of turmoil. Wall Street bonuses spun out of control, you fought tooth and nail with Congress over healthcare reforms, and hundreds of thousands of Americans — including the First Lady — perished when aliens came to Earth in giant disc-shaped warships and leveled our most populous cities with blue space lasers of doom. How will you improve on this in your second term?

PRESIDENT WHITMORE: Wolf, I’m glad you asked that. Those attacks, while devastating, showed me that the human spirit — the ability of the citizens of a country, and the world, to come together in a time of crisis — is truly an amazing thing. I believe that if we can look back to that awful day and remember the best parts of all of us bubbling up to solve a problem together, in unison, we can truly achieve anything.

WOLF BLITZER, MODERATOR: Mr. Trump, your reply?

DONALD TRUMP: Let me begin by saying that my condolences go out to the president on the loss of his wife, who was a great woman who died in service of her country, and was a solid 7, maybe even an 8 in the right lighting. Not a 10, and I know what a 10 looks like. We’ve all seen my daughter Ivanka, who is extremely attractive and who I have accidentally hit on multiple times in dark rooms until I realized it was her. Stand up, Ivanka. Someone in the control room get a shot of her. Slow pan up from feet to head. Real slow. See, a 10, even though many in the dishonest media are saying she is a 9.5. Lawsuits are being filed, folks. Believe me.

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WOLF BLITZER, MODERATOR: … Yes, but what does that have to do with what Presid-…

DONALD TRUMP: Look, was President Whitmore in cahoots with the aliens on this attack? I don’t know. Maybe. Probably. A lot of people are saying he was. Ask yourself this… did aliens ever attack before he was president? Why now? I’ll tell you why: Because he’s a weak, low-energy leader who could never stop an alien attack as well as I could.

PRESIDENT WHITMORE: Now, hold on. This is exactly what I’ve been talking about, Wolf. Mr. Trump has no answers, no ideas, so he just resorts to attacks, many of them contradictory. First I’m in cahoots with the aliens, then I’m too weak to stand up to them? I’d also like to remind him and the American people that when that attack was happening, I was in a fighter jet in formation with the brave members of our military, and a few brave civilians, coordinating a successful attack. Where were you during the attack, sir? Answer me that.

DONALD TRUMP: I was inside my luxurious panic room at Mar-a-Lago, which is stocked with all the finest Trump food products and is secured with a large solid gold door with my name engraved into it, surrounded by 2-… no, 6 billion dollars in gold.

PRESIDENT WHITMORE: And hiding in a bunker surrounded by your money while the rest of the country fought for survival… you don’t think that makes you a coward?

DONALD TRUMP: No, it makes me smart. And it was $10 billion in gold. Maybe $20 billion. I’ll sue anyone who says it was less.

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WOLF BLITZER, MODERATOR: Okay, moving on. Mr. Trump, you’ve been critical of the way the president handled the attack, and the steps he’s taken to prevent a new one. If elected, what would you do and have done differently?

DONALD TRUMP: Well, first of all, the president — who is a gutless, spineless liar who should probably be in jail for working with the aliens, which again, a lot of people are saying is true — has been very mean to me. But what would I have done differently Wolf? I’ll tell you.

[a commotion erupts in the back of the room, as JEFF GOLDBLUM’S CHARACTER FROM INDEPENDENCE DAY — whose name I can never remember and I am pretty sure is not Ian Malcolm, because that was his Jurassic Park character, and I am about 85 percent sure he didn’t just play the same character in both movies, because Ian Malcolm was cool and had a leather jacket and the ID4 guy was a dork with a flannel shirt tied around his waist — busts through the door holding like 80 pages of printouts]

JEFF GOLDBLUM’S CHARACTER FROM INDEPENDENCE DAY: Stop the debate! Something disturbing is happening beyond Mars! I think we could be headed toward anoth-…

DONALD TRUMP: Get ‘im outta here!

JEFF GOLDBLUM’S CHARACTER FROM INDEPENDENCE DAY: No, you don’t understand! I’m not a protester! I’m a scientist and I… wait. What are you doing? Get your hands off me! This is a matter of national secur… Put me down! Mr. President! I need to speak to you! This is urgent!

