Now for something completely different

Watching the congressional January 6 hearings, it’s hard to know whether to laugh or cry. Here’s an attempt at laughter. Warning: This is fake news.

  Things still seemed normal after the 2024 presidential election, but that didn’t last long after President-elect Donald Trump took the oath of office on January 20, 2025.

The first clue that things were changing came when President Trump returned to the White House and spent the afternoon using 150 black markers to sign 150 blanket pardons, including one for himself.

     A second clue that things were changing appeared that evening, when Trump arrived at the first inaugural ball as the Marine Band played Don’t You (Forget About Me), Trump’s campaign anthem, instead of Hail to the Chief.

       Rachel Maddow at MSNBC was quick to point out, multiple times, that “the band that recorded that hit was Simple Minds.”

       A third clue was that failed 2022 Georgia Senate candidate Herschel Walker was carrying the football with the nuclear codes as Trump moved from party to party.

       Guests at the balls were treated to cheeseburgers and sliders made with well-done beef drenched in ketchup and Diet Coke in MAGA-red Solo cups.

       Reporters, except those from Fox News, Infowars, TASS and other pro-Trump outlets, were ordered to leave, but only after they were photographed by members of the President’s private security detail, whom Trump called “the top 3 percenters of all the private cops in the world — maybe after that German Wagner Group”.

       In another departure from precedent, the second party the President attended was held at the Russian Embassy, where Ambassador Alina Sanko, a former Miss Russia, welcomed him with a promise of friendship, alliance and mutual assistance from President Vladimir Putin.

      The President thanked her, saying he was grateful to the Embassy for serving him Vkusno & tochka cheeseburgers, the Russian replacement for McDonald’s, although he mistakenly called her Ivanka.

      Another surprise came when the President invited Ambassador Sanko to visit him “at the Pink House”. When a reporter for Russia Today asked where that was, the President answered:

     “Of course it’s in Palm Beach. You don’t think a great president should live in some old house that only has two wings and no beach or golf course? Sleepy Joe was at the beach all the time. Plus, I’m a genius about real estate, and they tell me it burned down once. That doesn’t help property values, let me tell you.

     “Besides, Washington, DC didn’t vote for me, and I don’t own a hotel there anymore.”

      As Trump was leaving, a reporter from CNN asked him to comment on Putin’s plan to annex Lithuania. “Putin’s a pretty savvy guy,” Trump replied. “He understands how valuable waterfront property is.”

      The following morning, Press Secretary Tucker Carlson, stressing that he’d “taken a huge pay cut to serve our Beloved Leader”, announced Trump’s first cabinet picks, whom he said had “all pledged their fealty to the President and his awesome constitution”.

      Asked if he meant to say the U.S. Constitution, Carlson replied, “No. That old thing can get in the way of making America great again, like it did in 2020, even if a bunch of white guys did write it.”

      First on the list was Secretary of State nominee Jared Kushner, who said in a written statement that he was delighted to “renew his efforts to work with the leaders of Saudi Arabia and the Emirates to get a piece of the Middle East”.

      Next up was Trump’s nominee for Treasury Secretary, Mike Lindell, who appeared at the Mar a Lago press conference and vowed to bring the “overheated” U.S. economy “to the softest landing you can imagine”.

      For Attorney General, Carlson said Trump was nominating his “longtime consigliere — I mean counsel — Rudy Giuliani”.

      Asked if Giuliani’s health was equal to the job, the presidential spokesman replied, “Have you ever been to the Justice Department building? It’s big and it’s full of lawyers, although we’ll be firing most of them. It’s not like the top guy has to be awake the whole time. Besides, we have secure communications, so you could run it from a landscaping store, or even a sex shop next door.”

      Transportation Secretary-designate Elon Musk also appeared at the press conference, and among other things said he would launch what he called “an unprecedented research effort to make electricity out of oil, natural gas and coal — so we can help speed up the move to electric cars without ruining the economy and having important places like Texas secede.”

      The next morning, at the first Capitol Hill press conference of the new administration, Senate Majority Leader Ted Cruz vowed to confirm all the President's nominees “before the Sun goes down, maybe at least in El Paso”.

    The same day, Cruz and House Majority Leader Elise Stepanik introduced a flurry of bills that among other things proposed to abolish June 20, Juneteenth, as a national holiday and replace it with June 14, Trump’s birthday.

“There’s not that much difference between 20 and 14,” said the bill’s main House sponsor, newly pardoned Florida congressman Matt Gaetz.

      House Majority Whip Lauren Boebert said she was “aiming to drop the hammer on these bills ASAP”, and Republican Conference Chair Marjorie Taylor who also had received a presidential pardon, said she had “a laser-like focus on the task”.

      The Republican-controlled Senate and House quickly passed all the new bills, although both houses did balk at making January 6 a national holiday to commemorate “the noble effort to cleanse the 2020 presidential election of fraud, corruption and deep-dish Italian satellites”.

     Trump signed most of the new bills during the first year of his second term, and acting President Ron DeSantis signed the remaining ones after Trump suffered a mild stroke when he accidentally switched a tv from Fox News to CNN.

     The Florida Attorney General’s office moved to prosecute the network for attempting to cause bodily harm in connection with the President’s stroke, but dropped the effort when the stroke miraculously left Trump able to speak coherently.