This is the transcript of a meeting that I imagine Susie Wiles led in the West Wing this past week. In attendance were Ms. Wiles, Secretary of War Pete Hegseth, Secretary of HHS Robert F. Kennedy Jr., former White House press secretary Katie Zacharia, and Vice President JD Vance.
Wiles: So I called you here because I feel like you’ve all been phoning it in lately. Well, not you Katie. We fired you, so strictly speaking, you aren’t under any obligation to help out, but if you love the President as much as you say, you should be doing more. As for the rest of you, you’d all be fighting for your five minutes on Fox News everyday if it weren’t for the President. Don’t give me that look, Pete. Weekend Fox and Friends, please!
Vance: Well, I don’t think that’s quite fair, Susie. With all love and respect to our dear leader, President Trump didn’t put me in this position. Peter Thiel and his billions did.
Wiles: Shut up, JD. You want to be President someday? Peter Thiel isn’t going to buy you that. Not without President Trump’s help. And by the time President Trump’s term is finished, he’ll have made so much money that he’ll be telling Thiel when to poop and pee.
Vance: Sorry.
Wiles. Better be. Now, you all know your assignments. You are supposed to be out there talking with the media or holding rallies and taking attention away from the crazy shit that Trump is spewing and, above all, you’re supposed to be distracting from . . . well everything, including the Epstein files. So tell me what you’ve got. Kennedy, you go first.
Kennedy: I am going to Michigan this week–the state with the largest Arab population and highest percentage of Arabs of any state, and where we are in tight races for statewide offices–and I’m going to say “There’s 500 million Arabs in the world and yet they don’t produce science. They don’t win the Nobel Prize. They don’t win the Fields Prize. They don’t win the Wolf Prize. They don’t produce literature.”
Wiles: Hmmm. You know, Arabs have won lots of Nobel prizes, including the Peace Prize, and Nobel prizes in Chemistry and literature, among others, right?
Kennedy: I didn’t know that, but that makes the claim even better. It’s provably false and crazy–close to as crazy as the stuff Trump is saying these days.
Wiles: Close, but not quite. Still, that’s fine. It’s polarizing, racist, and, best of all, distracting. I like it a lot. Hegseth?
Hegseth: I am planning to fire the Pentagon’s top military planner just as we are planning the next phase of the Iran war. Great plan, right? Get it?
Wiles: I get it, you moron. I have to admit though that your plan is so stupid and crazy that it works. It almost makes Trump look only moderately demented by comparison. Go for it. Vance, what have you got?
Vance: I am going to reach out to Iranian leaders in another bid to restart peace talks.
Wiles: What’s crazy about that, besides the fact that it will never work? What else have you got?
Vance: Maybe I can trot out the “childless cat ladies” line again. That’s always good for sparking outrage. And I’ve already said that it was one of the dumbest things I’ve ever said. Would that work?
Wiles: You came to this meeting totally unprepared again, didn’t you JD? You need to go back to your office, huddle with your staff, and come up with something better. If you have to go with “childless cat ladies” again, it’ll do, but I won’t be happy. Okay, last but certainly not least. . . well . . .whatever. Katie, what have you got?
Zachariah: I am going to tell Newsmax that the media and all of Washington sabotaged me as press secretary. I plan to say, “They would not let me do my job, which was to focus on him and focus on what he’s doing to win. And it became too amassed over me.”
Wiles: “Too amassed over” you?
Zachariah: You know what I mean.
Wiles: I guess so.
Zachariah: They jumped on tiny things, like my reading skills and ability to answer questions. The media jumped all over that and they got me fired.
Wiles: So it had nothing to do with your competence, right?
Zachariah: Huh?
Wiles: Okay, gentlemen, this is what I’m talking about. It makes me wish Katie was still on the job. She could provide brilliant daily distraction from President Trump’s . . . infirmities. But that’s water under the bridge. Let’s get going now. Nice job, Bobby, Pete, and Katie. And JD?
Vance: Yes, Susie?
Wiles: Do better.