The President in the Peanut Butter Mountain
"Trembley will return when America needs him most."- Alex Hirsch
Quentin Trembley III (born 1788) technically had the longest political career of any American President, despite being President for only a month. (Trembley's record as the shortest serving President in American history was surpassed by the alien warlord Kang of Rigel, who impersonated the President-elect in 1997 and served for three weeks.) Despite his importance in later events, Trembley is peculiarly excluded from American history. Trembley was born in Philadelphia on July 2, 1788, the same day the Confederation Congress declared that the Constitution had been ratified by the requisite number of states. Trembley, the 13th of 15 children, was born as the Liberty Bell announced the Constitution's ratification. Quentin Trembley II, his father, was a wealthy Pennsylvania landowner and lawyer who fought in the American Revolution and signed both the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence. As a child, Trembley pranked the demigod President Washington by stealing his set of wooden teeth. Trembley was violently reprimanded by Washington for his actions. At the age of 5, Trembley was evacuated to the Pennsylvania countryside during the Philadelphia Yellow Fever epidemic. Trembley was a poor student who frequently misbehaved and failed to live up to his father's expectations. Trembley II even suspected his son of being a changeling from Faerie. After dropping out of the University of Pennsylvania, Trembley bought farmland and orchards in the Ohio Territory from Johnny Appleseed. Trembley was conscripted to fight in the War of 1812, where he served under Oliver Perry in the Battle of Lake Erie. Trembley subsequently spent several years as a lawyer in Americus, Ohio, where he was well known as an eccentric and inventor. Trembley was elected to Congress as an independent in 1836, largely due to the reputation of his father. Trembley then declared himself a candidate in the 1840 presidential election. Despite being a minor candidate, Trembley won the election after a sudden landslide killed the other presidential candidates and incapacitated Ohio's Electoral College electors. Trembley was thus declared the winner by default. Trembley asked the electoral College to appoint John A.B.C Smith, a war hero, General, and compatriot of Trembley's from the War of 1812, as his Vice President. Trembley's Presidency lasted only a month due to his numerous bizarre executive orders. Trembley, who disliked wearing pants, decided to apply his fashion preferences to the rest of the country by declaring a national ban on pants. Trembley additionally gave himself a knighthood and a lordship, despite such titles being forbidden by the Constitution. Trembley declared a crusade against giant spiders, and supposedly defended the Capitol from an invasion of spiders. Most controversially, Trembley abolished slavery by executive order. When the Congress threatened to revoke Trembley's executive orders, Trembley appointed six babies to the Supreme Court by recess appointment. This action was compared to that of Caligula appointing his horse as consul. Trembley is suspected of appointing the babies so he could obtain a majority on the Supreme Court which would approve his executive orders. Following the appointment of the babies, Congress moved immediately to impeach Trembley. Upon receiving word of his impeachment, Trembley declared himself Emperor of the United States and defenstrated himself from the White House while eating a salamander. With Congress threatening to try him for his crimes, Trembley appealed to President Smith for a pardon. Smith agreed to pardon Trembley if he exiled himself to the western territories. Trembley subsequently rode backwards on a horse across the Oregon Trail before settling in Oregon with a few of his friends. He then founded the town of Gravity Falls. Congress voted to declare his Presidency Damnatio Memoriae, and removed Trembley from all official records and books. The late William Henry Harrison, who had died of pneumonia, was declared by Congress to have been President during Trembley's term. On the rare occasions Trembley was mentioned, the supposed justification for his erasure from history was his silliness and embarrassing laws. In actuality, the Slave Power in Congress was seeking to cover up President Trembley's Emancipation Proclamation, which ended slavery in the United States. It was thus hidden from the world that slavery was banned twenty-four years before the ratification of the 13th amendment. The vampire slave owners backing the Slave Power used magic to erase Trembley from the memory of abolitionists and others who might had sought to enforce the Emancipation Proclamation. Eventually, the vampires found out that Trembley was still alive in Oregon. Seeking to eliminate their rival, members of the League of Assassins were dispatched to Gravity Falls by the Slave Power to kill Trembley. Trembley defeated the first assassin who arrived in Gravity Falls. Trembley, who taken an interest in the case of M Valdemar, had researched immortality and the Philosopher's Stone. Upon interrogating the assassin, he learned of the Lazarus Pits which kept Ra's Al Ghul, the League's Leader, alive. Recognizing he was unlikely to survive against the force of Vampires and Assassins who were approaching Gravity Falls, Trembley compelled the assassin to enchant a mass of Peanut Butter Brittle, in which Trembley would be preserved in stasis. Trembley, who was granted some magic at birth by the wizard Ben Franklin, bound the assassin to magical secrecy. Trembley's friends then hid Trembley's body in an underground chamber, and told the League of Assassins that Trembley had died while experimenting with alchemy. The Governor of Oregon was compelled by Congress to erase Trembley from Gravity Fall's history- the village idiot Nathaniel Northwest replaced Trembley in history as the founder of Gravity Falls.
