Jared Kushner Doesn't Get Inoculated

Image: Fort George G. Meade Public Affairs Office via Flickr

JARED and IVANKA are lounging around in pajamas. Their DAUGHTER is the shadow President per a coup last week in which she cast the deciding vote for herself. Her first order of business, after she ushered her grandfather into an assisted living facility, is to change the dress code. Onesies if you have them. Most pajamas are flame retardant, she explains sensibly as she distributes the new policy, acknowledging that she understands STEVE BANNON set booby traps, many of them involving fire, before he departed the White House. GARY COHN is rubbing Cheez-it crumbs on his gums like they’re cocaine. GENERAL KELLY is definitely not resigning. He’s playing the piano with GENERAL MATTIS and they’re singing “Sister Christian” to KUSHNER DAUGHTER like they’re Archie and Edith. KELLYANNE CONWAY walks in with DR. BEN CARSON, who is rolling a cart of syringes and carrying many bags. 

IVANKA [wearing an IVANKA-branded onesie and expensive jewelry]: Secretary Carson.

THE GENERALS [in unison, and excitedly rising from the piano, wearing onesies depicting all of Ken Burns’s documentaries]: Is the Twenty-fifth Amendment vote happening?

KUSHNER DAUGHTER [wearing a Wonder Woman onesie]: I determined it was actually less dangerous to America’s housing and urban development if Ben administered flu shots and not run HUD.

[There are audible gasps and crosstalk.]

KUSHNER DAUGHTER [declaratively but happily]: This administration now ascribes to the Germ theory of disease. And we certainly ascribe to herd immunity. [KUSHNER DAUGHTER passes out copies of The Hot Zone to all STAFF.]

[KELLYANNE CONWAY, wearing a Pat’s King of Steaks onesie, begins weeping, as JARED scuffs over to DR. BEN CARSON, his sneakers, still squeaking. JARED is wearing a ThunderCats onesie.]

JARED [tracing his fingers along his forehead and to his temples]: So I have these headaches.

[DR. BEN CARSON is so immersed in his flu shot cart, finally doing a job that aligns with his skill set, that he doesn’t hear JARED. He is wearing scrubs, not a onesie.]

GARY COHN [wearing an Odell Beckham Jr. onesie]: It’s just sympathy CTE. I get them too.

[KUSHNER DAUGHTER texts “chronic traumatic encephalopathy = Dad??” to herself. She also texts “What happens if we leave NAFTA?” to HILLARY CLINTON.]

GARY COHN [wisely]: You were watching the game last night. That’s probably why.

JARED [grimacing]: The Nationals?

GARY COHN [pithily but wrong]: What? Fuck no. Baseball is for people who read The New Yorker and worship their fathers.

IVANKA [powerfully]: He does neither of those.

BEN CARSON [pointing the syringe like it’s the world’s tiniest assault rifle]: Who’s first?

KUSHNER DAUGHTER [leading from behind]: The generals and I have come up with a ranking of who is most likely to catch the flu this year. We’ll just do it in order, if that’s okay with everyone? I’m in charge, but it’s also important that my authority is derived from consensus and not from the threat of state violence. [KUSHNER DAUGHTER hands DR. BEN CARSON the ranking.]

BEN CARSON [reading from the list]: Jared, you’re up first. I’ll just need a form of government ID. [He looks to KUSHNER DAUGHTER who nods approvingly.]

KELLYANNE CONWAY [interrupting]: To be clear, the only people the federal government should be in the business of identifying are Democratic-leaning voters in Milwaukee, Detroit, and Philadelphia. So we can purge them from the voter rolls.

[JARED looks helplessly to IVANKA, because she already shredded all of his paperwork.]

BEN CARSON [bureaucratically]: A driver’s license would work.

KUSHNER DAUGHTER [unabashedly]: He doesn’t drive.

BEN CARSON [bureaucratically]: What about a passport?

GARY COHN [winking]: Globalists don’t really need those.

BEN CARSON [looking to KUSHNER DAUGHTER]: Does he have an insurance card at least?

[KUSHNER DAUGHTER’s phone pings. She reads that her grandfather has gutted one more Obamacare protection, this one adversely affecting employees of small businesses.]

KUSHNER DAUGHTER [crossly]: No one wants that. Can someone explain to me how the President is still signing executive orders? I thought he was in an assisted living facility?

GARY COHN [nostalgically]: Livia Soprano inflicted so much havoc from a hospital bed.

KUSHNER DAUGHTER [sensibly]: Gary, look at me. I’m six. That show ended two years before I was born.

IVANKA [warmly]: If anyone spoils the ending of “The Sopranos” for my daughter, so help me.

KUSHNER DAUGHTER [pressing her temples]: Dad, can you get me a coffee? Now I have a headache.

JARED [weakly]: I didn’t get my shot yet.

KUSHNER DAUGHTER [to DR. BEN CARSON]: Can I just sign an affidavit that he is who he says he is? And you can give him the shot when he gets back.

[DR. BEN CARSON smiles at KUSHNER DAUGHTER’s reasonableness. He sticks the syringe behind his ear like it’s a pen.]

GARY COHN [decisively]: Fuck it. Do me then. I need three though. One for each arm. And then do one right in my face. [GARY COHN points at his nose, closes one nostril and snorts.]

[KUSHNER DAUGHTER holds up her right index finger at DR. BEN CARSON and mouths, “Only one.”]

GARY COHN [nostalgically, again]: The last time I was sick from work I was at U.S. Steel. Ten months at U.S. Steel. One sick day to interview on Wall Street. And then straight to the top. [GARY COHN shoots his hand up to the ceiling.]

IVANKA [sarcastically]: Your pivot from manufacturing to finance helped us win Ohio.

BEN CARSON [agreeably]: Can I do Gary next?

[KUSHNER DAUGHTER scans her ranking and sees that GARY COHN is in fact next. She nods. DR. BEN CARSON reaches into a leather satchel for two more syringes.]

GENERAL KELLY [bounding across the room]: No! That bag is the nuclear football

GARY COHN [confused]: The nuclear football is a murse?

GENERAL KELLY [exasperatedly]: It used to be inside a real football but whenever your grandfather saw it, he’d yell at it, and then he’d keep yelling. Support the anthem, support the police.

GENERAL MATTIS [clutching the nuclear football]: Sometimes for hours.

GENERAL KELLY [mimicking TRUMP]: Why is the football on the ground? Is the football kneeling?

KELLYANNE CONWAY [bemusedly]: Last week we thought he was going to give himself a stroke. He couldn’t think of the word for “football” or for “anthem” or for “kneeling” so he was just screaming sounds. My mother always said, you learn something new every day, and that day we learned that using words helps deliver oxygen to the President’s brain.

KUSHNER DAUGHTER [sternly]: Help me understand here, Kellyanne. If it being a football was going to cause a stroke, why—[to IVANKA] can I swear, Mom?

[IVANKA nods.]

KUSHNER DAUGHTER [powerfully]: Why the fuck didn’t you keep it a football?

[IVANKA smiles at her daughter as the GENERALS deliberately and carefully move the nuclear football away from DR. BEN CARSON. KUSHNER DAUGHTER taps out an office wide email that going forward and as long as she is the shadow President, the nuclear football will be referred to as the nuclear purse.]