BOLT UPRIGHT: Good evening, I’m Bolt Upright and this is Received Opinion!
[Digital feedback crudely edited into a melody-adjacent skein. On the screen behind UPRIGHT: A limited action cartoon showing Donald Trump wielding a whip, driving little brown-skinned men into a chain-link cage where they’re beaten by guards and, when they collapse, kicked off-screen. Chyron: NOT HAPPY CAMPERS.]
More bold, decisive action by President Trump this week! He not only pushed Congressional Republicans to cut Medicaid — long thought to be a political loser, and still thought to be a political loser by people who think we’ll ever have elections again — he also got them to give ICE and other immigration enforcement tens of billions of dollars in new funding.
[Background changes to Trump, Ron De Santis, and Kristi Noem touring the “Alligator Alcatraz” site and laughing.]
To celebrate this windfall, Trump opened a giant detention facility in the Florida Everglades, into which hundreds of newly-hired men in camo with no visible official identification will soon stuff thousands of immigrants and some U.S. citizens they are expected to seize off the streets. Oh, and because we don’t want any of what CBS News just got, let’s repeat the President’s cute names for these things: “Big Beautiful Bill” and “Alligator Alcatraz.”
[UPRIGHT lifts to his mouth a siren whistle and blows; looks off-screen.]
OK, Paul? We good?
[UPRIGHT faces the camera again. Background changes to a super of detainee Abrego Garcia’s face over scrolling legal documents from his amended complaint against Noem and DHS.]
Also, this just in, there’s a new suit against Noem and Homeland Security by Abrego Garcia, the immigrant even the New York Times admits was wrongfully deported. Garcia’s suit describes how he was tortured in the foreign prison to which Noem sent him. We have yet to receive Noem’s or the President’s bone-chilling response to these allegations.
[Background turns to documentary footage of Nazi concentration camps.]
All this raises a question: concentration camps — in or out? More and more people are saying these detention facilities, inside and outside the United States, are concentration camps, kind of like what you-know-who did to you-know-who — for our viewers under 60, that’s Hitler and the Jews. We don’t hear the President or his people denying it — maybe it’s what the scientists call a paradigm shift and, as with so much else, just something we’re supposed to accept! Let’s run it by our friends at the Decision Desk.
[Sousa march run through a trash compactor. UPRIGHT strolls to the Decision Desk, where he meets PEONI DOYENNE — wearing a Zimmermann floral silk palm Ascension maxi dress and hazel Stuart Weitzman Dayna platform sandals — and CHAFE DRAMATURGY – wearing a beige Brunello Cucinelli herringbone linen suit, a Prada Hawaii print bowling shirt, and China white John Varvatos Antwerp huaraches with no socks.]
UPRIGHT: So where’s our guest panelist?
[DOYENNE and DRAMATURGY giggle.]
DRAMATURGY: “John Selden”?
UPRIGHT: Yeah, from the Heritage Foundation. Oh, don’t tell me —
DOYENNE: You guessed it! Another one of Stephen Miller’s disguises. With a blond shag wig!
DRAMATURGY: We kidded him so hard about it he stormed off!
UPRIGHT: Why does he do this, I wonder? Can’t he just get one of his little Nazis to come out here and make his case?
DOYENNE: [Suddenly serious] Bolt! Oh, Bolt, I’m sorry, that is just so utterly beyond the pale. I’m extremely disappointed.
UPRIGHT: Peoni, we’re talking about concentration camps.
DOYENNE: [Points at UPRIGHT] Your word, Bolt. I don’t recall the administration using that word. Facilities, they call them.
UPRIGHT: And Alligator Alcatraz.
DOYENNE: Yes! And was Alcatraz a concentration camp? And you wonder why people think the media is liberal biased.
UPRIGHT: They still think that, do they?
DRAMATURGY: I do! I mean, I think I’m liberal biased. But I’m trying to do better, that’s why I was on all those panels about how Biden was senile.
DOYENNE: And it’s so unseemly, all these liberals going fascist this and Nazi that. I remember when Ronnie Reagan and Tip O’Neill used to go drinking together –
[Suddenly STEVEN MILLER, in an SS officer’s uniform sans insignia, storms in, followed by some guy in tactical gear with a gaiter pulled up over most of his face.]
MILLER: You! You! You have mocked this administration for the last time! Here is an ICE officer. Prepare to be removed to CECOT!
UPRIGHT: All right, then.
[UPRIGHT strolls up to the tac gear guy and kicks him in the nuts; as the guy reels, UPRIGHT punches him in the temple and he goes down. DOYENNE, DRAMATURGY, and MILLER stand back as UPRIGHT goes through the man’s pockets and withdraws a wallet, taking a card out it:]
“Personal security consultant. Low rates.”
[UPRIGHT looks at other cards]
Old Blockbuster card… “titty inspector”… no government ID here.
[UPRIGHT drops the wallet on the prone guy, turns and walks toward to MILLER, who flees.]
DRAMATURGY: Watch out, Bolt! Maybe he’ll come back with a real one.
UPRIGHT: Gimme danger. [To the camera] When we return, some zombie-eyed young woman from DHS will repeat canned statements when we ask her direct questions about her boss’ plan to deport Zohran Mamdani. [To DOYENNE] Got your flask with you, Peoni? I’m feeling kind of dry.
DOYENNE: And I’m feeling kind of wet. Oops, did I say that out loud?
[They laugh as network pages haul the unconscious bounty hunter offstage.]
I'm starting to develop a crush on Bolt, a completely fictional news mannequin with a drinking problem. And here I thought my taste in men had improved!
Roy, you hit it out of the park with Peoni's dress -- mumsy and overpriced. Not sure the platforms go with it, but as she slides into alcohol-induced dementia, she likely spends much of her time thinking she's back in her heyday of the 70s/80s.
Thanks so much for this! The transformation of Bolt Upright into Slab Punchfist, Cap'n America cosplayer punching NAZIs, is the media we need right now. Unfortunately, Paramount bribing the Fat-fingered Vulgarian is both what we deserve and what we got.