Donald Trump: From thinly veiled character in Carl Hiaasen novel to America's national fossil

 

Top headline:  Independent, 9/20/2020

Bottom headline:  U.S. Senator Gary Peters

From the Independent:

Donald Trump appears in the novel in thinly veiled form, referred to only by his secret service code name “Mastodon”. He has strayed into Hiaasen’s Florida-set sights by dint of his ostentatious Palm Beach resort Mar-a-Lago, here rechristened “Casa Bellicosa”, where Squeeze Me reaches its gripping climax. While the lumbering Mastodon is easy prey for Hiaasen’s quick-witted attacks, the character is, if anything, given a stronger grasp of logic and language than his real-life counterpart. “The trouble is, as satire, you can’t improve on the words that really come out of his mouth,” laments the author. “I surrendered to the fact that whatever the character said or did was never going to be as absurd as the real thing. If I had thought of him suggesting we mainline Clorox bleach to cure coronavirus I would have edited it out, yet here we are.”