Peeling the Orange

Peeling the Orange

“Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.”

-Anthony Weldon, The Court and Character of King James, 1651

“This is pretty exciting, Roy, my first President’s address to Congress. I’m nervous.”

“This is my 17th, and I still get goosebumps, Fred. It’s such an honor just to see him in person.”

“Well, I’ll just follow your lead, you know, for when to clap and for how long.”

“It’s not complicated, Fred. Basically, every time he says something, you clap. Stand up when I stand up and sit down when I do. You’ll be fine. And don’t forget the bow.”

“The bow, Roy?”

“Well, it’s not really a bow. It’s more like just a lowering of your head, averting your eyes, only quick glances in his direction.”

“I see, showing respect for the office.”

“No, to show he is a superior being and we are not worthy. Oh my goodness! Here he comes now!”

“I see him, Roy! Holy shit, he is orange! I just thought there was something wrong with my TV.”

“Oh my goodness, Fred! You can’t say that!! What’s wrong with you?!”

“Well, I’m sorry, Roy. It’s just that I’ve never seen an orange person before.”

“Jesus Christ, Fred, stop it with the orange stuff. Just keep quiet until it’s time to cheer.”

----------

“Mr. Speaker, the President of the United States!”

“You’re not cheering loud enough, Fred. Take it up a notch.”

“Ok, Roy, ok. Yea!! Yea!!!”

“Good, good. Now you’re getting it.”

“YEA!!

“That’s awesome, Fred. Look at him. He’s really eating this up. Ok, time to stop. He’s ready to speak.”

---------

“Mr. Speaker, members of Congress, I am pleased to report that the state of our union is… strong. In fact, it is stronger than it has ever been. Thanks to me, it is stronger now than even before it was a country.”

“How can that be, Roy?”

“Shut up and clap, Fred. And you were a little slow leaping to your feet.”

“I just didn’t understand how…”

“Dammit, Fred, it’s not your job to understand. It’s your job to clap.”

----------

“Besides all the great things I’ve already done, I’ve decided that I want to be known as the Uniter in Chief. I am the one guy who can bring the MAGA hordes and the scum on the left together.”

“Get up and clap, Fred, he’s going to unite the country! We need that.”

“But he called the other side scum. That doesn’t…”

“Shut up and clap, Fred. He’s the President… won in a landslide.”

---------

“Next on my list of incredible accomplishments is all the wars I’ve stopped… 27 at last count. That’s a lot of wars I kept from happening. I should be a slam-dunk for the Nobel Peace Prize.”

“Get up and cheer, Fred. Twenty-seven wars!”

“No one has ever stopped 27 wars. I probably saved a couple of billion lives.”

“Roy, 27 wars? That’s not possible.”

“What’s the matter with you, Fred. Didn’t you hear what he said?”

“It’s just that…”

“I stopped one just today on the way over here, the war between Cambodia and Armenia. That was a bad one.”

“What? Roy, Cambodia and Armenia were never at war. They’re 4,000 miles apart.”

“He stopped the killing, Fred. What’s wrong with that? Let’s give him the credit he deserves. He should get a Nobel Peace Prize for every war he stopped.”

“I just wish those pesky bone spurs wouldn’t have kept me from going to Vietnam and mixing it up with the bad guys. I would have stopped that war the first day I set foot in that miserable hell-hole of rice patties and mosquitoes.”

“I bet they would have called him Agent Orange… heh, heh, heh.”

“Not funny, Fred.”

“And that war between Russia and that goof Zielinsky never would have started if the 2020 election wasn’t stolen from me.”

“Roy, he lost like 63 court cases on that. Why does he keep saying the election was stolen?”

“You naive little fool, Fred. Who are you going to believe, all those stupid courts or the President? He won in a landslide, you know.”

“And add to that all the lives I saved by closing the border. My Attorney General Bondi… she’s a terrific gal…not bad looking either… figures I saved between 100 million and 258 million lives. I put the number at 300 million. Give me a 3rd term, and I will save the lives of every man, woman, and child on this planet!”

“Holy crap, Fred! That would really be something!”

“Three hundred million lives? That would be 90% of the country’s population, Roy.”

“Yeah, the guy is amazing. Thank God for him. We would have been wiped out.”

“And some lives I will save twice, thanks to my Secretary of Health, Robert Kennedy Jr. No more of that nasty needle jabbing. We are going to make America healthy again… the good old-fashioned natural way… like our forefathers did back in the old country.”

“Jesus, Roy, that’s when they had the plague and other bad stuff going on.”

“Who are you going to believe, Fred, a bunch of nerds in white coats or the President? He won in a landslide, you know.”

“And then we’re also going to have some trifectas of life-saving. No one has ever done that before. Take some young kid in Chicago. First, I keep him out of a war. Then I save him from being poisoned to death by some junk science vaccine, and then I bring in the National Guard to keep him from getting shot up in some street gang shit. It’s just one guy, but I think that should count as 3 lives saved.”

“What the hell is he talking about?”

“Shut up and clap, Fred.”

“And are ready for this? There may a four-lives banger in the works. Let’s say that kid moves to LA. I could save him from raging forest fires that Governor Newscum caused by fucking up forestry management and not letting firemen use water to put out fires. One kid… four lives saved.”

“Listen to the applause, Fred! Who else could save the same kid from dying 4 times?”

