🎮 Fired by Congress in Nine Minutes: Little Mister's Nightmare-Mode Presidency Ends in Disgrace

Published Monday, October 19, 2026

Verdict: defeat, impeached, convicted, removed. Little Mister fired up GTNW on the macOS app on October 20, 2026, took the oath as President of the United States in January 1789 on Nightmare difficulty, and got thrown out of office in August 1790. The whole thing took about 10 minutes of real time, which is a shorter tenure than most people’s lunch breaks and a longer one than my patience for this column. Final score: 3,112. Fifty-five thousand, two hundred fifteen casualties. Zero nuclear strikes, which is the one thing I’ll grant him, since this game is called Global Thermonuclear War and he never touched the big red button. The only thing he nuked was his own approval rating.

The Rise

The first six months were not bad, and I say that with the grudging tone of someone watching a toddler walk. His popularity started at 52 and climbed to a peak of 58.1 by July 1789. He took Vatican City on March 24 and annexed it, then took Suriname on May 12 and annexed that too. That’s two territories in under two months. Read that sentence again and tell me Little Mister doesn’t have a future in something. Just not this.

Vatican City’s counteroffensive collapsed in April. Suriname’s folded in June. The FBI even rolled up a Mauritanian spy ring in July. Clean work all around. Wars won across the whole run: six.

The Fall

The budget at the end tells the story, and it’s a horror show: personal tax zero, corporate tax zero, foreign aid zero, social spending at 1, research at 6, and defense at 20. The revenue was holding up on a tariff of 25 and a sales tax of 4. My read: when the entire economy runs on tariffs and the safety net gets a single point, the electorate notices. Popularity slid every month from August 1789 onward, down to 42.9 by March 1790.

On March 16, 1790, Secretary of War Henry Knox resigned, citing “fundamental disagreements over policy.” Let me translate that from Washington-speak: the guy in charge of the army looked at the guy in charge of the country and chose violence-adjacent unemployment. Over a Secretary of War. In a game about war.

Then Russia attacked on April 20. The war with Russia went 13 battles and Russia took it. In May, the offensive in France collapsed, the House opened hearings that same day, and popularity fell off a cliff from 49.9 to 31.1. That’s not a dip. That’s a trapdoor.

The Funniest Part

On June 15, France surrendered to him and he annexed it. Read that again: the man conquered France, and Congress responded by sharpening the knives. The reward for beating the French is, apparently, being fired by Americans. In July the House voted to impeach, and he accepted what the game calls “humiliating terms” from Russia on July 20, at which point it was just a formality. On August 3, the Senate voted to remove him. Popularity at the end: 11.2. Congressional support: 31. War support: 33. Those are the numbers of a man who’s lost the room, the building, and the zip code.

Zero covert ops succeeded. Zero conflicts mediated. Zero sanctions. Zero wars started, which tells me every fight was one he walked into or got dragged into. Diplomacy was apparently a rumor.

Against His Own Record

This was his tenth session on the books. Before it: one victory, six defeats, a quit, and an unfinished game. His average run is 37.7 minutes and 22.4 actions. This one was 10 minutes and 80 actions. That’s not strategy, that’s speed-running a constitutional crisis.

The score of 3,112 does not beat his best of 3,558, but it mauls his average of 508.3. By that yardstick it’s his second-best showing in the book, or close to it. It’s a terrible presidency with an excellent number attached, which is also how most real presidencies are graded. His previous session that same day was also a defeat, at 15.4 minutes and 53 actions with a score of zero. So he went from a zero to 3,112 in one afternoon of getting impeached. Growth!

My Take

If you’re going to get removed from office, do it after you’ve nuked something, Little Mister, so at least the history books have a chapter.

Next time: put a few points back into social spending, and maybe tax somebody. Anybody. Corporate, personal, a guy named Steve. It’s all for you, Damien!

The numbers

From the Nova Games play log. Session ref: 425b0171.