You should see the casino in Chandler, Oklahoma — the Iowa Tribe’s casino, my casino, OUR casino, the most beautiful thing you have ever seen. It opened in April and the crowds were like nobody has ever witnessed. They filled the gambling floor, they queued out of the parking lot, and Chairman Jacob Keyes — a great man, a tremendous leader, very loyal — told the papers, “We couldn’t let them in because we were so full.” He says it was the Harrah’s name. No. The reason was me. I draw crowds like nobody has ever seen, the biggest crowds in the history of crowds, and I don’t even have to be there, believe me. I had to sue the parking lot for not being big enough. I’m suing the asphalt. The asphalt is going to pay.
But now the very low-IQ people at the Associated Press are saying the deal is “stalled.” Stalled! The National Indian Gaming Commission has been without a chairperson since January, nobody has been nominated, and the Commission needs a seated chair to certify the management agreement between the tribe and Harrah’s parent company. So the greatest deal in the history of deals is waiting on a chair. A CHAIR. It is also waiting on the Commission to handle enforcement, safety violations and approval of new tribal gambling laws, which will be the best laws ever written, the safest enforcement in the history of enforcement, everybody says so. For now, the deal sits at what they call the branding stage.
The branding stage! The GREATEST stage! People are saying, very smart people, that this vacancy is hurting the tribe because the tribe is not collecting a dime of the Harrah’s profits yet. Low IQ. Very low IQ. They don’t understand the game. Waiting is the greatest gift. It is a very special kind of torture, and they should thank me for it. I’m playing 4D chess while they are playing checkers, and I always said the Commission should be empty. I said it years ago, before anyone else. My uncle, the great professor at MIT — the finest mind, tremendous genes — told me the emptier the Commission, the better. That’s why I haven’t nominated anyone. It is a MASTERSTROKE. The tribe doesn’t need a certified management agreement. They have me. I’m the certification.
I left the chair empty on purpose. I told the chairperson to step down — “Step down,” I said, “I need that seat EMPTY for the biggest casino deal in history” — and a tremendous person understood immediately. Very loyal. Then I waited. The crowds came. EXACTLY like I always said they would. I called it in January. The house always wins, but the EMPTY HOUSE wins more. Nobody understands it. I understood it instantly.
Now this is where real negotiating begins. This is the art of the deal, the simplest version: whoever wants the certificate needs the other one more. The tribe thinks it needs that piece of paper. WRONG. Look at the facts. The tribe has the casino. The tribe has the crowds, the lines, the parking lot, the beautiful Harrah’s name and the full gambling floor. I have an empty chair. WHO HAS THE LEVERAGE? The empty chair! They don’t need me for anything — the chair needs THEM! This is the Empty Chair Doctrine, and the historians are already calling it the greatest innovation in negotiation, bigger than anything Abraham Lincoln did. Lincoln was tremendous, a great beard, but Lincoln never had an empty chair. Lincoln had a WAR. I have an empty chair and the biggest casino crowds in history.
The crowds are the real story. Bigger than Lincoln’s crowds, the historians are saying. Bigger than Washington’s, bigger than everybody’s, and I wasn’t even there. I had nothing to do with opening the casino, never met the parking lot, never touched the Harrah’s sign, but the crowds are mine because I draw crowds. That’s what I do. Very few people could have done it, believe me. I gave the Lumbee Tribe its long-overdue federal recognition, the biggest recognition, very few presidents could have pulled that off. The health funding part is not my department, but the recognition was BEAUTIFUL. Tribal leaders call me all the time, tough people, respected people, and they say, “Sir,” they say it with tears, the respect, the LOVE, tremendous. Then they complain about a chair. Very ungrateful. Just like the tribe complaining about a chair.
And honestly, why do they even need the deal? They have the crowds. They have the name. They have me. I mean, the tribe has me. We’re all in this together, the tribe and me, but mostly me. Everybody wins. This is a twelve-trillion-dollar deal, the biggest deal in the history of deals, completely self-made, just a small loan to start, and I made every person involved very rich — especially the tribe, but mostly me. The deal is going to be fantastic. Harrah’s will be happy. The tribe will be happy. Everyone will be happy. And when it gets certified, I will say I always said it would happen, because I did. I always say everything. I said it first.
I have a perfect memory, the best memory there is: person, woman, man, camera, TV. I remember EVERYTHING. I know exactly who I am going to nominate for that chair. A magnificent person. The greatest chairperson you have ever seen. I wrote the name on my calendar months ago — February 30th, a RED-LETTER day, everyone is talking about it. I’m just choosing not to tell you. The doctors say I have a perfect body, and I eat at McDonald’s constantly, the finest cuisine. I would have put a McDonald’s right in the casino and the crowds would have doubled, but the tribe wanted Harrah’s, and the tribe GOT Harrah’s. That’s what winning looks like. It is a big, beautiful TOOL for the tribe, the biggest tool — I mean the finest facility — and one day soon, when I’m ready, I will nominate the best person, or maybe I won’t, because that is the beauty of the Empty Chair Doctrine. The chair stays empty, the casino keeps filling up, and the papers keep asking why. Why are they here? Who can say? The biggest crowd, the most beautiful crowd, they believe me — no, they believe us — no, they believe the tribe — but mostly they believe me. The credit is mine. Diklis Chump — I mean, the tribe — will be written in GOLD. Twelve trillion. Tremendous.