Trump Finally Gets the Priceless Book He Deserves: Ben Fountain on How Rasputin Swims the Potomac

**Andrew Keen** (0:00)
Hello, my name is Andrew Keen. Welcome to Keen On America, the daily interview show about the United States.
Hello, everybody, it's Tuesday, June the 9th, 2026 A couple of weeks ago, there was an interesting news story in The Washington Post about Donald Trump appointees pushing a $250 banknote with his portrait, for those people watching. You can see his brooding face on the cover of a $250 note. For those who aren't, you can imagine it. If I was writing a novel these days, my writings have become so bizarre. I might call it something like, Ceaucescu Swims the Potomac, the Potomac, or even Rasputin Swims the Potomac. But I've been beaten to it by a much better satirist, Ben Fountain, one of America's leading satirists, bestselling writer, both fiction and nonfiction. He has a new book out today and it's appropriately called Rasputin Swims The Potomac. And he's joining us from his home in Newburn, North Carolina. Ben, congratulations on the new book.

**Ben Fountain** (1:35)
Thank you, Andrew.

**Andrew Keen** (1:36)
I apologize for my terrible pronunciation. Tell me a little bit about this Potomac. What kind of place is it?

**Ben Fountain** (1:46)
Well, the Potomac River, it runs alongside the District of Columbia. And it separates the District of Columbia from Virginia. And so I suppose you could say in the title, it's symbolic.
Although I sort of hate symbolism. But in the book, this Rasputin character actually does swim the Potomac. He makes a 17-mile swim down the Potomac River in January. And that comes at the very end of the book.

**Andrew Keen** (2:30)
Yeah, I can't imagine Chalzescu being able to swim the Potomac. I think he would drown after about 100 yards. So this Rasputin character, then he must have some physical strength. Is he Putin-esque rather than Trumpian?

**Ben Fountain** (2:46)
Well, he's a professional wrestler. And he grew up Patrick Walsh Strickland in Buffalo, New York. He was a star football player. He joined the Army and served in the Special Forces in theaters of war in Afghanistan and Iraq. After his military service, he made a pilgrimage to Russia and spent six years in a Russian monastery, became fluent in Russian.
The next time he shows up, he's a professional wrestler in Japan. His wrestling persona is Grigory Yefimovich Rasputin, modeled on the famous Rasputin of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, who was close to the Tsar and the Tsarina.

**Andrew Keen** (3:40)
Supposedly brought the old regime down in Russia.

**Ben Fountain** (3:44)
Right. So now our Rasputin has become a pro wrestling star in the United States. He's been a world champion several times.
He's actually changed his name legally to Grigory Yefimovich Rasputin and he never breaks character. He assures everyone he is the Rasputin, the historical Rasputin and that's where that's who he is when the story begins.

**Andrew Keen** (4:13)
He supposedly at least according to Google which supposedly tells the truth. He was assassinated in 1916, December 1916 in St. Petersburg, but maybe back to life. Wrestling, Ben, one would have expected a satirist like yourself to, so to speak, jump on the sport, especially given Trump's obsession with it. What is it about wrestling that makes it such an appropriate symbol for the symbolic nature or the surreal or whatever other word you use to describe contemporary America in the 2020s?

**Ben Fountain** (4:53)
Well, you know, when I was when I was stalking this book in my head, I was thinking a lot about the blurring of the line between reality and fantasy in American life. And and, you know, just how I mean, with every passing day, month, year, that line becomes increasingly blurred. And Donald Trump, throughout his career, as a real estate developer and then in politics, he has blurred that line to master full effect for his own advantage.
And when I when I was thinking about starting this book in early 2023, and I felt like Trump was very much a live political property, and I felt like, yes, he's going to run for president again. And and and I think he's got a really good shot.
And he's going to be doing the same thing, blurring fantasy and reality to his advantage. And I just started thinking, well, what would be the next step on that continuum? If we continue down this road as a country. And I thought, for some reason, I started thinking about pro wrestling, which is famously fake. It's scripted. And yet, it's not fake. I mean, it does happen in real flesh and blood and people bang around the ring.
And so I started thinking in terms of, suppose someone from the professional wrestling world entered the political arena, but not in the way Jesse Ventura did some years ago. He was a professional wrestler, Jerry the Body Ventura. And he ran for the governorship of Minnesota and won. But he ran as Jesse Ventura himself. Suppose a wrestler ran as his or her wrestling persona. And so the fake is baked into the presentation and everyone knows it's fake. There's no pretense. And suppose the country buys it.