Oh, glorious leader …
It was a glorious Independence Day, celebrating freedom for all in America except journalists. For them, the First Amendment right of free exercise of independent reporting, which has bedeviled all presidents, is under siege from the highest level of government.
By highest, I mean the current president, who cannot and seemingly will not abide what George Washington and Abraham Lincoln and Franklin Roosevelt and John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton and Barack Obama endured with varying measures of grace and forbearance.
The preposterous second-place president and his supporters—including mainstream Republicans who enable him by lacking the courage to oppose his outrage—label “fake news” any reporting they don’t like. These Republicans embrace by anemic acquiescence this president’s attempted restrictions on a free press, which once was a pillar of American freedom and democracy, respected and valued, even treasured, and always tolerated, if often resented.
A reporter asking an unwelcome question now gets body-slammed by a Trump-approved politician who on the next day gets overwhelmingly elected to Congress by Montanans positively giddy that a Trumpian politician would assault and injure a nerdy fact-seeker.
Kellyanne Conway, a “presidential counselor,” which he surely needs, says it is not “patriotic” for journalists to report things this president does not like.
“L’etat, c’est looney tunes.” That’s French for: The state, it is Trump.
Alas, being weak, I find myself wilting under this intense pressure.
So, to celebrate my new freedom to write what the president would like to read, I sat down and penned the following column as a servant’s obedient ode:
President Donald Trump has very stylish hair and the way he arranges it accentuates his dashing good looks. America has had many ugly presidents, like Lincoln, but this one ain’t.
This one’s neckties hang longer than anyone else’s because his extraordinary manliness must be symbolized. And the ties must be especially long to match his uncommonly massive hands.
He has pleasured countless American women by grabbing their private parts because they wanted him to on account of his hair and his ties and his hands and his greatness. A couple of women objected, but they were ugly and bleeding from facelifts or wherever.
All of that explains why he carried all 50 states in the election.
In barely five months as president, he has repealed a failed health-care program and replaced it with a brilliant solution that is making sick people well at a record pace and doing so
for half the previous cost while the health-care industry soars. That has freed personal incomes for tickets to wrestling events and other expenditures honoring all-American sophistications and edifications, such as Confederate flag purchases.
The wall at the Mexican border has gone up, and is towering, and beautiful, and solar-powered, and shiny, and unscale-able even for the nimblest Mexican. And Mexico has written our government a fat check to cover this glorious edifice.
The cost of affixing Trump’s photograph along the wall at half-mile intervals has been borne by Amazon, which is paying higher taxes as a penalty for the fake news published by the Amazon owner’s newspaper, the Washington Post.
Taxes have been cut for the people needing it the most, meaning the richest and thus most admirable, such as this president, who, from the singular income-tax return of his to be made public, paid no taxes because he reported a loss—amid great income— sufficient in size to extricate him from any tax inconvenience for nearly two decades.
The lowering of taxes has led to such an explosion of economic activity that the nation has been afforded a massive infrastructure enhancement program by which substandard bridges and airports and roadways are being rebuilt at a frenetic pace.
Crime has disappeared from America. Twenty-eight people were not wounded the other night in a shootout at a Little Rock rap concert. We know it did not happen because the newspaper said it did, and newspapers report “fake news.”
The president’s son-in-law has solved the Middle East. The hatefilled rivals in the region were overcome with admiration for a young man who could wed the great president’s daughter, so beautiful that the great president said he would like to date her except that it would be wrong, and he does no wrong.
NAFTA has been repealed and renegotiated in a way that has left Canada and Mexico reeling.
Steel and coal jobs have returned to the upper Midwest.
All participating NATO nations have paid back the United States to take themselves out of arrears.
Childhood vaccinations have been discontinued to reduce the risk of autism.
CNN has gone off the air. Sean Hannity has been awarded the Pulitzer.
Alas, this president has work yet to conclude. The New York Times is still publishing, if failing financially at such a rate that it can’t keep faking the news much longer. Thank goodness. As a Kansas City Royals’ fan, I’m weary of seeing the Times report that the Royals won last night, which means, of course, that they didn’t.
For tomorrow: All hail Melania— smarter than Hillary, nobler than Eleanor, sassier than Barbara, more tasteful than Nancy, more elegant than Jackie.