In spite of the terrible things he's done to America, you need a heart of stone not to laugh at President Donald Trump.

He's the rich kid who can't be cool, outdone in every aspect of frostiness by the construction worker's kid in the cheap jeans whose slouch against the wall of a high school hallway is elegant in its simplicity, and powerful in its message to the girls. He's the guy who has to buy more than his share of drinks just to have company at the bar. The golden American girls with their easy, laughing beauty sent him sprawling, and he began to hunt his women among second-tier models from other countries.

He became president, though, but did it by losing the popular vote and squeaking through the Electoral College, an American political institution so uncool that a Water Commission election in Cornfield County steals the Electoral College's lunch money.

And now, as Trump tries to promote his all-fantasy view of the last election, there are stories that even Melania Trump is urging him to give it up and go back to the golden toilets of Florida.

That hurt me.

As a married man of some years, I know the terrible pain of the wifely opinion that is not just opposed to yours, but is horribly, terribly right.

And she can be a smart woman, and she can be a gentle woman, and she can love you with the burning intensity of a thousand suns, but at that moment, you wish she'd just go away and let you be wrong.

Donald Trump's ego is as fragile as fine crystal. It's not going to survive a fall off the dining room table.

Imagine it.

You're Donald Trump. Failed casino owner. Host of a reality show as dismal as any reality show. You have, by God, appeared in a professional wrestling ring.

But you are president now, as legit a historical figure as Abe Lincoln, and much more important to Black people.

After a 14-hour day of denying election results, putting heart into the white supremacists, and making sure the QAnon whackadoodles don't stop believing, you stumble home, as tired as an enslaved Indian garment factory worker.

You enter the private family quarters at the White House. You kick off your shoes, remove your 14-foot-long red tie, and send a minion out for a Big Mac and fries.

"Supersize it," you grunt wearily.

And she's all over you.

"Why don't you just concede?" she says. "You're making me look stupid.

"I told you you'd lose this time," she says. "But you wouldn't listen to me. You had to be the big man. Well, what are we going to do now, Mr. Big Man?

"I want to go back to New York," she says. "My child is growing up without golden toilets. My child! OUR child, Donald!"

"Geez," Trump thinks to himself. "Can I get her deported NOW?"

Is there a man who can picture this scene without shedding salty tears as big as nickels? If you ever lost the mortgage payment on a Super Bowl bet, the tears are definitely stinging the back of your throat.

If the world is against you, but your spouse is for you, you always have one safe place to go, one castle whose walls will never fall.

"You don't really think you're going to win?" she says. "What are you, stupid?"

And President Donald Trump, the leader of what used to be the most powerful country in the world, bites into his burger and feels the salt and fat slide down his throat, feels the secret sauce soothing his every hurt.

"Well," she says, "Aren't you going to say ANYTHING. Really?"

"I'm going to need some tacos," Trump croaks to his minion.

The world is full of ruined castles.

To find out more about Marc Munroe Dion and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit www.creators.com. Dion's latest book is a collection of his best columns entitled "Devil's Elbow: Dancing in the Ashes of America." It is available in paperback from Amazon.com, and for Nook, Kindle, and iBooks.

Photo credit: Free-Photos at Pixabay