Pity the fool, Alex Azar, for accepting the position of Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services. During his confirmation hearings six months ago, he sat composed at the mike, the epitome of the slick-haired capitalist, the former CEO of the Eli Lily drug company.
Now, however, according to an insider who wishes to remain anonymous, Alex has devolved into a quivering mass of protoplasm over Trump’s immigration debacle. Little did Alex know when he accepted the job that Eli Lily is to DHHS as GM was to Yugo (now known as the Worst Car in History.)
Trump neglected to inform Alex that his job at DHHS was to fail and to fail spectacularly. And then be strung up on the cross of Trump’s chaos, crying, “Trump made me do it, he made me do it.” We will have to wait and see how that goes.
In the meantime, insofar as one can ever feel sorry for a Republican, one might feel a bit of sympathy for a man ordered by US District Judge Dana Sabrow to repatriate so-called “separated” children to their families. Especially since no one seems to know exactly how many children are involved, their locations and the locations of their family members. How the hell does this happen in a high-tech country in which Big Data knows everything about everyone at all times? Where our satellites can identify the whereabouts of a lone terrorist in Afghanistan? Where OnStar can pinpoint the location of any of its cars, any time, anywhere?
The pachyderm at the border is this: Not only does the Trump administration not know, it doesn’t care.
“The quality of the children’s care is another unknowable issue,” confided an insider by the name of Hank who secretly recorded a conversation with Alex. Hank said he’s never seen such incompetence in his life.
The conversation was as follows.
“Hank, you have no idea of the magnitude of this FUBAR (military acronym for “Fu**ed Up Beyond All Repair),” says Alex. The judge is hammering us to produce those damn children, but we can’t produce them if we can’t find them.”
“Say what?”
“That’s right, we do NOT know where they are. Damn that Trump for putting me in this mess! How can we return the babies to their parents if we don’t know where they are? I just found out that they’ve been sending these babies all around the country like so many Amazon Prime packages—no one knows. Maybe Amazon, but not us.”
“Good lord! What are you going to do? You have a deadline to return those children. Can you call Jeff?”
“You mean Bezos? After all the personal bashing Trump has done? You think he wouldn’t laugh me off the phone? No. This is where all my time and experience at Lily has come in handy. Since we can’t locate the original ones, we’re quickly cloning a number of brown babies to take care of the shortfall. We call it “Kiddie Kloning—Fast and Furious.”
“Won’t their parents know the difference?”
“Probably not. You know—seen one, seen ‘em all. The’ll just be so happy to have a baby, they probably won’t notice the difference. Or care.”
“What if you can’t find the parents?”
“Well, I have a genius plan for that, too. Our obligation is to return them to someone, anyone who will take care of them, right? So we use drones.”
“Drones? What?”
“Drones, my friend. We’re going to send babies to El Salvador, Nicaragua, and those other S-hole South American countries by drone. And the best part is we’re going to make a game of it, a reality game show, if you will: ‘South American Ninja Atrapa al Bebé.’ Pay $250.00 for each baby someone catches as it drops from the sky. Trump’s all over this. It’s a win-win for everyone. It’s simple, really. Contestants on the ground compete to catch falling babies. They earn money and the babies get a new home. Is this brilliant or what?”
“I’d say ‘or what.’ Not to mention sick.”
“How can you say that? Trump has already signed off on it, he wants ‘Producer’ credits and he’s given me a raise to boot.”
“And what do you do if a parent cries foul, that his real baby was not returned?”
“Trump will just go on Fox News and say they lie. Who you gonna believe? Trump or a brown-skinned rapist and convicted felon?”
“What about the babies that might slip through the contestant’s fingers?”
“Collateral damage, my friend. Everyone understands you can’t catch every baby every time. Come on, that’s part of the fun, the suspense. People will tune in by the millions. Just think of the advertising dollars going into Trump’s pocket!! Emoluments, shmoluments, kiddo. Trump is King!”
And so it goes in Trumplandia. Stay tuned.
Rosie Sorenson is a humor writer in the San Francisco Bay Area. You can contact her at: RosieSorenson29@yahoo.com. The editor regrets that we cannot guarantee that the dialogue above is satire.
From The Progressive Populist, August 15, 2018
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