Political Humor

WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report)—In an indication that he has reached his breaking point with the Speaker of the House, Donald J. Trump is offering a hundred and thirty thousand dollars to keep Nancy Pelosi quiet, White House aides confirmed on Thursday. According to those aides, Trump floated the idea of a six-figure payment to silence Pelosi during a closed-door meeting on Wednesday night, in which he asserted that he had done “a million of these deals.” Trump’s effort to mute Pelosi faces a number of obstacles, however, including the fact that the person who has crafted such agreements for Trump in the past, Michael Cohen, is not available to perform such a service now. Additionally, any agreement to silence Pelosi could face constitutional hurdles, since one of Pelosi’s principal duties as Speaker is to speak. At the Capitol, Pelosi said that she would reject Trump’s proposed payment and added that she would offer him no money whatsoever to prevent him from delivering this year’s State of the Union address. “I am asking for an hour of silence from Donald Trump, and you can’t put a price tag on that,” she said.

Conservative MPs are concerned for the mental health of Prime Minister Theresa May after she was found obsessively typing ‘All work and no Brexit makes Theresa a dull girl.’ Theresa was found in her office, with hundreds of stacks of the same line hand-typed over and over. ‘And she had that thousand-yard stare too. Like she was about to go “Full Metal Jacket”. It was the scariest thing I’ve seen in my political career other than Boris Johnson’s nip slip last summer,’ said one anonymous Conservative MP. The mental breakdown comes on the back of May suffering the largest parliamentary defeat of any prime minister in modern time over her proposed Brexit deal. Despite the worrying behaviour, the PM is back in the House of Commons today. She has been overheard muttering to herself her intentions to ‘correct’ the MPs who voted against her. Theresa has been praised for her resilience, with one Conservative MP calling her a ‘shining example of a selfless leader.’

WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report)—Most people who are innocent of any crimes will still need to hire thirty-five lawyers at some point, a new study shows. According to the study, commissioned by the University of Minnesota Law School, thirty-five is the “bare minimum” number of lawyers that an innocent person should have on retainer in the event that he or she becomes the subject of an entirely unjustified criminal investigation. “We found that many innocent people are going through life without taking the basic precaution of hiring thirty-five lawyers,” Professor Davis Logsdon, who supervised the study, said. “They are flirting with disaster.” “An innocent person who has absolutely nothing to hide should do everything in his or her power to avoid answering questions from investigators,” he said. “Thirty-five lawyers can really help you do that.” Additionally, Logsdon noted, hiring nearly three dozen lawyers is invaluable because of the powerful statement it makes. “Nothing says ‘I’m innocent’ like hiring thirty-five lawyers,” he said. Although some innocent people may balk at the unwieldy number of lawyers that the study recommends, Logsdon emphasized that thirty-five lawyers provide necessary protection against unforeseen legal complications. “If, for example, one of your lawyers goes to prison, you will still have thirty-four,” he said. Logsdon acknowledged that, although every innocent person should definitely hire thirty-five lawyers, such legal help does not come cheap. “Legal bills for thirty-five lawyers can be very expensive, unless you’re a person who doesn’t pay his bills,” he said.

WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report)—In a bid to end the government shutdown, Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh said on Thursday that he would recycle his empties to pay for a wall with Mexico. Speaking to reporters from his office at the Court, Kavanaugh said that the inspiration came to him while he was building a beer-can pyramid in his basement rec room on Wednesday night. “I was in my man cave, building this rad beer pyramid, and I was, like, I bet if I recycled all the beer cans down here plus the ones out in the garage, I’d have enough to pay for that freaking wall,” the Supreme Court Justice said. He added that he started calling a number of his friends from Georgetown Prep to see if they would contribute their empties to the effort, and found that they were “totally stoked” about the idea. “P.J., Tobin, and Squee are all in,” he said. “This wall is gonna freaking rule.”

WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report)—The outgoing chief of staff, John Kelly, departed the White House with the nation’s nuclear codes hidden in his pants, General Kelly has confirmed. Kelly, whose illustrious military career spanned five decades, called his absconding with the nuclear codes “my greatest act of service to my country.” Speaking to reporters from his home, Kelly said that he had planned the heist of the nation’s nuclear codes with the pinpoint timing of a clandestine military mission. “I went into the Oval Office on Friday when I knew Trump would be distracted because ‘Fox & Friends’ was on,” he said. “Then, when he started tweeting something that one of the hosts told him to do, I slipped the codes into my pants, as quick as lightning.” Kelly revealed that, in order to prevent Trump from retrieving the codes, he was keeping them in his pants for safekeeping. “Let’s see that draft-dodging coward try to get them off me,” he said, his eyes gleaming with malice.