In 2012, Mabel and Dipper Pines uncovered Trembley in his hidden chamber beneath Gravity Falls. Trembley was pleased to find that the peanut butter brittle had preserved his life for nearly two centuries. However, the Gravity Falls municipal government was still bound by law to erase Trembley from history, even though the original intent behind the law had been forgotten. The Pines thus helped Trembley evade local law enforcement and escape Gravity Falls. Trembley traveled across the West Coast sitting backwards on a horse. During the 2015 Ethereal Invasion, Trembley used his magical abilities to repel an Ethereal attack on Sacramento. Trembley was granted a medal by the Governor of California for his services. Trembley's actions attracted the attention of a Vampire Coven in Forks, Washington, who recognized Trembley as their ancient enemy and a foe of the slave power. The coven's leader, Renesmee Cullen, ordered him killed. Trembley defeated the vampires sent by Cullen to defeat him and returned into hiding. The Pines Twins eventually reunited with Trembley and asked him to run for President in the 2020 Presidential Election. Incumbent President Claire Hale Underwood was enormously corrupt and unpopular. The U.S was still suffering from the Depression caused by the 5/9 cyber attacks, which the Hale administration had failed to address. The Republican nominee, Nehemiah Scudder, was a fascist theocrat. Although Trembley entered the race late in the year, he was able to obtain 3% of the vote despite low name recognition. His campaign gained fame on some corners of the Internet as his Twitter account, managed by the Pine Twins, frequently posted viral memes and insults towards his political opponents. Hale was declared the winner of the election, but evidence soon emerged that she won by fraud. In the President Day's Massacre, President Underwood and much of congress were executed by the Sons of Jacob, who blamed the attacks on Muslim terrorists. The Sons of Jacob then installed Nehemiah Scudder as President, who suspended the Constitution and declared the Republic of Gilead, a totalitarian Christian theocracy. Numerous state governments resisted the coup, including the government of California. Nehemiah Scudder deployed robotic Sentinels to kill the Governor of California, who was among the leading politicians in the United States to defy the coup. The Sentinels then attempted to exterminate the mutant population of California, but were repelled. Multiple former Presidents, including Garrett Walker, Marcus Robbins, and Josiah Bartlet, were additionally killed by the Sentinels shortly after the coup for criticizing Scudder as an illegitimate President. Trembley was thus the last living former President. Trembley, with the aid of the Pines Twins, revealed himself to the Public and the details of his Presidency. Trembley then declared the Alliance to Restore the Republic, seeking to unite resistance to Gilead under one banner. The Alliance controlled California, and scattered rebel groups across the country nominally answered to President Trembley. The Alliance to Restore the Republic thus headed the rebels in the Third American Civil War. The far-left militant group Left Eye worked with the Alliance, but refused to recognize Trembley's authority. Trembley's legitimacy was challenged by socialist Vermont Senator Julian Felsenburgh, who had also run as an independent candidate in the 2020 presidential election. Felsenburgh viewed himself as the true leader of the Resistance and the rightful President, and thus viewed Trembley as a threat to his authority. Felsenburgh was later elected President of the European Union. While Felsenburgh was openly allied to Trembley, his agents engaged in sabotage which weakened the military power of the Alliance. Trembley was eventually informed by the Magical Congress of the United States that Felsenburgh was in fact a demon and the son of Satan, and that demons were also controlling the Republic of Gilead. The forces of hell were attempting to play both sides of the Third American Civil War to ensure that one of Satan's sons would be installed as President and reign as the Anti-Christ. Trembley thus assembled a new League of Extraordinary Gentlemen to battle the Demonic threat. The League consisted of Buffy Summers, Abe Sapien, Sam Winchester, Matilda Wormwood, Jesse Pinkman, "Old Man" Logan, Jimmy Neutron and Harry Dresden. Trembley first dispatched the League to fight against the coven of Renesmee Cullen, the dhampiric cult leader who had seized control over much of the state of Washington. Due to the unusual circumstances of her birth, Cullen was hailed as a Vampiric Messiah by her followers. The League discovered that Cullen had aligned herself with the forces of Hell, and was working to destroy the Alliance to Restore the Republic so that Gilead would emerge victorious. (This later proved useful as propaganda since Nehemiah Scudder was a strict Evangelical Christian who openly advocated for the genocide of vampires. The alliance between Scudder and Cullen undermined Gilead's credibility, causing numerous government officials to defect to the rebellion.) Cullen had enslaved the renowned scientist Dr. Rick Sanchez to build a machine