Dumpty: The Age of Trump in Verse Read online

  A Bethesda-bred jock from elite Georgetown Prep,

  He’s Brett Kavanep.

  Renowned for a weird predilection for beer,

  He’s Brett Kavaneer.

  Beach blanket blowouts with PJ and Squee,

  He’s Brett Kavanee.

  Connected forever with barfing and boofing,

  He’s Brett Kavanoofing.

  A boozy assault on Christine Blasey Ford,

  He’s Brett Kavanord.

  Waggling his dick in a Yale coed’s face,

  His Brett Kavanace.

  Sifting through muck for Counselor Starr,

  He’s Brett Kavanarr.

  Sitting on secrets for Cheney and Dubya,

  He’s Brett Kavanubya.

  The Federalist Society’s bright golden boy,

  He’s Brett Kavanoy.

  Declaring a hit job by Bill and by Hillary,

  He’s Brett Kavanillary.

  Unleashing a rant that outdid Justice Thomas,

  He’s Brett Kavanomas.

  Backed in the end by the Senate Boys’ Club,

  He’s Brett Kavanub.

  Of all the fine judges that POTUS could choose

  To sit in the company of Charles Evans Hughes

  And Warren and Brennan and Brandeis and Marshall,

  Magisterial jurists, wise and impartial,

  Instead, Dumpty fingered this callow young cad,

  The feeblest justice we’ll ever have had.

  Hardly the Solon our Founders foresaw,

  He’s Brett Kavanaugh.

  President Donald Trump’s nominee, Justice BRETT KAVANAUGH , was confirmed to the Supreme Court in October 2018 despite allegations of sexual assault and misconduct .

  CHRISTINE BLASEY FORD , a professor of psychology at Palo Alto University, accused Kavanaugh of sexual assault when the two were in high school during the 1980s. Kavanaugh also allegedly exposed himself to a Yale classmate, Deborah Ramirez, at a party during their freshman year .

  THE MORTIFICATION OF ELLIOTT BROIDY

  Things keep getting worse for poor Elliott Broidy.

  His greed and libido have proved unalloyed. He

  Began by adhering to law and morality,

  But now he’s the emblem of lust and venality.

  His strenuous leer and his corpulent girth

  Have made him the butt of satirical mirth.

  Who can blame us? Just look at the man’s recent past,

  Full of scandals befitting the late Thomas Nast.

  His first misdemeanor the press barely mentions:

  Bribing the guys who doled out New York pensions.

  But then, like some spreading financial dysplasia,

  He lobbied for crooks in Ukraine and Malaysia

  And, mired in the geopolitical gutter,

  He poisoned the well with our allies in Qatar.

  Through it all, he was having the time of his life

  As millions were lavished on him and his wife.

  The GOP bosses were walking on air

  When they made him their deputy fund-raising chair.

  But imagine their shock when this lecherous clown,

  This overweight Icarus came crashing down.

  The cause of his sudden, precipitous fall?

  The saddest and sleaziest reason of all:

  The source from which all his calamities stem

  Was that hoariest of narratives, cherchez la femme !

  The man, you would think, was a little too old

  To cavort with a winsome Playboy centerfold.

  But an overabundance of power and money

  Provides an old grizzly with plenty of honey.

  A bear? More precisely an old Saint Bernard

  Who bird-dogged a bunny named Shera Bechard.

  Their tale has a title that’s aptly tabloidy:

  The Mortification of Elliott Broidy.

  A deck chair awaits on his own ship of fools

  For flouting the strictest Republican rules.

  Rule number one: you must never impregnate

  A mistress who’s also a vengeful ex-Playmate.

  And if it should happen, keep things in proportion:

  Don’t get mixed up in a girlfriend’s abortion.

  And Cohen! How could Elliott pick such a jerk?

  Nondisclosure agreements are known not to work!

  Along with a touch of distinct schadenfreudy,

  We glean a few lessons from Elliott Broidy:

  A grasping obsession with power and wealth

  Is bad for the country and bad for your health;

  And fate tends to play its most dastardly tricks

  On grabby old lechers who think with their dicks.

  Although he departs in disgrace and vainglory,

  Take Elliott to heart and take heart from his story.

  In 2017 , ELLIOTT B. BROIDY was deputy finance chairman of the Republican National Committee. He resigned in April 2018 after it was reported that he had paid a former Playboy Playmate $1.6 million to cover up their affair .

  THE WALRUS AND THE KLEPTOCRAT

  (AFTER LEWIS CARROLL)

  The streets all glowed with autumn light

  Beyond the palace door.

  Inside, the glittering chandeliers

  Lit up the marble floor.

  The Walrus and the Kleptocrat

  Plumbed the ways of war.

  “The time has come,” the Walrus said,

  “To follow different courses;

  To talk of promises forsworn,

  Of schisms and divorces.

  We’re scrapping the pact that keeps in check

  Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces.”

  The Kleptocrat, that wily cat,

  Suppressed a furtive leer.

  “Oh, no!” he cried, and wiped away

  A crocodilian tear.

  “The INF has kept us safe

  For lo, this many a year!”

  In fact, he’d never backed the pact

  Nor followed its decrees,

  But had built a secret missile force

  With surreptitious ease,

  Enough to bring the NATO alliance

  Trembling to its knees.

  The Kleptocrat eyed his oblivious prey

  With the gaze of a snake in the grass.

  The Walrus thought he’d skunked his foe

  But had given him a pass,

  Unwittingly planting a servile kiss

  On the Kleptocrat’s rosy ass.

  A year before, another scene

  Was every bit as hinky:

  A meeting of two heads of state

  At a summit in Helsinki,

  Where the Kleptocrat wrapped the Walrus’s boss

  Around his little pinkie.

  The shadows crept across Red Square,

  The sky began to redden.

  The Walrus snuggled in his bed,

  His limbs were limp and leaden.

  He smiled at how his day had gone,

  The global order he’d redrawn.

  He dreamed at last of a golden dawn

  Of nuclear Armageddon.

  JOHN BOLTON became Donald Trump’s national security advisor in April 2018. He advised the president to withdraw from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty with Russia, which Trump did in February 2019. Many analysts say that Russia’s previous nuclear weapons development, ordered by President VLADIMIR PUTIN , had already violated this treaty .

  JARED AND MOHAMMED

  Jared and Mohammed were

  A very lucky pair.

  Their families were filthy rich

  And each retained a share.

  Jared’s Dumpty’s son-in-law,

  Mohammed’s dad’s a king

  Who rules the Saudi Royal House:

  Ka-ching! Ka-ching! Ka-ching!

  Jared came from real estate,

  Mohammed, Saudi oil.

  They set about to find a way

  To be each other’s foil.

&n
bsp; With Jared lending White House cred,

  Mohammed could convince

  The family fold that he should hold

  The title of crown prince.

  And in return, Mohammed would

  Prevail on all his minions

  To force a Jared Peace Plan on

  Those pesky Palestinians.

  Jared pulled a string or two

  And no one thought it odd

  When Dumpty’s first official visit

  Took him to Riyadh.

  Once there, the Saudis engineered

  A freaky photo op,

  With Dumpty fondling a globe

  Beside Mohammed’s pop.

  With this, the fathers forged a bond

  Both sacred and iconic,

  Clueless that the whole wide world

  Considered it moronic.

  The sons concocted cushy deals

  The fathers were ecstatic,

  Displaying their devout embrace

  Of all things plutocratic.

  Their claims of future two-way trade

  Were wildly optimistic,

  In spite of talk the House of Saud

  Was brutal and sadistic.

  Jamal Khashoggi wrote it up,

  Mohammed threw a fit.

  He sent his goons to Istanbul

  To execute a hit.

