Election pranksters

True to form for an administration that could make the most routine tasks somehow absurd, Donald Trump couldn’t even lose an election without making it weird. With close but clear results, he refused to concede, concocting a series of unhinged conspiracy theories about stolen votes and fraud – lies he still maintains.

But laughs soon arrived, in the form of the Trump “voter fraud hotline”, which loyal patriots were meant to call into with evidence of fraud. It soon devolved into a debacle, as an army of pranksters flooded the phone lines with ridiculous tales meant to highlight the absurdity of the proceedings.

One caller told the hotline she met the devil at her polling station in Georgia, who challenged her to a fiddle contest. Another relayed the plot of the 1980s sitcom Different Strokes. A third wiseass called to snitch on a suspicious character skulking around that bore a striking resemblance to the McDonald’s mascot the Hamburglar, who, based on his clothing, he could only assume was antifa. They put a fine point on what a lot of the country thought: this entire effort is a joke – and you, Mr President, are also a joke.

“It’s misery. It’s one of the worst ways to end a campaign you could think of,” one campaign staffer fielding the calls said, calling the prank calls traumatizing. The hotline was soon shut down. What a small joyous gift to watch it all happen in a year otherwise full of bad news.

– LO’N