A husband and wife with their newborn son in a hospital room. A time traveler from the future instantaneously materializes behind them.
TIME TRAVELER: Future tyrant, prepare to meet your—
MAN: Who are you?
TIME TRAVELER: I’m here to prevent the rise of — wait, you spoke English. Is this Braunau am Inn, Austria?
MAN: No, it’s Queens, New York.
TIME TRAVELER: This isn’t 1889, and your names aren’t Alois and Klara?
MAN: It’s 1946. I’m Fred Trump, and this is my wife, Mary.
TIME TRAVELER: Wow. Oh, wow. The space-time transponders must have crossed due to the target’s similarities in — I mean, look, I’m not claiming they’re equivalent, and I think people who say that invalidate their arguments, but you have to admit, there are certain striking parallels. (looks at baby) Oh, man. I don’t know if I have it in me to do this.
MAN: To do what? Are you on the hospital staff?
TIME TRAVELER: I thought I could before, because Austria’s a foreign country and 1889 is so long ago, but this — it’s basically like the hospital room I was born in… (looks at baby again) Jesus, he’s actually pretty cute. I’m sure the other one was, too, but you’d have to bite the bullet and do that one. (puts hand on forehead) This suddenly feels really weird.
MAN: What feels weird?
TIME TRAVELER: Nothing.
WOMAN: What are you holding behind your back?
The time traveler backs up to a garbage can and drops something heavy in it from behind his back.
TIME TRAVELER: It was… a harmless piece of garbage… from nineteen-forty… six—right? Give me a sec, let me rethink this… So, what sort of parenting philosophy do you plan to use with your son?
MAN: None of your business, you vagrant!
TIME TRAVELER: That tone of voice is just what I wanted to discuss. Have you considered adopting a gentler approach to child-rearing? Such as not pushing your son to win at everything, no matter the cost to others and his own soul?
WOMAN: We will raise him in the manner we so desire. Be gone, vile scum!
TIME TRAVELER: You know, I’ve heard a lot about him (points to the man), not as much about you, but I can already sort of form a picture. (scratches head) Huh. This one’s really tricky. Could we bring a psychologist from the hospital in here? A classic Freudian?
MAN: Nurses! We have an intruder!
TIME TRAVELER: I know! Do you guys own a TV?
WOMAN: A what?
TIME TRAVELER: A T— sorry, a television set.
WOMAN: Obviously not. Hardly anyone has one.
TIME TRAVELER: When they become more popular, can you do me a favor and never get one? Or, wait, that might backfire. I got it: maybe buy so many televisions that your son grows to hate them? And station cameras hooked up to them all around the home, so that his entire experience of reality is televised, causing him to rebel by seeking total privacy as an adult? What else… oh, yeah, phones. Fill his bedroom with telephones and incessantly chirping birds until he develops a Pavlovian aversion to the audiovisual combination.
MAN: I’m calling the police!
TIME TRAVELER: Yes — call the police! Call the police every single day to your home and instill in your child a deep-seated aversion to weaponized authority and flagrant abuses of power. And don’t be shy about exposing him to jingoistic anti-Russia propaganda over the next decade. But, on second thought, that’ll get complicated in a few years, because he may appropriate the idea of a witch—
The sound of police in the hall.
TIME TRAVELER: Hold on, there’s so much more I want you to teach him — please hear me out, for the sake of civilization. Give him vocabulary lessons for positive and negative adjectives. Tanning causes cancer, and it’s unnatural-looking to have blond hair in your seventies. Show him how to speak without jerking his arms like a traffic guard.
MAN: Police, in here!
TIME TRAVELER: (speaking quickly) Pose for photos with a relaxed smile and without putting your thumbs up! Neckties should stop at the belt! Laughter is a natural human response to humor! God, he sucks! Stress the importance of sleeping more than four hours a night! Encourage an early and irreversible vasectomy!
The police enter the room.
TIME TRAVELER: One last thing: tell your son that diet sodas are for sissies, okay?
WOMAN: What is a “diet” soda?
TIME TRAVELER: I honestly think that has something to do with it.
The time traveler vanishes. The couple forgets everything he said but his final instruction. Donald Trump develops Type 2 diabetes in the 1980s from drinking a dozen cans of regular Coca-Cola a day and retires from real estate to manage his illness. His brush with mortality changes him profoundly, and he leverages his wealth and celebrity to become a powerful citizen advocate for universal health care — for which he helps pass legislation, in 1993, with Bill and Hillary Clinton. The experience leads him to run for president in 2016 on the Democratic ticket, and he is elected with overwhelming bipartisan support, ushering in a new progressive age.
The Stormy Daniels thing still happens, though.