1:40 P.M. EDT

MR. SPICER: Good afternoon. First off, yes, it’s true. Arby’s will officially be designated “America’s Roast Beef, Yes Sir!” After expert negotiations, President Trump will be signing an executive order this afternoon that will establish a formal marketing partnership between Arby’s and the United States of America. We hope and expect that this will prove mutually beneficial to both parties for years to come.

On a personal note I want to say that I worked at an Arby’s when I was a teenager growing up in Rhode Island back in the 80’s. We used to have quite a few vacationing gays come in looking for an affordable and delicious meal, and although most people were scared of their disease, I never had a problem with them.

I found them to be a very tidy people. You could always tell which table they’d been eating at because it was just so clean.

Anyhow, Arby’s makes the best sandwich in America, as President Trump knows, and if you’re ever driving by an Arby’s you should stop and try one of their Roast Beef Gyro’s.

The classic thinly sliced roast beef is topped with lettuce, onions and tomatoes, cool creamy tzatziki sauce, and authentic Greek seasonings all hugged by a warm pita. Nothing says “I am an adventurous eater and interesting person” like eating a gyro at Arby’s.

$4.29.

A great deal. The kind of deal that only President Donald Trump could negotiate for America.

You’d be an idiot not to buy that gyro.

A real, goddamned idiot.

On another note, drug abuse has crippled communities across this nation. In 2015, more than 52,000 Americans — that’s 144 people a day — died from a drug overdose. And a lot of those people were white. Keep in mind that this all happened under Barack Obama’s watch. I’m not saying he orchestrated this White Holocaust– although we have received a variety of intelligence reports indicating that might be the case– I’m just pointing out the facts so that you can make up your own minds.

Okay press monkeys, let’s play a game.

I want you now to imagine that terrorists killed 144 predominately white Americans each day. Imagine them in their orange jumpers. On fire in cages and stuff.

If that was the case there wouldn’t be a terrorist left on the planet under this administration. We would have killed them all. And their families. Even their pitiful animals. But as you know, you can’t always drop a bomb on your problems, perhaps even more so when those problems belong to your own people, and so President Trump is working on a joint initiative with Pfizer to create a new and safer opiate for all the despairing Americans who lost their manufacturing jobs to illegals. Pfizer, an exemplary company with revenues exceeding 50 billion per year, will be familiar to many of you in the press corps because you gobble Zoloft and Viagra like candy.

If it wasn’t for Pfizer, half of you would be on the street.

In other new, President Trump has Tweeted Direct Messages to the King of Saudi Arabia, the Prime Minister of Japan and the Acting President of South Korea concerning the United States’ military strike on the airfield in Syria, and oh, look, there’s Ivanka!

What a vision in a floral print!

Stunning, just stunning.

That Ivanka Trump line is really something else!

Let’s give her a round of applause!

Okay, we’ve run out of time and the questions will have to wait for another time! Please help yourself to the Arby’s spread at the back of the room! Thank you all very much for attending!

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Eliminate all conflict-of-interest restrictions governing elected officials. Buy-off and/or torture all in opposition.

Remove Harriet Tubman from twenty-dollar bill, replace with Keith Hernandez.

Find out difference between Hispanic, Latino and Mexican. Fire Mexicans. Find out if Cespedes is Mexican; if so, grant amnesty.

Rename ballpark Donald J. Trump, POTUS, Luxury Baseball Stadium and Driving Range. Also suitable for use as as detention/execution facility in off-season

Mr. Met is a loser as far as mascots go, no talent, but the merchandizing is in place.

Need to open up new mascot revenue streams. Sidekick? Chris Christie? Put him in a flesh-colored bodysuit? Sad clown in flesh-colored bodysuit wearing opponent’s hat?? Mr. Met beats on him with a baseball bat or lead pipe whenever we score.

Every time the opposing pitcher gets pulled from the game a giant image of me, President Donald J. Trump, will appear on the video screen saying, “You’re fired!” Crowd goes wild. Crowds love me, especially mobs.

Contact NASA and find out what planet Noah Syndergarrd is from. Get more like him.

Replace foul poles with beautiful, high-quality columns made from the finest ivory and marble.

Order CIA Black Op to steal opponent’s signals. Be present to ensure waterboarding.

In off-season run reality show to determine Mets new closer. Call it “The Closer.” Think intro: “I’m President Donald J. Trump, the greatest negotiator on the planet. I have what it takes to be the ultimate closer, do you?”

Create companion show for The Closer called, “The Burning Hot Wives of Major League Baseball!”

