Hillary Clinton enters a bunker where many people are waiting.
CLINTON: Good to see you all for our secret weekly meeting. What are you watching?
MEDIA MEMBER: One of the many existing videos of Muslims in New Jersey celebrating 9/11 that we are keeping under wraps.
CLINTON: (smiles and shakes her head fondly) Ah, memories. How’s our war chest?
FEMALE STAFFER: It’s flush for dishonest attack ads on Donald Trump, thanks to money from the international bankers.
CLINTON: Send them some bagels and lox. And the global warming initiative?
FEMALE STAFFER: Our Chinese friends tell us the hoax is working perfectly. No one suspects that the planet is actually getting colder and that we need more factories to keep it warm.
Clinton coughs for several minutes then opens an unmarked bottle of pills and swallows several.
CLINTON: Sorry about my sickly health. Now I temporarily have more stamina because of these Mexican drugs.
MEDIA MEMBER: Secretary Clinton, we are having trouble coming up with new ways to rig the election because we are not intelligent. We have already ordered the journalists at all the failing biased news outlets to slander Mr. Trump with lies, but it’s not working — he is too charismatic and honorable, and everyone knows he is the best at making deals.
FEMALE STAFFER: For that is all that matters, in the presidency and in life: deals.
CLINTON: I was afraid of this, just as I am afraid of many things. Since he is superior to me in every way, we must concoct a story that Mr. Trump sexually assaulted a woman.
FEMALE STAFFER: But… but… that would imply that there exists a woman somewhere who did not desire Mr. Trump’s seductive advances.
CLINTON: I see your point; he is so sexually magnetic that such an outcome defies logic. Forgive me — my health problems cause me to think irrationally, on top of the fact that I’m a postmenopausal woman.
FEMALE STAFFER: Surely there are outtakes of Mr. Trump speaking on camera in a manner that might upset the East Coast liberal elite he invites to his weddings to be nice.
MEDIA MEMBER: We have found nothing from scouring the many guest appearances he has made on TV shows to boost their low ratings out of the kindness of his heart.
FEMALE STAFFER: How about this clip of him talking to Billy Bush in 2005?
MEDIA MEMBER: Which part?
FEMALE STAFFER: When he discusses the ways women always willingly allow him to partake in gentlemanly foreplay.
MEDIA MEMBER: Oh, I didn’t know what you were referring to, because there is nothing inappropriate about what he said. It is simply a truthful, colorfully narrated account of how alluring women find him.
FEMALE STAFFER: (dreamily) Yes. And nobody respects us more than he does.
CLINTON: I know and you know that it’s simply locker-room banter, which is a phrase I just learned because in school I studied like a loser all the time instead of playing sports. But the American people are gullible and overly sensitive in this politically correct climate that the president and I invented, along with ISIS. We will say that this is vulgar, and they will believe us and be offended on their cyber blogs.
MEDIA MEMBER: What about also bribing some beautiful Hollywood actresses and Czech supermodels to falsely corroborate the claims in the video?
FEMALE STAFFER: We tried, but they all said no because they have either already had the best consensual sex of their lives with Mr. Trump or they really want to and are afraid of ruining their chances, in the unlikely event he and Melania ever divorce just before her prenuptial bonus kicks in.
CLINTON: Of course — I would do the same. Despite the obvious implausibility, we will just have to get desperate, unattractive women. Bill knows plenty.
She faints. No one wants to help her. Eventually she recovers.
CLINTON: Gosh, I really am weak and unlovable — no wonder I’m doing so badly in the latest accurate Breitbart News Network anonymous polls.
She fans herself with Barack Obama’s birth certificate from Kenya and mops her brow with uncounted Emmy votes for The Apprentice.
Teddy Wayne’s most recent novel,
Loner, is now available in the UK.