I’m considering things great and small when my phone rings. I do not recognize the number, but the ring itself feels like a political survey, so I answer.
“Stand by for the Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi,” the voice says. It sounds eerily like the Emperor in Star Wars. So, I wait. I wait. I wait.
“Big Red Car, how are you, dear?” the Speaker asks.
“Fine, Madame Speaker, et vous?”
“Swimming, love that Continental touch. So, Big Red, I have a few things I wanted to get off my chest and I thought — who better than my bestie the Big Red Car? Do you have a few minutes?”
“Certainly, Madame Speaker. May I record this?”
“Yes, but when you write your little blog postie thing, run it by my people. Deal?”
I say, “Certainly,” but I have my spark plug wires crossed so, NO, that isn’t going to happen.
“So, Big Red, I’m catching Hell on this seventeen day delay in approving the Senate bill on the PPP thing.”
“Yes, ma’am, you are. Looks very callous, plus the whole ice cream talk show thing — really, what the fuck were you thinking?”
“Listen you box of rusty bolts, I can call Chris Wallace or Brian Matthews — keep a civil tongue in that V8 of yours. It’s not fair.”
“Let me review the bidding, Madame Speaker. Did you hold up Mitch McConnell’s simple little bill to put another $300,000,000,000 in the Payroll Protection Program or not? For goodness sake, they ran out of money and the demand is overwhelming. Waht was the big deal?”
“Well, of course I did. I had to stuff my crazy shit in it. That’s what I do. I stuffed that first bill full of anything I could think of — Hell, I got $25,000,000 for the Kennedy Center and my daughter is on the Board of Trustees. God that was sweet. That’s not the issue.”
“What is the issue, Madame Speaker?”
“The blood issue, Red, is that people are paying attention and giving me Hell!”
“Did I miss something? You did delay the bill for seventeen days? You did it when the country, small business, and employees were bleeding, swinging in the wind? Isn’t it a fair beef?”
“Look, Big Red, all of that is true, but the media is supposed to cover for me and I told those bozos it was Mitch’s fault.”
“Did they believe it, Madame Speaker?”
“Well, no, or course not, but I wanted them to pass it along. They know the score — meaning the media — but I want to pull the wool over the eyes of the American public. For the children?”
“Madame Speaker, may I speak candidly?”
“No, of course not. What you can do is kiss my ass like the rest of the media. God, Chris Wallace has soft lips, but that Brian Williams, he’s a licker. OK, if you must — be candid.”
“Madame Speaker, the House hasn’t passed any legislation this session, you’ve spent the entire session investigating the President, the President whips you like a rented mule every time — Adam Schiff, Jerry Nadler, impeachment? You’re getting your ass handed to you on a regular basis.”
“You forgot that fucking moron, AOC — oh, please God, I hope she loses her primary or gets smoked in the election. That is not for print, Big Red. Promise?”
“Of course, Madame Speaker. So what is the theme here?”
“It’s very simple. President Trump gets nothing — no credit for leadership, no credit for the economy, nothing. Anything we can do to hurt his re-election chances, we do. Period.”
“But, Madame Speaker, what if it wrecks the economy, what about the American people?”
“Fuck them. This is way more important than the American people. This is my temper tantrum and they’re just living in it. God, I love the way that sounds.”
“Madame Speaker, what possessed you to go on a talk show and show off your $6,000,000 house, your fabulous kitchen, and the ice cream? You have more ice cream than a Whole Foods. What were you thinking?”
“I’m the Speaker of the House. I have people — little people — to do my thinking. And, by the way, you moron, my house is worth $12,000,000 — that $6,000,000 is just the assessed tax value. I don’t pay taxes on the real value.”
“But the ice cream?”
“I love ice cream. I was getting a little cabin fever, so I wanted to show my human side. So, ice cream.”
“You don’t have a human side, Madame Speaker. You’re a bloodless ghoul. You were in your multi-million dollar estate, in your luxurious kitchen, showing off an 18-wheeler of ice cream while America was dying. How could you?”
“On second thought, Big Red Car, you aren’t the right media outlet for my feelings. Why don’t you and the rest of America fuck off.”
I did record the conversation.
#LetThemEatIceCream
#RememberInNovember
