See, this is how you get fake news. Earlier today, the White House put out its usual “1600 Daily” newsletter, updating Trump-watchers everywhere about what he’ll be up to today, and sharing various articles praising the administration and its programs. Unfortunately, whoever assembled today’s newsletter was apparently only in a skimming mood, because the first entry on today’s news report was a vicious takedown of Trump’s proposed budget by Washington Post writer Alexandra Petri, facetiously titled “Trump’s budget makes perfect sense and will fix America, and I will tell you why.”
And while we can see the appeal of that headline—sitting all pretty next to “The Washington Post”—for someone whose job is to come up with nice news stories about the administration, every single day, a quick click would have revealed that Petri was less interested in praising Trump and company, and more into mocking the inherent heartlessness of their “hard power budget.” Here’s the sort of prose that greeted the president’s supporters when they clicked through:
BUT HOW WILL I SURVIVE ON THIS BUDGET? you may be wondering. I AM A HUMAN CHILD, NOT A COSTLY FIGHTER JET. You may not survive, but that is because you are SOFT and WEAK, something this budget is designed to eliminate.
Or this piece:
We must go back to the America that was great, when the air was full of coal and danger and the way you could tell if the air was breathable was by carrying a canary around with you at all times, perched on your leathery, coal-dust-covered finger.
Or an excerpt from Petri’s list of the programs being cut:
- “Chemical Safety Board: Give us CHEMICAL DANGER, which sounds way more metal.
- Corporation for Public Broadcasting: Instead, anyone who turns on the radio will be able to hear audio footage of a Trump son shooting a rare land mammal.
- National Endowment for the Arts: The NEA will be destroyed and replaced with an armored helicopter with a shark painted on it.”
The White House has since deleted its recommendation of the article from its web site. For her part, Petri responded to the whole thing on Twitter: