15 March 2107

New-New Amsterdam

Federated States of the Americas

Data archaeologists have had a breakthrough in researching the fall of the First American Republic, confirming that the alleged attempt to assassinate President Donald J. Trump, which precipitated the declaration of martial law—and the subsequent “inviting in” of Russian troops to “help keep order” in the streets—was in fact, as has long been rumored, “scripted.”

This throws Trump’s famous—though almost certainly apocryphal—quote, that he “could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue” and not lose any support, into stark, and ironic, relief.

The event that launched the seventeen-year dictatorship that shattered the country, of course, was what appeared to be the shooting of Trump himself—which, as we all know: Took place on Manhattan’s Fifth Avenue!

Attempts to reach former Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell for comment were unsuccessful.  Now just shy of 165 years old, it is believed that McConnell’s consciousness has been transferred to an animatronic turtle which appears on an occasional basis at Euro Disney outside Paris.

Speaking via satellite, from an undisclosed location, Infowars founder Alex Jones, the first head of the Ministry of Truth under the Trump Republic, cited other phony casus belli in support of the legitimacy of the faked assassination attempt.

“From the sinking of The Maine to the Tonkin Gulf Resolution to the non-existent ‘Weapons of Mass Destruction’ in Iraq,” Jones said, “there was a long and honorable American tradition of deploying whatever propaganda would be most effective in moving the country where it needed to go.  Between the findings of the Mueller investigation and the newly Democratic Congress, there was no doubt that the Trump Presidency was in danger of being ended by the machinations of The Deep State.  That simply could not be permitted to happen!”

Skeptics have long argued that—given the deaths of First Lady Melania Trump and son-in-law Jared Kushner, and the crippling of Donald Trump, Jr—there was no possibility that the assassination attempt could have been staged.

“That level of family carnage?” said Harvard historian D. James Picklesworthy.  “You would have to be Caligula to make those kinds of sacrifices.  Although,” he conceded, seeming to reconsider, “it is entirely possible that Trump actually would have found that comparison flattering.”

“Look: It set the table for the president to marry Ivanka; start there,” Jones said in response.  Which, he added, facilitated a smooth transfer of power when Trump suffered a massive coronary, some seven years into his reign as Really Huge Leader of Everything.

Of course, neither the—genuine—assassination that ended Ivanka’s regency nor the years of Russian rule that followed were part of the plan, Jones emphasized.

“You can’t anticipate everything,” he said philosophically.  “I also think it’s important to note, however, that it was Russia that saved us from being subsumed into the Chindian Empire.  So . . . everything happens for a reason!”

Current Princeps of the Americas Chelsea Clinton declined to be interviewed for this story.