Bald head, hair shaved on both sides above his ears, skull shining, pedantic, certain he’s right, sitting in a restaurant Steven pointed across the room at the TV set above the bar.

‘There’s your friend John Bolton on TV. Criticizing Trump. You ought to tell him to shut up.’

I glanced at the TV, shrugged – an argument about Trump seemed pointless. On the other side of the table, short cropped black hair, Jeff poked Steven. ‘So, you think Trump’s right – that Zelensky started the Ukraine War?’

Steven shot back. ‘Ukraine doesn’t matter to us.’

Jeff dangled bait. ‘You want to make Canada a state too?’

‘Canada’s ripping us off.’

A small-town lawyer, George scratched his chin. ‘I watched Trump’s interview on ABC – do you reckon disobeying court orders is going to backfire on him?’

Steven’s lips puckered. ‘A president gets to deport whoever he wants – who cares what liberal judges think?’

Jeff shook his head. ‘I’d say Trump opened a can of worms when he threw due process out the window.’

Steven mocked. ‘You don’t like Trump kicking gang members out of our country?’

Jeff laid both arms on the table in front of him. ‘I don’t mind deporting illegals but Trump saying he gets to deport whoever he wants sounds iffy – when he threw due process out the window even his own Supreme Court rapped his knuckles.’

‘We need to break a few rules to get out of this mess we’re in – Trump’s got the guts to do it.’

‘So, why’s Trump dropping in the polls?’

Steven growled. ‘Fake polls.’

‘Even Fox News’ poll had him dropping.’

George frowned. ‘I don’t think Trump’s dropping because he’s deporting people. He’s dropping because he thinks he’s above the law. He thinks that judges don’t matter, laws don’t matter – people see that as a sign of a character problem.’

Steven snapped: ‘Those judges are the ones with no backbone…not Trump.’

Sitting at the end of the table, gray-haired, James stopped him. ‘Look at Trump’s tariffs – Canada’s our friend. Britain, France, Germany, Japan are our friends. If their tariffs are unfair to us Trump should have just sat down with them and quietly said, Let’s fix this – instead of berating them, saying they’re ripping us off, in front of TV cameras.’

Steven smirked. ‘Friends don’t rip us off.’

I said: ‘After Trump told people Covid would go away, people lost trust in him. Trump had a character problem. That’s why he lost in 2020. Last year, what saved him was Biden – people looked at Biden asking themselves which would be worse sitting in the White House: A Republican who’d say anything to get elected or an eighty-year-old who couldn’t complete a sentence. But Biden’s gone now and Trump’s character problem’s back front and center.’

Steven slammed his open palm on the table. ‘What difference does character make as long as Trump cleans up this mess…’

I paused, then asked, ‘Do you think it’s alright for a man to cheat on his wife?’

Steven turned righteous. ‘Of course not.’

‘If a man lies to you, not once but over and over, would you trust him?’

‘I see where you’re heading…’

‘So what matters more to you in a president? Honesty? Or whether he’s a Republican – like you? These days most people say, I’d vote for a crook if I agreed with him – but our country wasn’t always this way.’

‘Trump’s no crook.’

George laughed. ‘When you throw honesty out the window there’s not much left – a nation without character turns into a hollow shell.’

In the old days, packed with hucksters, charlatans, con men, America wasn’t sinless but beneath the surface there was bedrock: Greed, lies, blasphemy, led to a reckoning. Is that bedrock slumbering – or gone?

If it’s gone, with no bedrock the floor caves in. Look back at history. That’s an old story. It’s happened over and over.

(This is a story. It’s true. But not literally.)

*******

Telling stories, in his memoir Carter Wrenn follows The Trail of the Serpent twisting and turning through politics from Reagan to Trump. Order his book from Amazon.