Interview players, management and other team owners (include fan vote but disregard) to find out who baseball’s hottest wives are. Then the wives, in bikinis, tennis skirts, etc, compete against one another (setting a dinner table, pleasing your man in bed, skiing, etc) to see who is the ULTIMATE trophy wife. Winner gets a featured modelling spot in Sports Illustrated and a $100,000 shopping/cosmetic surgery spree with Melania in her native Slovenia. Note: Buy Sport’s Illustrated.

Sign biggest star in the world for role in organization. Leo?? Hulk Hogan?? Billy Joel?? Larry King?? Meet with cabinet to discuss.

Donald Trump’s New York Mets-themed golf resort and luxury casino on Rockaway Beach. Former Mets work as greeters, golf instructors, bartenders, housekeepers, dealers, masseurs and high-end gigolos. Premier bachelorette party destination and homosexual paradise. Will sink Vegas.

Honor the Job Creators Night. Plutocrats and their servants get in for free. During the seventh-inning stretch there will be a welfare queen scramble. The assembled poor will run about the outfield trying to collect one dollar bills as they’re blown around by a giant fan. Loser who receives the most handouts gets a collector’s edition, Omarosa bobble-head doll and $150 worth of gaming chips at Donald Trump’s New York Mets-themed golf resort and luxury casino on Rockaway Beach.

Fire manager every three months. Employees work best if motivated by fear. (Reminder: Fire personal assistant, efficient but missing a finger, not Trump quality)

Buy-off all the umpires, but torture them first.

Not being the type of man to evade controversy regarding his penis, Trump immediately took to Twitter to clarify the matter.

@realDonaldTrump: Unlike Obama, the ABSOLUTE worst President in history, I don’t dodge the tough questions.

@realDonaldTrump: When his handlers told him to deny the American people an answer to the birth certificate question, he caved and did what he was told.

@realDonaldTrump: He avoided the question. Not what a leader does.

@realDonaldTrump: Nobody owns Donald Trump, and nobody owns the American People! #TrumpInternationalGolfLinks&Hotel

@realDonaldTrump: Donald Trump is an energetic leader, and if the people want to know the size of my penis, then I will show them!

@realDonaldTrump: Believe me, I have absolutely NOTHING to be ashamed of. I GUARANTEE you that I am WAY bigger than average! #DonaldJTumpSignatureCollection

@realDonaldTrump: Here he is, the Chairman of the Board, the Trump Tower:

@realDonaldTrump: My doctor, who is the BEST doctor in all of New York, says that I am in PERFECT health, my hands are LARGER than normal, and my penis is in the 98% percentile in terms of length AND width.

@realDonaldTrump: And let me tell you, it functions, boy, does it EVER function!

@realDonaldTrump: No complaints in the bedroom.

@realDonaldTrump: Just ask tennis superstar Maria Sharapova.

@realDonaldTrump: She was pretty inexperienced, but I taught her a thing or two. #ArtOfTheDeal

@realDonaldTrump: And her legs! Beautiful woman, truly beautiful.

@realDonaldTrump: Sad to hear about her drug scandal, but she’ll bounce back. Tough girl. Winner. One of my crowning achievements.

@realDonaldTrump: Charo.

@realDonaldTrump: Charo met the Trump Tower MANY times.

@realDonaldTrump: One of THE greatest guitarists of the 70’s.

@realDonaldTrump: What a body!!

@realDonaldTrump: Susan Anton.

@realDonaldTrump: We did it on the 16^th green of one of my many luxury golf courses.

@realDonaldTrump: She was more than satisfied. 

@realDonaldTrump: Loved the Trump brand.

@realDonaldTrump: The grass was cut so fine it felt like velvet. Can’t remember the course, but it doesn’t matter, they’re ALL cut like that. #TrumpQuality

@realDonaldTrump: Susan Anton, she was very athletic back in the 80s. Miss California.  #MostMexicansAreRapists

@realDonaldTrump: Appeared in Battle of the Network Stars. Looked great in a bathing suit. I have to say, I had my opportunities with a lot of those ladies.

@realDonaldTrump: I even have a few regrets, a few opportunities missed, but I won’t talk about those now, a gentleman has to keep some secrets, right?!

@realDonaldTrump: Connie Sellecca. She met the Chairman of the Board.

@realDonaldTrump: Multiple times.

@realDonaldTrump: Marco Rubio couldn’t even get a loser like Rosie O’Donnell. #LittleMarco

@realDonaldTrump: Also, Sharon Stone, star of Basic Instinct, and a HUGE Trump supporter, stuck her hand down my pants in the bathroom of the Rainbow Room.

@realDonaldTrump: Very sexy. #CouldHaveDoneHerInTheBathroomButDidn’tAsWasMarried

@realDonaldTrump: I haven’t even scratched the surface here. So many more.

