The outlook was grim: Last week, all indications seemed to point to 2017’s White House Easter Egg Roll becoming the latest in a long line of seemingly straightforward actions the Trump administration is constitutionally incapable of executing in any professional manner. With one-fifth the usual number of volunteers and fewer than half the amount of commemorative eggs produced for the event, the White House was reduced to making last-second entreaties to Sesame Street to provide entertainment, just days after Trump proposed cutting all funding to the educational mainstay. Meaning, today’s Easter egg roll would be brought to you by the letters “T-h-e n-e-r-v-e o-f t-h-o-s-e- a-s-s-h-o-l-e-s.”
Still, the day has arrived, and thanks to the magic of YouTube, you can watch the poorly planned celebration unfold in real time—or at least stare at some live camera feeds that continually cut back to the words “We’ll be Right Back.”
The White House has a site streaming four separate video feeds, including the view from the Truman balcony; a close-up of the Reading Nook (where we just watched Melania read a children’s book with more assured diction than her husband is capable of mustering when it comes to remembering what country he just bombed); the “Bunny Hop” stage (currently hosting some live music seemingly engineered to repel young people); and a final one menacingly titled, “President Trump,” which is supposed to feature any of Trump’s participation in the event, and which has unsurprisingly been on radio silence since we turned on the feed a while ago. Presumably, it’s only a matter of time before we’re treated to a fleeting clip of the president holding up an egg he decorated, pronouncing himself the winner of the egg roll, and scorning the assembled children for not being able to push an egg with the same vigor as a man like himself.