PRESIDENT WHITMORE: You know, maybe we should hear him ou-…

DONALD TRUMP: Yeah, bash his brains in.

[two goons carry JEFF GOLDBLUM’S CHARACTER FROM INDEPENDENCE DAY out of the hall]

DONALD TRUMP: Anyway, where was I? My space plan. I would have been firing nuclear bombs into space — let me tell you, the biggest, best nuclear bombs you’ve ever seen — for years before the attack, just to send a message. I’d shoot them at the moon and blow it to hell.

PRESIDENT WHITMORE: Wait, did you just say you’d blow up the moon?

DONALD TRUMP: What? No.

WOLF BLITZER, MODERATOR: Actually, Mr. Trump, you did say that. You said “I’d shoot them” — meaning nuclear bombs — “at the moon and blow it to hell.” Those are your words, sir. We can play the tape back if you lik-…

DONALD TRUMP: Sorry, Wolf. I never said it. And if you keep broadcasting these false attacks on me, I’ll have to sue you and your low-rated network into oblivion.

WOLF BLITZER, MODERATOR: O-…kay. Mr. President, your response to Mr. Trump’s plan?

PRESIDENT WHITMORE: I think the people of America know, I think we’ve proven, that by coming together and standing up to the attack, even though we were massively outgunned and at a technological disadvantage, we sent a message throughout the galaxy that we are strong, and brave, and we won’t go down without a fight. I think that message resonating throughout the cosmos, in addition to new funding to build-up our space research and exploration programs, are the best way to keep us safe in the immediate future. Firing nuclear bombs into space at random as some sort of poorly-conceived deterrent is a massive waste of resources at best and a way to needlessly instigate whatever life form they accidentally reach. It’s just reckless.

WOLF BLITZER: Fair enough. Moving on now to infrastructure and rebuilding. Mr. Trump, you’ve said you would cut taxes 15 percent across the board, and there are reports now that you yourself avoided paying taxes for over a decade after reporting a near $1 billion loss. How do you plan to fund the massive rebuilding plans in New York, Los Angeles, and Washington, D.C.?

DONALD TRUMP: I have a plan. A better plan than any of the experts have come up with. And believe me, folks, I’ve talked to all the experts. Many of them worked for me, but I fired them. See, Wolf, I’m a builder. I build things. I know people in construction. And we’re gonna put up so many alien-proof skyscrapers you won’t even believe it.

WOLF BLITZER, MODERATOR: Yes, but how are you going to pay f-… wait. Alien-proof skyscrapers? What does that even mean?

DONALD TRUMP: Impervious to alien attacks, Wolf.

WOLF BLITZER, MODERATOR: Yes, but how?

DONALD TRUMP: We’re gonna make America great again.

PRESIDENT WHITMORE: Oh, Jesus Christ. There he goes again. Making promises he has no intention of keeping, based on ideas that mean nothing. This is his whole M.O. I mean, how am I only up four points in the polls right now? Are you people even listening to him? I saved us from an alien attack! Me! I gave a big speech and flew a plane into battle! You all saw the tapes! I should be running away with this. At the very least I should be running away with it… against him. My God. What is happening right now? I feel like I’m hallucinating. Is that what’s happening? Has someone been slipping me peyote every day for this entire campaign? Because I think about it a lot — a lot, on my plane from stop-to-stop, while I’m eating, for the hours and hours I lie awake staring at the ceiling wondering what the hell is going — and that’s the only solution I’ve been able to come up with. It’s the most perplexing thing I’ve ever seen, and again, I just saw aliens come down from outer space and blow up the White House with a laser.

DONALD TRUMP: You know what? If I did say I’d blow up the moon — and I’m not saying I did, and my lawyers are backstage ready to pounce if anyone in here implies that I did — maybe what I meant is that the moon had it coming for not warning us about the warships. Again, I don’t know. But maybe. A lot of people are saying I’m smart for suggesting it, if I did, which I probably didn’t, so I’ll sue them for saying that. But they’re right. Okay, debate over. I won. Everyone says I won. Look at the polls. Good night.

PRESIDENT WHITMORE: [banging head on podium]

WOLF BLITZER, MODERATOR: Actually, we have 75 minutes to g-… You know what? Screw it. This brings us to the end of the first debate. May God have mercy on all of our souls.

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