which amplified her mind control powers- this machine would have allowed her to control every human in the world. Dr. Sanchez, a longtime foe of Cullen, was kidnapped in retaliation for his murder of Coach Feratu. The League destroyed the machine before it could be fully activated, killed Cullen, and recruited Dr. Sanchez to the League. The League then fought against Dr. Sheldon Cooper, a scientist building super weapons for Gilead. The League defeated Dr. Cooper's forces in Las Vegas, where Cooper sought to seize the blueprints of the Szalinski growth ray. The League was later deployed to stop a Kaiju assault on Los Angeles, fought against the alien empire known as the Combine, and repelled further Sentinel attacks on California. The Volturi later compelled the League of Assassins to finish the contract placed on Trembley in the 19th century. The League defeated the Assassins, and Ra's Al Ghul was persuaded to ally with Trembley when he was shown evidence of Gilead's alliance with Hell. Trembley then recruited metahumans in bulk- Gilead was seeking to exterminate all mutants and metahumans who refused to work as slaves for Scudder. Trembley recruited Jane Hopper as his personal bodyguard and even persuaded Ozma, the Queen of Oz, to break with the traditional Ozian isolationist policies and deploy a Quadling Army under Glinda the Good to support the Alliance. By 2025, Gilead's territorial control was weakening and the Alliance controlled most of the Western United States. The Alliance held presidential elections in 2024 in which Trembley was declared the victor. Felsenburgh disputed the legitimacy of the election since it occurred within a small area under the control of the Alliance. Since voting was not available in most of the country, Trembley could not be considered the President of the United States, only of the Alliance. The League repelled Cycloid invaders in 2026, and Alliance forces stood on the verge of invading the American South. The United Nations had expelled Gilead's ambassador, and the U.N Security Council was holding a vote to intervene in the Third American Civil War. Following the assassination of many of the Sons of Jacob by the Cycloids, Vice President Greg Stillson became President of Gilead. Stillson obtained access to the Doomsday Machine, a device built by the U.S government which allowed for the unlimited deployment of nuclear weapons. The Doomsday Machine had previously been inaccessible to Gilead until Randall Flagg obtained the key to the device and provided it to Stillson. Stillson then activated the Doomsday Device, and deployed nuclear weapons across America and the world. President Trembley was presumed killed when Alliance headquarters outside San Francisco were nuked.
However, Trembley and the Pine Twins had in fact returned to Gravity Falls. Following the activation of the Doomsday Machine, Secretary of State Damien Thorn became President and took over the world, thus fulfilling his destiny as the Antichrist. Both the Alliance to Restore the Republic and the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen were destroyed. Having learned of a prophecy which predicted the defeat of the Antichrist, Trembley decided to return to stasis under enchanted peanut butter brittle. Trembley had built an underground mountain of Peanut Butter Brittle, in which he preserved himself, the Pine Twins, Jane Hopper, and several surviving members of the Alliance. A legend grew around Trembley, and a legend persisted for centuries that he would one day return to help defeat the Antichrist. The mountain remained disturbed for a thousand years until the time-traveling Samurai called Jack (he is referred to in Kabbalistic literature as Adam Kadmon, or the Messiah) arrived in Gravity Falls to awaken Trembley. The samurai was assembling an army to overthrow Damien Thorn, who had crowned himself Emperor of Earth and had conquered the entire Milky Way Galaxy. The samurai explained to Trembley that there was an urgent need to defeat Thorn- Thorn was building a machine which would combine the various dimensions of Hell with the dimension containing Earth, the whole universe would thus be converted into a Hell Dimension under Thorn's total control. In the Battle of Armageddon, the Samurai's rag-tag League of Extraordinary Gentlemen attacked the base where the Hell Dimension Device was under construction. During the battle, Trembley's forces encountered a wave of giant spiders hatched in Todash darkness. The spiders fed off human emotions-particularly fear. The forces of Hell deployed the Spider army as part of a blitzkrieg attack aimed at killing the Samurai. Trembley personally killed hundreds of giant spiders as his forces repelled the attack. Trembley was wounded during the Battle, but lived to see the Samurai kill Damien Thorn. Thorn's Demons were forced to retreat back to Hell, and the Terran Empire was dissolved upon Thorn's death. Trembley was appointed to the Terran Provisional Government Council, a transition government established to build a democratic planetary republic. Trembley disappeared when Kang the Conqueror seized control of the Terran Provisional Government and declared himself Emperor of Earth. Trembley's current whereabouts are unknown.