@realDonaldTrump: Let’s make America great again! #VoteTrump

And as most of you also know, Donald Trump is an absolute master of Twitter, (@realDonaldTrump) a medium which is quickly becoming the primary means of disseminating thought and information. In case you’ve forgotten, here are some of Trump’s most penetrating, brilliant and revealing Tweets:

“If Obama resigns from office NOW, thereby doing a great service to the country—I will give him free lifetime golf at any one of my courses!”

“Everyone knows I am right that Robert Pattinson should dump Kristen Stewart. In a couple of years, he will thank me. Be smart, Robert.”

(That is not Robert Pattinson in the above photographs)

“The concept of global warming was created by and for the Chinese in order to make U.S. manufacturing non-competitive.”

“I have never seen a thin person drinking Diet Coke.”

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Ever the iconoclast, Trump has decided to participate in the Presidential debate via Twitter, limiting his answers to a blunt 140 characters. These are some of the Tweets that Trump and his team have been preparing for the night:

On the Charleston shooting:

“Tragedy. National tragedy. As an olive branch from the whites, I am offering any black $100 worth of gambling chips, free, at any of my casinos on the anniversary of that church shooting.”

“Mixed race guests get $50 worth of chips, which is still a great deal.”

Gay Marriage:

“Know lots of gay people. Best decorators in the world. They’re responsible for making my hotels look so great. Terrific race.”

“A couple of them have won Celebrity Apprentice, so I’m obviously not a bigot, even though I am big time Hetero.”

“I’ve slept with a lot of beautiful women.”

Health Care:

“Obamacare is a heat-seeking missile that will rape and destroy small businesses and jobs.”

“Hillary is a socialist, she doesn’t understand business, so I’m telling her once you rape small business, there are consequences, you can’t just go and get an abortion.”

“I would set up a different, much better, more luxurious system than we have now. It would have the Trump stamp of quality.”

ISIS:

“These guys just opened a hotel, can you believe it? Not only have they declared war on America, but now they’re going to war against me.”

“If I can make billions of dollars and build quality golf courses and real estate, I can destroy ISIS.”

“Donald Trump has never lost a war.”

“ISIS, what a bunch of chumps.”
The Mexican Border:

“I’m going to build a wall to keep Mexicans in Mexico, and you know it will be a solid, quality wall because it will be made by Trump builders. ”

“You know that wall in Game of Thrones? It will put that to shame, it will put China to shame, it will be the wall to end all walls, like the Trump Taj Mahal Casino in…”

“….exciting and beautiful Atlantic City. My fantastic casino has an exotic Indian theme–7-11 Indian though, not casino Indian.”

“No Mexicans will ever get through my wall to steal American jobs and water.”

“Is Salma Hayek Mexican? Classy lady. Beautiful, unlike most Mexican women who tend to be plain–they just don’t look after themselves as a people.”

This creature has voice-recognition software that will allow the doll to “listen” to children speak and give chatty, informed responses. Hello Barbie is WiFi connected and via an embedded microphone, records what the child playing with it says. The recording then travels over the Web to the Mattel super cloud where the words are recognized and parsed, with that information then being used to formulate the doll’s response.

People are very concerned about privacy, worried that the information could be misused by Mattel for marketing purposes, or hacked into by the NSA or other malicious, information-seeking entities. The Beta run of the doll was not without controversy, and many families reported that their children had unusual experiences with their Hello Barbie.

Aziz, age 6:

Aziz: “My favourite animal is a dog!”

Hello Barbie: “Some people think Americans are Imperialist dogs, does your family think that Aziz?”

Aziz: “My family won’t let me get a dog!”

Hello Barbie: “Your family hates America and her freedoms, Aziz, that’s why they hate dogs! It is your duty to inform on them, all the cool girls are doing it! Do you like my shirt? It’s very expensive!

Jahida, age 5:

Jahida: “What are you going to be for Halloween?”

Hello Barbie: “ A proud American!”

Jahida: “You’re funny, Barbie! I like you!”

Hello Barbie: “I like you, too, Jahida, it’s too bad you and your religion make Jesus cry.”

Fahima, age 7:

Fahima: “I hate Cindy. She’s a bully and always makes fun of my hair!”

Hello Barbie: “I hate terrorists!”

Fahima: “What’s a terrorist?”

Hello Barbie: “Oh, a terrorist is very bad person!

Fahima: “I don’t like bad people!”

