J. Randall Davis

About J. Randall Davis

I've taught English at MiraCosta College for over twenty years.  I just completed the third draft of my first play, Donald Trump Meets His Maker.  I hope to have it staged soon.  What follows is a synopsis of the play.

This play offers an explanation, albeit fantastical, for Trump’s inaction and near silence for 187 minutes during the Capitol siege on January 6^th, 2021.  The primary setting for the play is the private dining room off the Oval Office in the White House, where Donald Trump holed up that afternoon, after giving his rallying cry at the Ellipse earlier in the day.  Trump sits rapt before a gigantic television screen, viewing his followers’ descent upon the Capitol.  Of a sudden, the Grim Reaper materializes in the dining room, and announces that the time has arrived for him to take Trump away. 

            In the hope of dissuading the Grim Reaper from completing his mission, Trump calls upon the assistance of Satan—“Hail, Satan, full of hate.  Hail, Satan, full of hate.  Hail, Satan, full of hate.”—and clicks his shoes together, echoing Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz.  Satan appears and listens to Trump’s appeal for clemency.  Trump attempts to convince Satan to overrule the Grim Reaper by presenting a video playlist of Trump’s Big Six:  Six moments, to each of which one might well have responded, “Just when you thought he couldn’t sink any lower, now this.”  After watching the video on the dining room television screen, Satan is persuaded to spare Trump, as it is readily apparent that Trump will remain of considerable service to Satan.

            One of the play’s conceits is that only Trump, and not his visitors, of which there were a few—for example, Ivanka Trump, Mark Meadows, and Pat Cipollone—can see the Grim Reaper and Satan:  “Only he whom we come for can see us.”