The latest revelations

Boltonmania becomes several smaller mania

© 2017 Gage Skidmore, used under a Creative Commons license

Washington, D.C. — Still reeling from the John Bolton revelations, Senate Republicans were caught flatfooted when three more former White House advisers claimed — and in some cases provided stunning evidence — that Donald Trump committed a number of questionable acts, some criminal, some just weird.

These revelations appeared yesterday in publicity materials for upcoming tell-all books by Hope Hicks, John Kelly, and Omarosa Manigault — a peculiar coincidence, especially given that all three have different publishers.

The promotional materials for former White House Chief of Staff Kelly’s Moron in Chief: Babysitting the President that appeared yesterday on the Simon & Schuster website were by far the most shocking, including what appeared to be video footage of Trump shoveling White House silverware, candlesticks, and other historical artifacts into a duffel bag and instructing Marines to “take it out front, Fat Tony will be here later to pick it up.” The publishers also posted what are alleged to be recordings of presidential phone calls in which Trump is heard telling various world leaders, “NATO membership fees just went up, hint hint,” and “I just wanna wet my beak, that’s all, what do I care if you kill your own people.” (These recordings have been removed from the website by court order pending a hearing.)

Meanwhile in marketing for her book Spin This: My Months in the Trump White House, Hicks claimed that the President offered her money for sexual favors “at least once a week.” The former White House Director of Strategic Communications said the propositions “became a sort of ritual... he would come into my office, close the door, state or imply that the walls were soundproof, and tell me that there was a ‘big payday’ in it for me if I ‘did the right things.’”

The President's offers to Hicks, some of which she taped and shared with the New York Times, ranged from “$100 right now, cash” to “your own floor in Trump Tower and a little Mexican girl who does laundry, you fold though.”

Simultaneously Manigault, Trump’s former director of communications for the Office of Public Liaison, issued a press release for her book Life After Lunacy: How to Bounce Back From a Toxic Presidency that linked to a 500-page Excel spreadsheet documenting the times she claims Trump used racial slurs in her presence during her 12 months in office. The President’s favorite slur, Manigault says, was the N-word (“He uses that word like the preacher uses hallelujah”), but he also used several lesser-known variants and “some I think he made up,” said Manigault, “like ‘Drake’s Coffee Cake’ and ‘Burnt Sienna.’”

Later that day Michael McKinley, former Senior Advisor to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, turned over to House impeachment managers footage of Pompeo breaking into a poor box at Pilgrim African Methodist Episcopal Church in the Kingman Park neighborhood of Washington. “Keep the engine running, Tommy,” Pompeo is heard yelling as he stuffs bills and coins into his jacket pockets.

Top Republicans reacted with a mixture of stupor and evasive action.

“Go away,” screamed South Carolina GOP Senator Lindsay as he locked himself in the Senate cloakroom. “Go away, go away, go away.”

“How did you get in here,” cried Iowa Republican Senator Chuck Grassley, found under a desk in the Senate’s Hart Office Building. “I never even heard of these people. I’m calling the police. Is my secretary out there? Judy! Judy, Goddamn it, call the Sergeant at Arms.”

“These guys are just a bunch of losers,” said Trump whatever-he-is Rudolph Giuliani, attempting to get into a reporter’s car. “We have evidence that all of them, and I mean every single Trump appointee who is not still in the administration, collaborated with Hunter Biden and Hillary Clinton to make up these stories, just make them up out of nothing, and spread them in the liberal media. I’m going to pick the evidence up tomorrow when I get to Crimea. Where do you live? I’ll bring you some churchkhela.”