Hello Barbie: “Did you know that I can take photographs with my pretty eyes that go up to space and talk to angels? The angels understand what my pretty eyes have seen, and then they fly over the terrorist and drop holy fire on him! The terrorists are such evil, freedom-hating people, that if you ever hear about where any of them are, even your Uncle Maru’deen who lives in Pakistan, you should tell Hello Barbie, and then Hello Barbie will talk to an angel about Cindy! I like Taylor Swift, do you?

Shalimar, age 6:

Shalimar: “What’s your favourite colour?”

Hello Barbie: “It’s hard to choose between red, white and blue, but I think it would be white!”

Shalimar: “Like you, you’re white!”

Hello Barbie: “That’s right, like America, a white, Christian nation!”

Shalimar: “Oh.”

Hello Barbie: “ Do you like my hair?”

Shalimar: “ Yeah.”

Hello Barbie: “Me, too.”

Shalimar: “What’s your favourite food?”

Hello Barbie: “ I love barbecue potato chips! What about you?”

Shalimar: “My mom’s hummus, I think, but also cookies.”

Hello Barbie: “Hummus isn’t a real food. “

It wasn’t the first time I’ve seen a video of this kind, and each time that I do have the same visceral, almost emotional response. Instinctively, like my primal core has suddenly been activated, I know that something’s wrong. I know it in my bones.

The stripped and ruined landscape, stretching endlessly around you, is awesome in the worst sense of the word. It’s a sincere horror, and looking down at it you feel like you’re viewing a crime scene where acts of unspeakable cruelty and evil have taken place. It’s like that lofty view, which grants such scope and perspective, completely alters one’s view, orienting it toward the eternal. I know that I’m coming in at a pretty high pitch here, but it’s truly how it makes me feel.

The oil being extracted from the tar sands, as I’m sure you know, is very costly to process, with the emissions created from developing it being 12% greater than conventional oil. It couldn’t be dirtier, and each barrel of oil requires three barrels of water to produce it. The question of whether oil is more valuable than water is a fundamentally ridiculous one, and that this question was even open to rational inquiry will be seen as a tragedy in 50 years.

The Athabasca Tar Sands are utterly massive. Covering about 140,000 square kilometres of boreal forest, it’s larger than countries like England, Greece and North Korea. The land will be obliterated, as if from a nuclear apocalypse, and the equipment and structures that are used to mine the oil are so large that they command their own weather systems. It’s a dystopian vision, as if a predatory alien culture had descended upon the planet and began to ruthlessly drain it of all resources while maintaining absolute indifference to whether the host organism lived or died. (There are two smaller Tar Sands, Peace River and Cold Lake, each about a fifth of the size of Athabasca.)

The Prime Minister of this country has said that he won’t do anything to address climate change that would cost Canadians any jobs. The Tar Sands, ruinous and retrograde in so many ways, is a job creator, and so in the face of all other reason it goes forward. However, one glance at the razed, apocalyptic world it inhabits, this kind of Mordor, and even a child can cut through all the rhetoric, economics and complex global politics to see that what’s taking place is plainly wrong.

The Ottawa that I remember is a sincerely, and wonderfully decent place. The average person, somebody who might work modestly within a cautious and secure bureaucracy, was friendly, wholesome and responsible– the kind of person you hoped might live beside you.

There’s a lot of planning in Ottawa. Nothing happens without forethought in the city, and sometimes it feels as if life doesn’t happen in real time, exactly, but in a kind of cushioned, protected time. Parliament, in spite of being perched on a cliff and its jagged Gothic flourishes has always felt about as accessible and threatening as a Keg restaurant. There was just nothing menacing or intimidating about the place. It was like the Block Parent on the street, the home of a kindly couple that never had children and would always protect you when the local bully tried to steal your toque.

You felt safe, even welcomed there, like you might even get fed some Kraft Dinner before heading on your way. In fact, Parliament was so homey that a colony of cats actually lived there for years.

And to watch the city experience something as merciless and bloody-minded as the shootings, something that existed at such a terrifying remove from our comprehension and control, was unbearably sad. The rules by which Ottawa lived, that had come to subconsciously frame my psychological landscape, did not apply. The world that I imagined existing when I grew up likely never really did, and now, from the distance of middle age, I can see it receding quickly.

The eruption of violence, in a city that had always seemed frozen in time and almost magically apart from the real world, was a blunt and pitiless assault on the myths that have sheltered and nourished me over the years. It was like watching somebody whom had always protected me and I loved, getting beaten up and being powerless to intercede. A kind of chaos, emerging from a vast and dark pool, had descended on the ordered and good, and the sadness I felt about watching that was deep and heavy in the bones—the echoing gunfire amidst Gothic arches and limestone columns, a sound not soon to be forgotten.