After Kanye West’s bizarre audience with Donald Trump in the Oval Office, as reporters looked on, Kim K was overheard in a nearby studio shouting at the TV monitor. “That’s it. He’s sullying my brand,” she cried. “I can’t have that!” She and her entourage reportedly stomped out.
Kim had put up with Kanye’s hijacking of Taylor Swift’s winning moment at the 2009 Grammys when he shoved Taylor aside at the microphone and hollered, “… Beyoncé had one of the best videos of all time.” Kim had put up with his 2016 “nervous breakdown,” reportedly stoked by his opioid abuse. But the embarrassing Oval Office escapade seemed a bridge too far, even for our publicity-hungry Kimmie.
Kanye has not been seen since.
Rumors abound, but word on the street has it that Kim and her Mom employed their Chinese connections to have Kanye whisked off to Xinjiang Province where he is now detained in a Chinese facility designed for the re-education of Uyghurs. Over a million of these ethnic Muslims and other deplorables have reportedly been jailed for indoctrination, i.e., brainwashing and rightsizing. Kanye, a hard nut, had failed several rounds of traditional therapy. Kim is hoping the center’s experienced professionals can do something to straighten out her unstable and often incoherent husband.
After watching the video of Kanye’s performance in the Offal, I mean, Oval Office, I now understand that Trump and Kanye are brothers from a different mother. Neither can weave together a logical sequence of words that cohere. Both have a casual relationship with the truth. Each gazes into the glistening pond and sees only his own image. Both men adore themselves beyond measure and recognize in each other the greatness of the gods for whom facts are fungible.
I was shocked at Trump’s silent, adoring mien as he witnessed Kanye ricochet between lobbying for clemency for a convicted murderer serving 150-200 years; crying out for the abolition of the 13th amendment and its “trap door”; and singing the praises of the magical red MAGA hat which seems to have singlehandedly undone Kanye’s deep and lingering feelings of abandonment by his father.
“It was something about when I put this hat on, it made me feel like Superman,” Kanye said to Trump who sat king-like behind the presidential oak desk. “You made a superman. That’s my favorite super hero. And you made a superman cape for me.” (CNN Politics, Oct. 11, 2018). [Note to Psychologists: Apparently one red hat is all that’s required to heal a fatherless young man. Presto! Who needs therapy?]
Kim explained Kanye’s disappearance by telling reporters he had enrolled in a spiritual retreat for tortured artists to heal his troubled mind, but would be home soon. Whenever she was asked if she had visited him, she replied by saying, “No visitors are allowed. He needs his space.” Privately, she was telling friends that now that she could finally breathe again, she wasn’t sure she wanted him home.
President Trump called Kim so often to inquire about Kanye that she finally relented and told him.
“What?” he said. “That sounds terrible. I’m going to fly over there and check up on him. You can’t trust those Chinese, you know.”
As soon as he landed in at the Urumqi Airport in Xinjiang Province, he was whisked away in an armor-plated limo.
“Gee, this doesn’t look familiar from the last time I was in Bejing,” he said, gazing through the bullet-proof glass.
“We bring you secret way, safer for you, Most Distinguished President,” said the driver. Trump’s Secret Service bodyguards nodded.
The limo rolled up to the stark, concrete Uyghur prison and stopped. The six bodyguards hopped out, and one opened the door, leading the way to the entrance.
“So this is where they have Kanye? What a dump!” Trump shrugged and buttoned his jacket. “Well, he won’t be here long. He’s coming back with me.” The bodyguards remained silent.
Trump and his entourage were led into the cold concrete structure and down an unadorned hallway, passing through several locked gates. When they came to the end, the guide looked at Trump, said, “You must wait in here,” and opened the door to a very large carpeted cell. Trump looked back at his bodyguards, eyebrows raised. Three on each side of the door held out their arms in a sweeping motion, pointing inside. Trump stepped in.
And, that’s how it happened.
The 25th amendment kicked in when the cell door clanged shut.
“What! Is this some kind of a feeble joke? Let me out now you f***ing morons. This is not funny. I’m the President of the United States and you can’t do this.”
“It’s President Pence now, sir.” His bodyguards stepped back, saluted and left the building.
Trump screamed. “You can’t do this! Guard, guard! Let me out now, dammit.” The Chinese guard shuffled quickly toward him.
Trump gripped the bars and hollered, “There’s been a terrible mistake. Don’t you know who I am?”
The guard bowed and said, meekly “I know who you were, Sir. So sorry, but we have our orders.”
And thus began the education of Donald Trump. He was forced to endure eight hours a day of ESL training (English as a Second Language), beginning by reading out loud from Dick and Jane and then graduating to more difficult texts. Whenever he completed one intelligible thought per sentence, he earned a Diet Coke. He hated the fried rice, he hated scrubbing floors. At first he tried to argue, “But I have bone spurs.”
“We don’t believe in bone spurs, Mr. Trump. You’re fat, you’re American, you need to slim down. We don’t believe in American values because you don’t believe in American values. We teach you what you don’t believe in: hard work, obedience, telling truth. This is truth-telling camp, Mr. Trump. Lies get you punishment. Truth get you 30 minutes of MSNBC or visit with Kanye. We not allow Fox propaganda in camp. Very bad for Chi.”
“Why aren’t they coming to get me? Why aren’t they sending in the Navy Seals? They got Osama, why can’t they get me?” He strangled the bars, tears rolling down his face.
“We have arrangement with President Pence.”
Trump, who hadn’t yet graduated to irony, couldn’t believe it.
“I’ve been outsourced to China? China?!”
Rosie Sorenson is a humor writer in the San Francisco Bay Area. You can contact her at: RosieSorenson29@yahoo.com
From The Progressive Populist, December 1, 2018
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