What happens next is one of those black swan events that nobody (except Cokie Roberts) saw coming. Delightfully, this one made the world a better place.
Suddenly, possibly due to climate change, a blizzard swept in and blocked every street. Meanwhile the local cell service went down. For the first time in years (possibly their entire lives) the folks in Trump’s audience found themselves totally without instructions on what to do next. Meanwhile, zombies and Paul Ryan appeared and began to circle the White House.
Things look grim as the crowd stands there looking like especially stupid sheep. While the Secret Service expertly maintains a safe perimeter, they can’t coax the crowd to evacuate, or even go inside. The Secret Service has exceeded this year’s carbon emissions and thus can’t use a helicopter or vehicle to move people. They’ll just have to walk. Neither politicians nor the press are keen to do anything even remotely physical or practical, even if their life depends on it.
Not entirely unexpectedly, they’re ill-suited for the end times and they start to drop like flies. Any damn fool can get by for a while, even in bad conditions, but not so for DC Swamp Dwellers! Within eleven minutes, supplies of bottled water, tofu snacks, and Adderall have run out. Within the first hour, 80% of the assembled Congressmembers have starved. Nobody knows how a grown person can starve to death in less than two hours but Congress is up to the task! Some folks theorize that Congressional budgeting has trained them to burn through calories in mathematically improbably ways.
Fortunately, Trump is one with the twitterverse and therefore does not need to eat; he just hangs around buffering 140-character bits of wisdom for future use. The few remaining politicians with the tiniest hint of common sense slowly begin to work together. The press, at the first sign of common sense among politicians, commit suicide in a great screaming heap of irrelevancy. With few exceptions they’re all dead within minutes.
Cokie Roberts, sighing at the stupidity of it all, notices a few interns who are insufficiently indoctrinated to die at the thought of cooperation. She instructs them to toss the bodies to the zombies outside the White House barricades. “This happens all the time” she explains. The zombies are seeking brains and therefore want nothing to do with a pile of politicians and journalists. Meanwhile Ann Coulter grabs a stick and with a battle cry that would make Thor pee himself, starts stabbing zombies in an epic bloody rampage. “That happens too”, Cokie explains. The interns are learning a lot today. Cokie decides she’ll explain about the pencil sharpener and the wombat if they make it through the week.
Meanwhile, as a solution to standing in the snow and shivering, Congress informally drafts a select subcommittee to rediscover the secret of fire. This doesn’t work at all. Eventually a nearby janitor explains the whole thing. He also tries to get them to “get out of the goddamn snow and go inside” but that confuses them and they refuse.
Luckily it doesn’t matter. Bipartisanship is a powerful force for civilization and soon a bonfire is crackling merrily on the White House steps. It’s fed amply by the interns who, under Cokie’s direction, periodically disappear into the White House and emerge with armloads of unread regulatory paperwork.
Meanwhile, Trump, with his savant-like ability to see directly into the internet, has tuned to a website called “The Turkey’s Dead, Now What” and is reciting butchering instructions to Congress. The greatest minds in DC, after hours of study, eventually manage to butcher the bird. They’re all pleased to be as skilled as the average nine-year-old Amish boy.
Trump magnanimously invites anyone who’s present to join him for the “most awesomest Thanksgiving feast in the history of everything ever”. Then he tunes his mind directly into the internet trying to find out “how very great smart incredible Americans should cook this thing”. A Secret Service member makes a mental note to hire a nine-year-old Amish boy, especially if he knows how to cook, for just such situations. He glances over the crowd and makes another mental note to keep the child away from almost everyone in Congress.
The ensuing Thanksgiving dinner is delicious and everyone is happy. Except two PETA protesters that appear out of nowhere. Obviously, they’re thrown on the fire. A single octo, ovo, gluten free, vegan, localvore, emerges from the scant remaining press corps. She’s promptly fed to the zombies; who don’t like the taste.
The remaining members of congress mellow out and sit around the fire after the best meal of the year. They’re telling stories and drinking and acting like normal human beings. The snow looks beautiful. Cokie explains to the interns that this happens periodically in America; usually about once every few decades. That’s why we’re not currently living in mud huts. Alas the periodic correction has been a long time coming this cycle, which explains a lot. Cokie admits that she secretly invested in a mud hut factory several years ago but she’s happy to take the loss.
The zombies wander off to a nearby university where they seek ‘braiiiins’ in vain and eventually starve to death; though it’s rumored that several enrolled and got degrees in journalism. Rand Paul, who’s having the worst month in history, was subsequently runover by a Zamboni. Nobody seems to know why. There was a wombat painted on the machine. Don’t ask!
Within 24 hours, peace has broken out planet wide, as each nation, seeing Trump and his hair inexpertly aiming at a turkey, has a new appreciation for just how batshit crazy Americans really are. Except of course Vladimir Putin who is absolutely giddy to see someone with balls running any county anywhere. The unknown blogger remains blissfully aware of this; only pausing to muse at a Slate article titled “Turkeys Are Made Of Food, Who Knew?” and wonder what inspired such an insipid topic.
Merry Thanksgiving Y’all!