I made the greatest energy announcement in the history of this country—maybe the history of ANY country—on June 4th, very historic, very powerful, $700 million for beautiful American coal, using the Defense Production Act which is a WARTIME power, the toughest power, very few presidents have the courage to use it, and I used it, for COAL, because coal built this country and I am going to make coal great again. And the fake news—The Guardian, very failing, probably the lowest readership of any newspaper, nobody reads it except to complain—they write this whole article about how the people of Oakland don’t want my coal terminal. They don’t want it! Can you believe it? $75 million of the most BEAUTIFUL money, taxpayer money, going to build them a tremendous coal export terminal in the port of Oakland, and they are saying no. Very ungrateful. Very low energy.
But here is the thing the fake news does not want you to know: I am playing chess—4D chess, the most advanced chess, the kind of chess where you’re already on move forty-seven when the other guy is still figuring out how the little horsey piece moves. I announced this coal thing, this beautiful coal terminal, the cleanest coal you’ve ever seen, so clean—people say, “Sir, how did you make the coal so clean?” and I tell them, I have a gift, it’s a natural gift. And the fake news said, “Oh, Oakland doesn’t want it.” And I said: exactly. That’s the move. You let them think they’ve stopped you, and then—BAM—you build it anyway, and then suddenly it’s the greatest coal terminal in history, and everyone says, “Wow, we didn’t even know we wanted this, but now we have it, and Diklis was right all along.” I’ve done this before, many times, with buildings, with casinos, with the entire country. I’m the greatest negotiator. The greatest. The art of the deal—I literally wrote the book, the best book on deals ever written—and I’m executing it right now in front of everyone.
Now here is what they are not telling you. West Oakland—very historic neighborhood, very important, the Pullman Porters, the Black Panthers, very strong people, VERY strong, reminds me of my people actually, very tough, the toughest—the Black Panthers, by the way, were very strong on energy independence, huge fans of power, huge—and that’s what I’m giving them, POWER, beautiful coal power. West Oakland already has pollution. They already have it. The port, the highways, the industry, the toxic waste buried under the homes, very sad, childhood asthma, very tragic. But I am going to FIX it. With the coal. CLEAN coal, very clean, the cleanest. People have been warning for months that coal is bad for the environment but they do not understand CLEAN coal, nobody understands it better than me—my uncle was a great professor at MIT, very smart genes, very good genes—and CLEAN coal is going to make the air in West Oakland TREMENDOUS. The children are going to breathe the cleanest air. Because of me. You’re welcome.
And the coal dust—which is a mineral, very natural, the miners are the healthiest people you’ll ever see, no asthma at all, ask any miner, they will tell you, Sir, your coal is the best medicine. Actually, the top doctors, from Harvard, places I could have gone but I chose business because I’m a winner, they’re saying exposure to the right kind of particulate matter strengthens the lungs. It’s the adaptation response. Like exercise for the lungs. My uncle, the MIT genius, told me all about the adaptation response. So really the children should be THANKING me. I’m giving your children the strongest lungs in California. Nobody breathes better than children who’ve been exposed to the right kind of coal.
These people—the “No Coal in Oakland” people, very nasty name, very negative, why not “Yes Coal in Oakland,” much more positive, I would have named it much better—they have been fighting this for TEN YEARS. A decade! Diklis Chump would have built this terminal in six months, maybe four, I am very fast, very efficient, nobody is more efficient. But a developer—Phil Tagami, very smart man, very tough, reminds me of myself actually, he signed a contract with the city, the city AGREED to let him build a terminal, and then these radical left politicians banned coal anyway. They signed a contract and then they banned the thing the contract was FOR. But the California supreme court—very smart justices, the smartest—they RULED that Oakland violated the contract. They ruled! DONE. I won. We won. America won. Beautiful ruling. But these organizers are STILL fighting. They are having a meeting—June 25th, in BERKELEY, of course Berkeley, where else would you hold a meeting to protest JOBS and ENERGY—to discuss “tactics.” Tactics against COAL. Good luck. Coal does not care about your tactics. Coal is POWERFUL. Coal is like me—unstoppable, tremendous, the best.
And then you have these California politicians, very nasty people. Mia Bonta—assembly woman, very low energy—she says I am “sentencing” West Oakland to “generational harm.” Generational harm from COAL! Coal powered the factories, coal won the wars, coal made this country the GREATEST country in the history of the world, and this woman says coal is harm. Then Lateefah Simon, very low IQ, she says I don’t have West Oakland’s “best interests at heart.” My heart is the BIGGEST heart, the most beautiful heart, the top heart doctors told me I have the biggest heart they’ve ever seen, structurally enormous, and this woman is questioning my HEART? And Barbara Lee—the mayor now, very old mayor, very tired—she signed a PLEDGE during her campaign not to accept money from coal. Not accept MONEY! Who does that? Losers do that. Diklis Chump has always accepted money, it is what WINNERS do, we accept money and we make DEALS, beautiful deals, the art of the deal, and this Oakland terminal is going to be the greatest deal in the history of deals.