NEW YORK (The Borowitz Report)—MSNBC will preempt Donald Trump’s national address on Tuesday night by airing Barack Obama’s keynote address at the 2004 Democratic National Convention, network officials have confirmed. Harland Dorrinson, an MSNBC spokesperson, said that the network elected to air the Obama speech “in order to best serve our audience.” “Based on the data gathered by our research department, the number of MSNBC viewers who were planning to watch the Trump speech was approximately zero,” Dorrinson said. “This seemed like a better way to go.” Since the Obama speech has a running time of only sixteen minutes, MSNBC plans to air it “over and over” until Trump has finished talking, Dorrinson said. “We’ll air it all night if we have to,” he said. The network spokesperson said that the White House had contacted MSNBC to argue that the network could not preëmpt a national address by Trump. “We had three words for them,” he said. “Yes we can.”

Britain will install a border gate after Brexit to protect the nation’s borders. It’s hoped the gate will either deter illegal immigration or stop people leaving the country on mass, depending on just how badly Brexit goes. The proposed border gate will consist of exactly one gate without any surrounding fence or wall to cut down costs. ‘Frankly, we’re taking a big loss of Brexit. A single gate is all we can muster from our budget,’ said one government chief. ‘If you don’t want to get tutted at, don’t sneak in. Or out,’ said the project head. Chris Grayling has already awarded the £20 million contract to build the gate to a nice chap he used to go to school with. ‘He already owns a hammer. I’ve done my research on this one,’ promised Grayling.

WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report)—In an unexpected breakthrough that could end the government shutdown, President Donald Trump has backed down from his demand for a wall and offered instead to post Vice-President Mike Pence at the border with big binoculars. According to the White House, Pence’s mission at the border will alternate between keeping an eye out for potential intruders and glaring menacingly into the distance. At a press conference announcing the development, Pence appeared to embrace his new role as the nation’s first line of defense against illegal immigration. “If anyone wants to sneak into the United States, why, lordy, they’ll have to get past Mike Pence first,” he said. The White House press secretary, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, denied that stationing Pence at the border represented a concession on Trump’s part and claimed that the Vice-President was “just as good as a wall.” “If anyone can take the place of an inanimate object, it’s Mike Pence,” she said.

WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report)—Capping an extraordinary 2018, Donald J. Trump announced on Thursday that he had been named Man of the Year by the terrorist organization known as ISIS. Trump made the announcement after receiving the news from the leader of ISIS, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, whom Trump called “a terrific, fabulous guy.” “I got along great with him, and he said a lot of nice things about me,” Trump said. “He said ISIS didn’t even consider anyone else.” Trump, who is expecting to receive an official Man of the Year plaque from ISIS in the next few weeks, said that the award “came as a total surprise to me.” “It’s a particularly impressive honor when you consider ISIS was co-founded by Hillary and Obama,” he said. Andy Borowitz is the New York Times best-selling author of “The 50 Funniest American Writers,” and a comedian who has written for The New Yorker since 1998. He writes the Borowitz Report, a satirical column on the news, for newyorker.com. Read more »

WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report)—In a tense meeting on Monday, leading Cabinet members warned Donald J. Trump that shutting down the federal government would make it exponentially harder for them to steal from. Led by his Treasury Secretary, Steven Mnuchin, the Cabinet members begged Trump to prevent a government showdown that would bring their brazen spree of pillaging the nation’s coffers to a screeching halt. “Mr. President, with the federal government up and running, I was able to take seven trips on military aircraft at a cost of eight hundred thousand dollars,” Mnuchin said. “I implore you, sir: don’t make me fly coach.” Trump’s three oldest children, Ivanka, Eric, and Don, Jr., who have piled up impressive taxpayer-funded travel bills of their own, chimed in with an emotional plea to their father. “Daddy, please don’t make us stop plundering government money,” Ivanka said. “Not right before Christmas.” The normally taciturn Housing and Urban Development Secretary, Ben Carson, also spoke up, warning that a government shutdown would make it impossible for him to accessorize his thirty-one-thousand-dollar dining-room set by purchasing seven-thousand-dollar place mats. “I’d really like those,” he said. According to Kellyanne Conway, the counsellor to the President, the emotional Cabinet meeting had a profound impact on Trump. “For the first time he saw how a government shutdown would hurt people,” Conway said.