There’s a certain absurdity in imagining Donald Trump as an inmate on Alcatraz, but so is his desire to reopen the prison that has been shuttered for decades. He’s an absurd person.

It was the best of times, but it was also the weirdest of timelines. And just when you thought American politics had exhausted every avenue of reality TV absurdity, Donald Trump, fraudster and convicted felon, floated a characteristically deadpan suggestion: why not reopen Alcatraz to house “America’s most ruthless and violent Offenders”?

It sounds like satire—until it doesn’t. Trump’s base, ever attuned to the theatrical, quickly embraced it. “Lock ‘Em Up Island!” has replaced “Build the Wall!” as the catchiest three-word fix for a 300-year-old national crisis.

But suppose the whole thing backfired. What if Trump—the architect of chaos—found himself not as warden-in-chief but as inmate number one?

Picture it: Trump stepping off the ferry to Alcatraz, clad in a bespoke orange jumpsuit from Ivanka’s latest line, “Convict Chic.” Grinning for the cameras, he announces, “This is the best prison. Tremendous security. Not like those Democrat-run cities. I might buy it, actually.”

By personal decree, his cell is outfitted in gold trim, with a marble sink and a bidet that plays “Hail to the Chief.” Morse code tapped furiously through the pipes, becomes his last legal form of tweeting.

Of course, he’s not alone in this satirical reimagining of The Rock. Alcatraz 2.0 becomes more celebrity-laden than a White House Correspondents’ Dinner hosted by Alex Jones. We’ll leave the casting to your imagination.

A prison TikTok influencer amasses 11 million views a day, livestreaming the drama from Cellblock C. The only person not watching? Joe Biden—who still thinks “Alcatraz” is a new COVID variant.

In a gesture of trans-Pacific brotherhood, Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese offered to transfer Trump to Christmas Island, citing Canberra’s expertise in political exile. Talks collapsed when Trump demanded the island be renamed “Festivus Land” and staffed exclusively by former Apprentice contestants.

Each week culminates in a talent show. The winner earns ten precious minutes to record a podcast from the lighthouse.

Once upon a time, Alcatraz held Al Capone—brought down not by bullets but by taxes. Now, almost a century later, Trump’s tax returns remain elusive, playing hide-and-seek with the IRS. There’s a certain symmetry to it.

Whispers emerge of an escape plot. But not from prison—with it. Trump’s masterstroke? Build a wall around Alcatraz, declare the rest of the U.S. a penitentiary, and install himself as “Warden for Life.” As for the cost? “Canada will pay,” he insists.

Will Trump end up in Alcatraz? Probably not. But in today’s America, “unlikely” often trends before lunch. The island is now a museum, a bird sanctuary, and a federal monument to how not to run a prison.

Yet the true confinement is the one we’ve constructed ourselves: a media ecosystem of outrage, distraction, and algorithmic spectacle. In that world, Trump doesn’t need bars—just bandwidth limits.

Stranger things have happened.