  Inside the Saudi consulate,

  The poor entrapped Jamal

  Was strangled and dismembered by

  The prince’s cruel cabal.

  Everybody everywhere

  Declared it homicide,

  But Dumpty and his son-in-law

  Both took Mohammed’s side.

  Global disrepute encumbered

  All their rosy plans,

  For though Mohammed did the deed,

  There’s blood on Jared’s hands.

  Jared and Mohammed are

  A most unlucky twosome.

  They started bright and glistery

  But now there’s little mystery:

  Their legacy in history

  Is grisly, grim, and gruesome.

  The crown prince of Saudi Arabia , MOHAMMED BIN SALMAN , authorized a secret security force that committed multiple crimes in a campaign to silence dissenters, including, according to the CIA, the murder of JAMAL KHASHOGGI , a journalist and Saudi Arabian dissident .

  Intelligence reports on JARED KUSHNER , Donald Trump’s son-in-law and senior advisor, revealed that multiple foreign leaders targeted him, aiming to use him to advance their political and business interests .

  A LIBERAL’S COMPLAINT

  Sean Hannity,

  Sean Hannity.

  You tidal wave of vanity!

  You media profanity!

  Purveying rank inanity

  That verges on insanity!

  You gross albino manatee!

  With zero class, urbanity,

  Bearing, nay humanity !

  Your head is full of granity!

  Your brain is mashed bananity!

  You’re such a horse’s fannity!

  Grow up! And be a mannity!

  Or find another planet-y,

  Sean Hannity.

  SEAN HANNITY is a conservative political radio and television host on the Fox News Channel .

  SEVEN DAYS IN NOVEMBER

  The midterms had ended the evening before

  When Dumpty confronted the White House press corps.

  With his opening words he proclaimed “Total victory!”

  But facts inconveniently proved contradictory:

  The House had been flipped by the conquering Dems,

  Including an army of crusading femmes,

  And talk of impeachment was filling the air

  With Schiff, Cummings, and Nadler each claiming a chair.

  All at once Jim Acosta, Dumpty’s CNN nemesis,

  Provoked an explosion that rattled the premises.

  His questioning triggered a Dumptyan roar

  Like a bull at the hands of a deft picador.

  In minutes, Acosta’s press pass was suspended.

  Reportorial norms were thus gravely upended.

  “Total victory,” that daft self-delusional phrase,

  Had fueled the misrule of the next seven days.

  With the force of a rapidly moving monsoon,

  Dumpty rashly reacted that midafternoon.

  His target? The focus of all his obsessions,

  His hapless AG, the beleaguered Jeff Sessions.

  Poor Jeff was evicted in shame and disgrace,

  Supplanted by someone that no one could place:

  Matthew Whitaker, master of self-reinvention,

  Whose right-wing harangues had caught Dumpty’s attention.

  This Washington horse of a different color

  Saw red on the subject of Robert S. Mueller.

  So what was his primary qualification?

  His promise to quash Mueller’s investigation.

  Hence Dumpty had managed in one single day

  To doubly debase the American Way:

  Two crimes in plain sight to appall and disgust us,

  Breach of Free Press and Obstruction of Justice.

  Day two, with these Dumpty debacles behind him,

  The walls of the White House no longer confined him.

  His people thought, lest his morale should unravel,

  They’d send him abroad for a few days of travel.

  The principal leaders of each western nation

  Were shortly to meet for a French convocation.

  A century had passed since the Great War concluded

  And POTUS’s staff wanted Dumpty included.

  A weekend in France, they thought, might do him good.

  Paris for certain, but first Belleau Wood:

  A centenary tribute with speeches and song,

  A salute to dead veterans! What could go wrong!

  A prediction of rainfall gave Dumpty a scare.

  He feared its unsightly effect on his hair.

  So while hundreds bore witness where multitudes fell,

  Dumpty stayed dry in his Paris hotel.

  This faux pas was met with a storm of contempt

  From which most of his staff had thought Dumpty exempt.

