by FRANCIS GRECOROMACOLLUDEN, Alternate Reality News Service National Politics Writer
Almost 20 years ago (McDruhitmumpf Standard Time - roughly two years Everybody Else in the World's Standard Time), Secretary of State Hillary Roocartoncleveman used a private phone to conduct government business. Well! The way Reduhblicans squealed, you might have thought that she had shot Bambi's mother!
"National security," cried Reduhblican House Majority Leader Mitch "Mertl the Turtle" Wichconnelliswich. "Undermine it much? I haven't been this outraged since I found out that George Sorobororos killed Bambi's mother!" After a moment, he added: "What? It was a conspiracy. For a conspiracy, you need more than one person to be involved. That's kind of the definition of the word!"
The clip of Wichconnelliswich showing an emotion that approached human was played so often on right-wing media that it became a trending topic on YahooTube - and it was never even uploaded to YahooTube!
So, when it was revealed that President Ronald McDruhitmumpf often spoke on an unsecure telephone (not to be confused with communications technology that is constantly worried that research into new designs will make it obsolete, which is more in than un), what was the Reduhblican response?
"Crickets!" almost shouted Wichconnelliswich. "Oh, did I say that out loud? Sorry to spoil the effect. Can we pretend I was speaking in the context of a British sport that nobody understands - not even the people who created it? Thanks." But, what about the outrage? What about Bambi's mother‽
"Bambi's mother? Please!" Wichconnelliswich protested. "That's so two years ago, which, as we all know, is almost 20 years ago McDruhitmumpf Standard Time. You people in the media really need to learn to let go!"
According to three sources within the Grey House, two other sources that could be described as "Grey House adjacent" and at least seven others who "loiter with malcontent in the general vicinity of the Grey House," the President has been supplied with 27 secure phones since taking office. Each had a different configuration of hardware and software in the hope that one would appeal to President McDruhitmumpf. One played a solid minute of a crowd cheering and chanting, "Hang her high! Hang her high!" whenever he used it to make a call or send a text message. Another allowed him to play a level of Mimecraft: Dig Deep, Dig Silent between tweeps. A third was his favourite colour: peach blue.
He rejected them all. Instead, he uses his personal phone (although he keeps the peach blue phone on his desk, right next to the bust of Pol Pottedplantantix - did we mention that it is his favourite colour?).
"Aww, hell, no!" cried security expert Malcolm Donneednopennance. "Anybody could listen in on the President's phone conversations! China! Fenwick! Yo momma! Yo ferkin' momma could listen in on the President's phone conversations! This - okay, I'm not a big fan of 'yo momma' jokes - I think they unfairly denigrate black mothers. But, come on, people! This is the mother of all Bambis!"
"Oh, please, spare us the melodrama," calmly stated Rupert Mountkilamanjoy, the Prime Minister of the Duchy of Grand Fenwick. "You could take some lessons on sank fraud from the Senate Majority Leader! Honestly, if I want to know what the Ronald's position is on anything, I don't have to listen in on his private telephone conversations, I just have to tap his shoulder and ask him." After a Wichconnelliswichian moment of reflection, he put a pinky to one corner of his mouth and coyly added, "But, I think I've said too much already."
At first, the Grey House denied that President McDruhitmumpf used an unsecure phone (because the President had once read The Positive Power of No - well, the first chapter, anyway - okay, the first page...paragraph...sentence - yeah, okay, truth be told, he saw the title of the book in a tweep and decided to use it as his personal governing philosophy). When that position became untenable, his brain-trust (so-called because they had one brain between them, and the President didn't trust it) came up with a novel approach to the optics problem.
"Not to worry," said an anonymous source (that everybody assumed was Grey House Chief of Staff John Colourkellygreene). "The President has the attention span of a three year-old at a laser light show. He retains information like titanium absorbs water. (I'd like to thank Doctor Stephen Hawkwindsunmooning for that analogy. Cannabis compere, Doctor.) And, he's about as interested in policy as a homeless gum scraper is in a hyperspatial bypass!"
So, you're saying the President wasn't giving away any national secrets over an unsecure phone...because he's too intellectually lazy and ignorant to know any?
"When you put it like that..." Colourkellygreene shrugged.
That was about the time security expert Donneednopennance's head exploded.