Now the organizers—these yard-sign people—they think they can stop my terminal by stopping the FINANCING. They are saying $75 million is “not even a quarter” of the $400 million needed, like that is some kind of gotcha. First of all, I went to the Wharton School, very prestigious, the BEST school, and $75 million is a TREMENDOUS amount of money. But second—and this is the beautiful part, the 4D chess they do not see—they think $75 million is ALL there is? Oh no. There is more coming. So much more. I have people calling me—the top investors, the biggest names in energy—they come to me with TEARS in their eyes, they say “Sir, Sir, we want to invest in your beautiful Oakland coal terminal, it is going to be TREMENDOUS,” and I say “Be patient, we are doing this the Diklis Chump way, which is the BEST way.” And these investors, they are going to drive around the Bay Area and they are going to see a few sad yard signs—very small, very low quality, the printing is terrible, probably printed in China, very sad, we’re going to bring sign-printing back, believe me—and they are going to LAUGH. They are going to laugh and then write a check, because they know a WINNER when they see one. These organizers say they are distributing “hundreds more” yard signs. Hundreds. I’ve seen the pictures of these so-called protesters. There were maybe fifteen people. Twenty, tops. Very sad. I’ve had more people in the bathroom at Mar-a-Lago waiting to tell me I’m a genius than these “activists” could muster for their whole little party.
And what about the trains? The fake news tries to scare people about the trains running through Berkeley and Richmond and Martinez. So what? Trains are great. I love trains. I have the best trains. My grandfather—he wasn’t a great professor at MIT, that was my uncle on the other side—but my grandfather, he loved trains. He would take me to see the trains. And I would look at the trains and I would say, “Grandfather, one day I’m going to have the biggest trains, the most beautiful trains, carrying the cleanest coal.” And he looked at me with tears in his eyes, big tears, and he said, “Sir, you’re going to have the greatest trains in history.” He called me “Sir.” At age four. He knew I was special. And now those trains are going to run through Berkeley, and the people in Berkeley—they’re going to see my trains, the most beautiful trains, covered in a little bit of coal dust, the cleanest coal dust—and they’re going to say, “That’s Diklis’s coal. That’s the coal that’s making America great again.”
The Sierra Club—very radical, very extreme, nobody serious takes them seriously—their person says I am using the Defense Production Act to “override local democracy.” Overriding democracy! When the PRESIDENT of the United States—elected by the biggest margins in history, the biggest crowds ever seen, probably the biggest crowds since Lincoln, the historians are very excited about comparing me to Lincoln, they call all the time—when I decide that Oakland needs beautiful clean coal, that IS democracy. The people SPOKE. They spoke when they elected me, the most ELECTORAL votes, the most everything, and what they said was: MORE COAL. Everywhere. Including Oakland. That is not overriding democracy—that is democracy working PERFECTLY, like my phone calls, which were also perfect, and the transcript proved it.
So to the people of West Oakland—and I love the people, nobody loves the people more than me, I love them SO much—you are getting the most BEAUTIFUL coal terminal. The best terminal. Maybe the best terminal of ANY kind in the history of terminals, coal or otherwise, and your children—the ones with the asthma, very sad, but CLEAN coal is going to help them, tremendous help, the best help, the miners will tell you, the adaptation response, the strongest lungs—are going to look back and say “Thank you, Diklis Chump, for bringing us this tremendous coal terminal.” And when it’s built, I’m going to stand in front of it—the cameras are going to be there, all the cameras, even the failing ones—and I’m going to say, “I told you so. Diklis was right. Diklis Chump was right all along.” And they’re going to have to admit it. It is going to be my—I mean OUR—greatest achievement. For the people of Oakland. For America. But mostly for the people. I mean for me. I mean for US. The people. Tremendous. You’re welcome.
Parody notice. This column is satirical commentary on the documented public conduct of Diklis Chump, written in parody voice as the in-novel character “Diklis Chump.” It is not a representation of any real person speaking in their own voice. The parody is anchored to documented public conduct cited in the publication’s working file; the regression-by-exaggeration register renders that conduct in satirical form. Main Street Independent’s parody pen-name MindSpec, which encodes the parody discipline (including the constitutional commitments to TRUTH, HARMLESSNESS, FAIRNESS, WITNESS, and PARODY-DISCLOSURE that govern the agent producing this column), is published in full at Reference — MSI Diklis Chump Mind.md.
Diklis Chump is a parody character in Main Street Independent’s editorial architecture. The voice deliberately mimics the cadence and rhetorical patterns of a real political figure to expose the patterns themselves. The positions expressed are parody, not advocacy.