The secure line between Mar-a-Lago and the Kremlin crackled to life. Trump sat so sad. Nothing was going his way. He so desperately needed some Cheer. So, he Called Putin.

“Volodya? It’s Donald. Listen, you gotta talk to me. I’m having a rough one. A really rough one. Probably the roughest day anyone’s ever had, if we’re being honest. Nothing is going right.”

On the other end, Vladimir Putin rubbed his temples, staring at the insanely long conference table separating him from his nearest aide. He sighed, adjusting his earpiece. “Donald. It is three in the morning here. What is the emergency?”

“The emergency is the fake news, Volodya! And the deals. Or the lack of deals!” Trump slumped into his gold-plated armchair, swirling a Diet Coke. “I told everybody—everyone, the best people—that I’d have a Peace Deal done in twenty-four hours. Twenty-four hours! I thought it’d be easy. You sign a paper, I sign a paper, we take a beautiful picture, maybe do a ribbon-cutting. But it’s been months, and I still haven’t gotten a Peace Deal! Not one! Can you believe that? It’s a disaster.”

There was a long pause on the Russian end. Putin let out a dry, hollow chuckle that sounded like boots crunching on frozen tundra.

“You think you have problem with Peace Deal?” Putin said, his voice dripping with icy exhaustion. “Donald, I have been looking for Peace Deal for over four years. Every time I think I have one right. And then he blows up a refinery or sends a drone into my bedroom window. I do not have Peace Deal either. I want a Peace Deal. Nobody wants to give me Peace Deal. Nobody Like me now.”

“Vlad, I like you. I like you a lot. Yeah, but you don’t understand the pressure I’m under,” Trump whined, waving a hand in the air. “The ratings, Volodya! My popularity… it’s sinking. They’re putting out these polls—totally rigged, completely fake, but still, they’re sinking. I used to walk into a room and get a ten-minute standing ovation. Now? If I don’t give out free hats, it’s like seven minutes, tops. It’s killing me. They stole the 2020 election from me.”

Putin leaned back, staring listlessly at the ceiling of the Kremlin. “Welcome to my world, my friend. Welcome to my world.”

“Your world? Come on, you’re a dictator! You get ninety-seven percent of the vote!”

“Yes, Donald, but do you know how much paperwork it takes to fake ninety-seven percent?” Putin groaned. “The governors, the regional bosses, the ballot stuffing—it is exhausting. And the popularity? The teenagers on Telegram make memes of me. Not the good memes where I am riding a bear shirtless. Bad memes. They call me an old man in a bunker. My popularity is so low, even the oligarchs are looking out the windows like they want to jump instead of me pushing them. They even have me as the Happy Homo.”

“Well, at least you have windows you can control,” Trump countered, getting worked up. “I’ve got committees. I’ve got courts. I’ve got people telling me I can’t just deport the press corps. And the generals! Don’t get me started on the generals. I told them, ‘Fellas, let’s just make a deal, very simple, very beautiful.’ And they bring in these charts. Thousands of charts. With arrows! I hate arrows, Volodya. If a deal can’t fit on a napkin, it’s a bad deal.”

“I have charts too,” Putin said, his voice sinking into a monotone drone. “My generals bring charts of fields. Just mud and fields. They say, ‘Look, Comrade President, we took three centimeters of this ditch today.’ Three centimeters! I spent two billion rubles for three centimeters of mud? I could buy better mud in Sochi!”

“Exactly! It’s the incompetent people,” Trump agreed loudly, pacing the room. “You surround yourself with the best, and then they turn out to be total losers. And the crowd sizes, Volodya! Have you seen the rallies lately? The energy is… it’s good, but it’s not my energy. I talked about water pressure for forty-five minutes the other night, and some guy in the second row fell asleep. In a red hat! I wanted him escorted out, but they told me it’s a free country. Can you believe that? A free country. It’s ruining the vibe.”

“You complain about a man sleeping?” Putin replied, his tone flat. “Last week, I gave a four-hour lecture on the historical unity of Russians and Ukrainians starting from the year 882. Absolute poetry. I look out at the front row—three ministers are snoring. I cannot even vanish them anymore because I run out of ministers! I have to recycle the old ones. It is humiliating.”

“It’s a tough business. The toughest,” Trump sighed, collapsing back into his chair. “We’re too good for them, Volodya. That’s the problem. We’re geniuses, and we’re surrounded by people who don’t get the vision. Like the Nobel Peace Prize. Where is my Nobel Peace Prize? I should have three by now. If they gave them out for just thinking about peace, I’d have a closet full of them. I have stopped 10 Wars now.”

“They gave one to Obama just for showing up,” Putin muttered, a flash of ancient resentment crossing his face. “I conquer Crimea, nothing. I stabilize Syria, nothing. They give peace prizes to European bureaucrats who drink tea all day.”

“A total joke,” Trump said, shaking his head. “The whole system is broken. But listen, you feel better now? Because talking about how bad you have it really makes me feel a lot better about my situation. I might as well change my last name to Epstein. No one believes word I say about the man. They’d rather hate me over Grocery prices. Gas and Diesel Prices too.”

Putin blinked into the empty, dark office. “No, Donald. I do not feel better. I feel significantly more depressed.”

“Great! Tremendous. Let’s do this again next week. Tell the hackers I said hi!” Trump clicked off the line, took a deep sip of his Diet Coke, and smiled. He still had it.