  They sought his redemption the following day

  At a stately event on the Champs-Elysées.

  He would march with his peers to a solemn memorial,

  Dignified, humble, and ambassadorial.

  If he kept a cool head and avoided a slip,

  The prospects were rosy for righting the ship.

  Unhappily, all of their hopes were in vain:

  Paris was drenched with continuous rain.

  Dumpty yielded once more to tonsorial anxiety,

  Thus taking a pass on compassionate piety.

  The procession went forward despite the deluge,

  But the impact of POTUS’s absence was huge.

  While the others all marched, Dumpty rode in a car,

  Igniting a storm of disastrous PR.

  The climax of Dumpty’s Parisian burlesque

  Might well have been comic if it weren’t so grotesque.

  He had bickered with Merkel and blasted Macron,

  Now they sat side by side, all civility gone.

  When a shifty-eyed latecomer strode to the stand,

  Teuton and Gaul coldly shook the man’s hand.

  But Dumpty lit up like a bright chandelier!

  His friend had arrived! The beloved Vladimir !

  Dumpty’s foreign adventure was over that night,

  A trip where not one single thing had gone right.

  He slumped into the White House and staggered upstairs

  Having learned that his strength was not Foreign Affairs.

  Moonlight still shone on the broad White House lawn

  As Dumpty awoke a few hours before dawn.

  With his thoughts and emotions in wild disarray,

  He strove to keep memories of Paris at
bay.

  But sadly, before he could pull on his pants,

  New crises eclipsed the fiascos in France.

  Unpacified by the comforts of home,

  A long list of torments now cluttered his dome.

  For starters Matt Whitaker, Dumpty’s new hire,

  Had come under virulent critical fire.

  Unconfirmed by the Senate and prone to corruption,

  His appointment was stirring frenetic disruption.

  Meanwhile in Arabia, tempted by Mammon,

  Dumpty had vouched for Mohammed bin Salman.

  With an excess of greed and a dearth of remorse,

  In the case of Khashoggi he’d backed the wrong horse.

  And as fire in the West dealt out mass devastation,

  Its victims heard Dumpty’s inane explanation:

  “Bad forest management! Stupid mistakes!

  They say that all Finns are provided with rakes!”

  In the midst of the day’s cataclysmic commotion

  Came news of the object of Dumpty’s devotion:

  Like another unmentionable government female,

  Ivanka did classified work on her e-mail!

  Sensing family strife and political harm,

  Reporters had hastened to sound the alarm.

  But Dumpty, immune to the pangs of hypocrisy,

  Was deaf to this instance of rank idiocracy.

  Still sozzled with jet lag that late afternoon,

  Dumpty remained in his bedroom cocoon.

  But a sudden and violent realization

  Filled him with panic and disconsolation:

  Transmogrifying from orange to gray,

  He remembered too late it was Veterans Day!

  He’d been so tormented, distracted, and nervous,

  He’d blown yet another memorial service!

  Spent with fatigue, perturbation, and dread,

  Dumpty turned off the lights and crawled back into bed.

  Thus ended six days of an unlucky streak

  In his terrible, horrible, very bad week.

  Next day, Dumpty struggled to lighten his mood

  By turning to Twitter, Fox News, and junk food.

  But befuddled, embittered, and racked with frustration,

  He weighed other options for self-stimulation.

  He wanted a rally! He wanted a crowd!

  He wanted ovations, earsplittingly loud!

  But with midterm campaigns having finished at last,

  His rallies for now were a thing of the past.

  He wanted a summit! A one-on-one chat

  With a Russian, Korean, or Turk autocrat!

  But summits are organized months in advance,

  Not hastily launched by the seat of his pants.

  “A Mack truck,” Dumpty whimpered, a little forlorn.

  “I could sit in the cab. Maybe play with the horn.”

  But trucks, he conceded, were not that much fun,

  And the shtick with the horn had already been done.