Jared Kushner Sells Girl Scout Cookies

Image: David & Margie Hill via Flickr

JARED, who has a black eye, is looking for an Overton window to jump out of, as his DAUGHTER is happily doling out the Girl Scout cookies she sold earlier this term. The STAFF is lining up to receive their orders. It’s the most crowded the White House has been since that one time BARACK OBAMA invited SANTANA over to celebrate MICHELLE’s birthday, and JOE BIDEN ended up singing the Rob Thomas parts of “Smooth.” EVERYONE, even staff who’ve been fired, even staff who’ve resigned in disgrace, even staff who don’t usually come in on Wednesdays, is here to pick up cookies. NO ONE is much talking about the State of the Union, so little do they care about the state of the Union and so focused are they on gobbling up Thin Mints.

HOPE HICKS [to NO ONE]: She sent me a paragraph-long text earlier. I couldn’t get into it right then. I mean, a fucking paragraph? What is this, The Supreme Court? I was like, I will get you the promotion code as soon as I get back to my desk. Like how hard is that for you to fucking get? I’m not glued to my desk all fucking—

KUSHNER DAUGHTER [from behind the card table GENERAL MATTIS set up for her]: If you have your payment cards out and ready, the line will move much faster.

[HOPE HICKS, SARAH HUCKABEE SANDERS and OMAROSA get in line behind GARY COHN. They’re negatively bonding with each other by wondering whether TRUMP tan tans or spray tans. KELLYANNE CONWAY interrupts them. She’s wearing Philadelphia Eagles earrings and bragging about how she is going to the Super Bowl this weekend. But she’s lying. Lie-bragging. She’s typing “lie-bragging—use?” into her Notes app.]

KELLYANNE CONWAY [shoving her phone in HOPE HICKS’s face]: Look—he’s drenching a hoagie in lighter fluid and then fire-bombing the Airbnb he’s staying at. Just like that extremely non-problematic movie the President doesn’t know exists.

[JARED can’t find an Overton window to jump through so he just idles next to the line. Eventually he sits down on the floor. There’s crosstalk as SARAH HUCKABEE SANDERS says she has never known a grown person to sit on the ground as often as JARED does. HOPE HICKS asks EVERYONE how old they think JARED is. NO ONE knows.]

GARY COHN [whispering]: Jared, double cut me.

[JARED scrunches his forehead because he doesn’t know what double cut means.]

KUSHNER DAUGHTER [sensibly]: You cut Gary on line and then he cuts you.

GARY COHN [neo-liberally]: That way, I keep my spot on line and you get to skip ahead of everyone behind me.

KUSHNER DAUGHTER [conveying to her colleagues that while she may not have attended the State of the Union, she did check Twitter this morning]: It’s the perfect metaphor for the New America.

KELLYANNE CONWAY [reverting back to a strong Philly accent because she’s slightly agitated]: Oh my fucking God. I forgot you all say “on line” instead of “in line.”

[There’s sexist crosstalk, even from the women, as GARY COHN marvels at KUSHNER DAUGHTER’s ability to multitask. GARY COHN takes a phone call.]

GARY COHN [into his phone]: Okay, so look. I agree, but the world isn’t going to actually burn. It’s going to keep heating up. Gradually.

KUSHNER DAUGHTER [to JARED]: Congratulations, Dad. You bought the most boxes.

JARED [pulling the order list up to his eyes and recognizes that STEVE BANNON wrote down his name and the number 50 down in the Trefoil category]: This isn’t my handwriting. [JARED realizes his DAUGHTER already knows it’s STEVE BANNON’s handwriting.] What’s my prize?

KUSHNER DAUGHTER [powerfully]: It had been walk-in privileges with Grandpa. But we can’t restore yours per the terms of Steve’s resignation so—[KUSHNER DAUGHTER hands JARED a coin. STAFF gasps because they presume it’s a Bitcoin.]

GARY COHN [still into his phone]: We don’t even notice it. Until one day—[GARY COHN makes a poof gesture with his hands.] Hold on, Joe. [He takes the coin from JARED and examines it theatrically.] This thing is as real as Chronic fatigue syndrome. [He unwraps the coin and bites it. It’s leftover Hanukkah gelt. GARY COHN returns to his phone call and closes the deal.] I voted for your da—your uncle? Your great uncle. I voted for your great uncle. In 1960? Wow. I guess I didn’t vote for your great uncle. Okay, well let’s not let that distract us. But this was a good talk, and I look forward—[JOE KENNEDY III hangs up on GARY COHN, who looks around to make sure no one noticed, and then receives his cookies.]

KELLYANNE CONWAY [truthfully, for once]: Those aren’t Girl Scout cookies. Those are Entenmann’s.

KUSHNER DAUGHTER [conscientiously]: They were sitting there in the grocery store and I felt bad for them.

JARED [to himself]: They’re donuts. They’re not even cookies.

[NO ONE’s even mad about it. When you’re a plutocrat, you can get away with anything including disguising Entenmann’s as Girl Scout cookies. Besides, the way she transformed the boxes, hot gluing the photoshopped Girl Scout logos onto the store bought cookie and donut boxes, seemed pretty ingenious to this bunch.]

HOPE HICKS [pointing to the girl in a wheelchair on her box of cookies]: Do you think this is an actual Girl Scout or, like, an actress?

GARY COHN [avuncular, to JARED]: So, do you want to tell me how you got your black eye?

JARED [quietly]: I ate asparagus.

GARY COHN [moving capital seamlessly across international borders via a few text messages] And then you got a whiff of your own piss, and it made you pass out and you fell into the porcelain. Say no more; I understand completely.

[JARED nods as a loud motor revs. It’s obviously STEVE BANNON, loaded and operating heavy machinery. IVANKA trails him in. They cut to the beginning of the line but don’t even bother with the double cut charade.]

STEVE BANNON [driving a riding lawn mower that was manufactured overseas]: Who doesn’t love a cookie?

SARAH HUCKABEE SANDERS [blandly]: Steve, what have you been up to?

IVANKA [showing up to work on a Wednesday for the first time in her entire life]: Besides brewing his own mead?

[KUSHNER DAUGHTER sighs to herself, takes a good, hard look at her six years’ worth of life choices, and decisively tears up her cookie list. She exits, stage left, to star in her own spinoff series on Freeform (formerly ABC Family), which will air, she hopes, sometime before the midterm elections. EVERYONE ELSE waits until she’s gone. Then they pillage the cookies like the pirates they are. Even JARED rips open a box and eats gluten for the first time since he campaigned in Michigan that one time last year.]