Brentwood stood and cleared her throat before asking her question. “Mr. President, you have always talked tough on terror, but in recent months it appears that your administration has been unable to deliver on your promise to keep the American people safe from the terrorist siege against our country. Last-second thwarts aside, how problematic do you perceive the Department of Homeland Security’s inability to secure our borders?”
Michaels’s eyes widened as he tried to digest Brentwood’s question. He’d let his guard down, assuming he’d get a solid question but one he could answer. Instead, she zipped him a question fraught with landmines. And unfortunately, he had to come up with an intelligent answer to assuage her concerns—or else the internet would be saturated with memes and snarky reinterpretations of his words before the hour was up.
“That’s a great question,” Michaels began. “I see it as problematic as I do complicated in this increasingly global world we live in. It is my duty to help protect American citizens from outside threats. Thank God we haven’t lost any lives on American soil due to attacks from Islamic extremists—or any other type of terrorist group for that matter.”
Brentwood raised her hand tentatively. “I appreciate you affirming your sworn duty to uphold the constitution and keep our sovereign nation safe, but what do you intend to do to stop this troubling trend of near misses and prevent future plans to do great harm?”
Michaels glanced around the room and felt as if the walls were closing around him. For a half second, he wondered if she knew the truth, that he’d all but invited those attacks in order to gain a tighter stranglehold on what the American people would allow him to do without much objections. But he dismissed the thought as quickly as it came. There was no way she knew. He took a deep breath and decided to double down on his assertion that they were keeping Americans safe. In a beat, he went from outrage over Brentwood’s perceived attack against him to gratitude over her serving up a question that allowed him to do what he wanted to do all along.
“We’re going to keep Americans safe by aggressively targeting some of the world’s most renowned terrorists,” Michaels said. “And just to be clear so you don’t misinterpret what I’m saying—we are taking the war to the terrorists. There’s no cave deep enough, no rock big enough, no mountain high enough, no desert vast enough that we won’t have our soldiers, the most well-trained corps on the planet, hunting terrorists down and bringing them to justice.”
An audible buzz spread throughout the room.
Michaels resisted the urge to smile, confident that he’d shifted the focus of the press conference away from his abysmal favorability ratings and back toward his plan forward for the country. Even if the war on terror was all staged, Michaels didn’t care. All he wanted was power . . . and more of it. If he couldn’t get it through extreme measures taken to convince the American people that they needed him to have more power in order to secure the country, he’d flip the script. If he captured Karif Fazil, he was all but assured the U.S. equivalency of sainthood.
Then the next reporter questioned him.
“James Perry, CNN,” the reporter stated before launching into his question. “Your approval ratings hit historic lows with the public last week, both at home and abroad. What areas do you feel are necessary to address first in order to regain the trust of the American people?”
Michaels narrowed his eyes and clutched the podium.
So much for gaining control of the conversation.
“Any trust the American people have lost with me and this administration is due to the media’s distortion of facts coupled with outright lies about what we’ve been doing,” Michaels said. “During my first term, we’ve created more jobs than any other administration in the past forty years, we’ve lowered the deficit and trimmed two trillion dollars off the national debt, and we’ve implemented education initiatives that have led to the highest test scores ever seen in our public school system. So, why don’t you explain to me why people have lost faith in the best administration this country has quite likely ever seen?”
“But Mr. President, with all due respect, your statement doesn’t line up with—”
“With what? Your agenda?” Michaels said, pounding his fist on the lectern. “I’m done with your stupid questions. Why don’t you report what’s really going on in Washington so Americans can find out for themselves just how good they’ve really got it.”
Michaels glanced at the clock. The press conference was scheduled to continue for another fifteen minutes, but he’d had enough. He released his grip from the podium and turned and stormed off the stage amid clicks from photographers and shouted questions from the press corps.
Michaels was already storming down the hall when he heard his spokesperson addressing the restless audience. His words reverberated off the corridor walls from all the television sets tuned to the event in various offices along the west wing.
“That’s all for today. Thank you,” the spokesperson said.
Michaels told his secretary to hold his calls and slammed the door to his office. He stared at the painting of Thomas Jefferson he’d requested to be hung to the left of his
