THE KING STOOD HIGH up on the battlements, far from the din of castle and the reek of the royal swamp. He had hied himself thither to practice French King Louis XIV’s putative pronouncement.
“Lay-Tah, say MOI,” he intoned. “Lay-Tah, say MOI.”
That’s the way Princess Ivanka had written it out.
“Phonetically,” she’d said, whatever that meant. He’d been saying “Latte Say Moi” until Ivanka had, with a roll of her eyes, interjected that “you’re not ordering at Starbucks.” Lucky thing, that. The king wasn’t a coffee drinker, but Mike Pence was. He had spent a decade trying to get an extra-large coffee there, and still came away with a small cup every time.
The king knew Louis’s phrase had talismanic power, but he wasn’t sure why. Or even what it meant, really. He’d wanted to ask Emmanuel Macron when he visited, but he’d been too embarrassed. What if the French president had replied “Lay-tah, Alligatah!” and collapsed in gales of Gallic laughter? Why, the king would be left looking like a royal dope.
He knew some members of his court regarded him thusly. One had referred to him as a “moron,” several others as an “idiot.” He’d pushed them all out the window, but as in the Defenestration of Prague, they’d landed in a pile of manure, and hinted they preferred being there to serving him.
He still heard whispers about “the Royal Dunce” in castle hallways, but he assumed they were references to Michael Cohen. What a regal mess he’d made of things trying to hush up a porno princess’s ribald tale about the wandering ways of the royal eye — and scepter.
Well, now he at least had a real barrister in Lord Giuliani the Loquacious. And yet, there were days when it seemed as though the only thing Rudy did by way of preparation for his interviews with the Fourth Estate was dip his ladle deep into the royal mead barrel.
The king stared down from the parapet. From afar, his subjects looked like ants. So purposefully did they move across the courtyard that one could almost imagine they were . . . ants delivering subpoenas. There came the angry frown that clouded his countenance whenever he thought of Lord Sessions. When he had appointed him Attorney of the Realm, the King had assumed that Lord Sessions would comport himself as a loyal knight.
But when an unruly mob came and raised an effigy of Vlad the Electoral Impaler over the castle wall and made insinuations that Vlad had schemed with the king’s men, instead of clapping them all in irons or pouring boiling oil upon their heads, Sessions had washed his hands of the affair. That had left a member of the palace’s old guard in charge of the matter, who had appointed a Royal Counsel, who had set promptly about investigating the king’s own associates!
So now it was up to his private privy councilors to isssue regal legal pronouncements.
Such as, that he, as King, couldn’t obstruct justice, because he was justice, and so couldn’t obstruct himself.
And that he couldn’t be subpoenaed.
And that he could pardon himself if he so desired. Truth be told — zounds, how he hated that phrase! — Lord Giuliani had made a hash of that assertion by adding that the king would never do such a thing.
The king had issued a royal clarifying tweet: “I have the absolute right to PARDON myself, but why would I do that when I have done nothing wrong?” By which he meant: I won’t unless I am convicted of a crime.
But his subjects were rolling their eyes. Even traditional Trumpswabs like Count Christie.
He needed a larger, more sweeping claim.
The king fretted his brow, pursed his lips.
“Lay-Tay, say MOI. Lay-Tay, say MOI.”
Scot Lehigh can be reached at [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter @GlobeScotLehigh.