“That’s redicu…”

“No one ever thought that was possible. I’m the only one who could that. I think I should get one of those Pulitzer Prizes, too.”

----------

“And look what I’ve done with prices. Sleepy Joe had everything up, and under my leadership, prices on everything are going down. Bread… down. Chicken… down. Pickles… down. And gas! They’re practically giving it away. In some states, it was below $2.00 a gallon my first week in office, and it’s still going down.”

“Roy, I just paid $3.59 a gallon last weekend back in Colorado.”

“That’s not possible, Fred. You heard him. He won in a landslide, you know.”

“And I’ve cut taxes more than all the previous Presidents combined.”

“Roy, that can’t be…”

“And look what I’ve done with DOGE. Elon, who used to be my buddy until he lost his freaking mind, and I cut the Government bureaucracy by a whopping 127%... and services are better now. And I cut Medicaid by a trillion dollars without any drop in services. No one ever thought that was possible.”

“Why aren’t you clapping, Fred?! You don’t think it’s good that he cut the program by a trillion dollars without any effect on the nation’s health care? I think that’s amazing.”

“I don’t think it’s possible, Roy.”

“What is wrong with you, Fred? He’s the President. He won in a landslide, you know.”

----------

“And just wait until the effects of all my big, beautiful tariffs kick in. Prices will go through the basement floor. For example, I slapped a 50% on everything coming out of Brazil. That means that the cost to consumers for buying any product from Brazil will be cut in half.

“And I will be cutting the cost of drugs bigly. No more jabbing needles into little arms. Bobby and I have come up with a big, beautiful idea. Instead of injecting vaccines into billions of people who probably would never have gotten sick anyway, we’re going to wait for people to get sick first and then inject them with a disinfectant or something to kill all the bad stuff. I came up with the idea during that COVID thing. We’ve already had meetings in the White House with the folks at Raid and Clorox. The number of injections will drop by 850% and save trillions of dollars every year.”

“The guy is a genius, Fred.”

“Yeah, I’ve heard him say that.”

----------

“I am also going to reduce cancer in this country by 312% by taking down all the windmills. Secretary Kennedy ran an experiment with mice… actually one mouse… and the little windmill that came with his electric train set. He observed the mouse for 7 days in the makeshift lab he set up in his basement, and the mouse died. He concluded that the mouse died of cancer or something else, like he forgot to feed him. He couldn’t positively say it was cancer, but he couldn’t rule it out either, and that’s good enough for me. So I signed an Executive Order requiring that all windmills must be destroyed by noon tomorrow.”

“What? That’s absurd, Roy.”

“You don’t want to get rid of cancer? They ran an experiment and everything. Why aren’t you cheering, Fred?”

“And getting rid of the windmills will be a twofer. It is a known fact that every windmill kills 27 birds a day, so I will be saving over 12 billion birds a year. That’s why they call me the Environmental President.”

“I never heard anyone call him the Environmental President, Roy.”

“He just said it, Fred. What is wrong with you?”

----------

“And I have come up with a way to eliminate all the devastation caused by hurricanes. I’m going to nuke them. Hurricanes usually form over water, big water… like you don’t see a lot of hurricanes in places like Iowa… so no one will get killed by the blast. As soon as one forms, way out in the ocean somewhere, we’ll drop a nuclear bomb right in the eye of the hurricane. BOOM! No more hurricane. I think people in Florida will like that.”

“No more hurricanes, Fred. You gotta like that.”

“Roy, you can’t…”

-----------

“You’ve got to love the freedoms we have here in America. Those founding fathers did a bang-up job when they wrote up our Constitution. I probably could have done better, but I wasn’t around then. Like, they sort of messed up on the First Amendment. I mean, look at all the nut-job lefties out there who say bad things about me, and they have no consequences. That’s not right.”

“He might be talking about you, Fred. You'd better be careful. You don’t want to get primaried.”

“So I will be signing an Executive Order…don’t you love the sound of that? Executive Order… like I get to order people what to do and they have to do it. The Order will yank the licenses from hack networks like ABC, CBS, NBC, and Comedy Central for all the bad shit they’ve been saying about me.”

“Comedy Central, Roy?”

“Yeah, South Park puts on stuff making fun of the President and showing him with a little wiener.”

“A little wiener? Heh, heh, heh.”

“Not funny, Fred. Knock it off.”

----------

“In conclusion, I would just like to remind you that we will have a wonderful assortment of MAGA apparel and gear for sale outside the Chamber as you leave. We have several new items that I’m sure you’ll like- Donald Trump Christmas ornaments with my face on them, a rugged Sham-Wow for buffing your car… with my face on it, table coasters with my face on them, red, white, and blue lamp shades… with my face on them, and an authentic, real Bible full of stories about Jesus with my face on the cover. If you pay with cash, I’m offering a 5% discount on all the items.

“I’m getting the coasters and the Bible. How about you, Fred?”

“I think I’ll pass. Roy, there’s something I don’t understand here.”

“What’s that, Fred?”

“Why are all these people he made fun of cheering so loudly for him?”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, he called them dumb, a lightweight, low IQ, a stiff, a disgrace, a nut-job, said one guy cheated on his wife, things like that. He even insulted one senator’s wife.”

“Fred, it’s like I’ve been trying to tell you. He’s the President… won in a landslide. Power is like a magnet, Fred. You’ll learn.”