Satirists in Disarray
As Trump's regency takes shape, satirists across the world beg for mercy
With this week’s rollout of baffling cabinet picks by president-elect Donald Trump, satirists are struggling to keep up.
“What’s more bizarre than Matt Gaetz as Attorney General? We can’t beat that,” said an anonymous writer for The Onion.
Merrick Garland, who oversaw the prosecutions of Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh, and Unabomber Ted Kaczynski, and accomplished US Court of Appeals judge, will pass over the seat of the chief law enforcement officer to a man his department investigated for raping an underage girl.
“Nothing,” persisted the anonymous writer, sweating, “better exposes the gulf between our surreality and common decency better than this nomination.”
Lee Zeldin, whom the League of Conservation Voters gives an astounding 14% rating on votes in Congress for the environment, will lead the EPA. For comparison, the LCV gives former White Wizard Saruman a score of 16% after his slash-and-burn policy ransacked the oldest forest still standing in Middle-earth.
RFK Jr will be his Health and Human Services Secretary. Mr Junior, who is himself only half-human, has stated on-record numerous times he doesn’t believe in vaccines, fluoride in water, or that the “life” part of the Declaration of Independence was meant to be taken literally at all.
“It’s incomparable,” an unnamed SNL writer stated when we spoke by smoke signal earlier this week. “How do we satirize such an absurd pick? RFK Jr is a vulture, but if we joked that a literal vulture were Trump’s nominee, that would be less disturbing. Vultures actually play a positive role in human health. RFK Jr doesn’t.”
Elise Stefanik will be Trump’s nominee for UN Ambassador. Stefanik, an Upstate New York congresswoman, has only left the country three times in her life: on her twenty-first birthday to buy alcohol in Canada, in her thirties when a GPS error took her briefly into Vermont, and recently to Rome, NY to throw out the first pitch at a little league baseball game.
“What is funnier than that? Than any of these picks?” The SNL writer continued. “People should be terrified. This is a level of cronyism Gorbachev would find insulting. Our jobs feel impossible right now. We’re supposed to be making jokes in hard times such as these. Our jokes should shine a light on the darkest parts of American culture and encourage people to question their values. But we can’t. Mr Trump is doing our job for us.”