by Ramin Mazaheri for the Saker Blog

So there I was again on the “Job Creator’s Red-Eye” (NYC to Silicon Valley) and I made this fateful, election-shaping decision.

The reality is that as a big-time CEO we all knew this was coming – it was announced at the last Bilderburg meeting and re-confirmed at Davos. Trump was there, and he objected, and even though I hate Trump with the same postmodern fury of a nose-ringed, 95-pound Brooklyn barista (8 pounds in tattoo ink and 2 pounds in glasses) I cannot allow such obvious political manipulation to go unchecked.

The New York Times refuses to admit who gave them more than two decades of Trump’s tax returns, and just two days before the first Trump-Biden debate no less.

I wonder how many days Joe will be sequestered from the media after he drinks his now-usual pre-dabate Long Island Ice Tea cocktail of beta-blockers, amphetamines, vitamin B12, anabolic steroids and Chinese rhinoceros horn? I was told the same amount doesn’t give Joe the same kick like before – that’s a problem. If Joe wins I guess we’ll have to grind up all the Chinese rhinos in the world just so Joe can hold a press conference with the King of Sweden, Carl XVI Gustaf? More concerning than the rhinos is that if we add in too many psychedelics Joe will try and pull off something folksy like, “So you are the first King Carl but you are the 16th Gustaf? Howzatwork? And is it ’16 Gustafs’ or ‘16th Gustaves’?”

Back to the tax returns: the bottom line is that Americans will be shocked and appalled to discover that rich people successfully and legally avoid paying their taxes.

So in order to protect my fellow CEOs I must keep this rough worldly knowledge from the virgin ears of the average American, and thus I must reveal the source of the Times leak:

The source of Trump’s IRS tax information is none other than my neighbour who lives two doors down, Lemuel Sherbockowicz.

It’s true.

Firstly, I want to point out just how much Lemuel has been through under four years of Trump: Lemmy, you see, is a minority. Therefore, his integrity cannot be questioned.

Firstly, he’s left-handed. Do you realize how few stores carry left-handed scissors? The strips he uses in his papier-mâché artworks are terribly crooked.

Lemmy is red-headed. I wish Lemuel had been an albino, in order to strengthen his case here, but Biden has promised to add red-headedness to Title IX of the 1964 Civil Rights Code in exchange for a major score of rhino horn. (They really have Joe chasing the dragon, it seems.)

Lemmy, despite his last name, is Black. He was adopted. By immigrants. One of whom had gender-reassignment surgery, before reversing it. The other was diagnosed with serious social anxiety disorder unfairly inflicted by a repressive patriarchal society after being unable to urinate in full public view on a bet. Both parents overcame teenage acne.

So… Lemmy is bulletproof – his intentions and actions are beyond any possible reproach. The only thing you should be asking regarding Lemuel Sherbockowicz is: why haven’t you apologised to him yet?

But how did he get Trump’s tax returns?

This is how it happened: just as Democrats called up elderly Green Party supporters in Montana 25 times in order to harass them into recanting their signatures on a petition aiming to get the Greens on the presidential, congressional and local ballots (allowing third parties to actually exist obviously undermines the US claim of having free and open elections – those votes are owed to Democrats (if the voter is a real leftist) or Republicans (if the voter is a Libertarian)), Lemmy said somebody from the Times kept calling and calling and calling him to say that he had to personally hand what they claimed were Trump’s tax returns to a Times reporter.

Lemmy kept asking why the Times needed anyone to personally hand over documents which were not theirs to a Times reporter? The caller – who only identified herself as “No Throat” (because throats are merely a social construct, the caller insisted) – said that the rules of good journalism prohibit journalists from making false claims themselves… but good journalism says that relaying false claims by others is totally fine.

Lemmy said this didn’t sound like “the rules of good journalism” to him.

No Throat said the Times does this all the time in the Trump era, and then she shamed him into doing it by calling him a “traitor to his handedness” and an “Uncle Righty”.

No Throat thanked Lemmy after he gave up because he was tired of answering the phone (it’s his own fault – for still having a land line) because now the Times was able to publish just some of Trump’s tax records.

No Throat rejoiced that the people who already hate Trump will cast their one vote against Trump even harder.

And those on the fence, No Throat was sure, would surely adore the Times for working with the Internal Revenue Service to manipulate American democracy – Americans in flyover country love the tax man, right? Another savvy move from the East Coast elite – they must live in Harlem, they are so hip.

And No Throat said that by breaking to the flyover inbreds the shocking, unheard news that Trump was not actually 100% morally upright, nor as great a businessman as he wildly claims to be, would surely prove to them that Biden and his Clintonista faction must be morally upright… somehow. Lemmy said that he didn’t see this connection, but he was happy he was making some people happy they would be voting harder.

But Lemmy – being as much a Sherbockowicz as any of the Sherbockowiczes – pushed the boundary: he asked if there was some nobody like him behind the Times many, many other anonymous-based stories? Lemmy actually said, “Anonymous sources have negatively or at least questionably influenced the election more than Julian Assange or the Russians ever possibly could.”

No Throat nearly choked with righteous fury – how could Lemmy possibly question the integrity of The New York Times, especially after being intimidated into accepting their report based on totally unproven facts?! For which Lemuel Sherbockowicz is most certainly the source!

Anyway, No Throat insisted, the point is all about Trump: he is a liar. Democrats finally got a limited sample of Trump’s tax returns to prove that – despite his hundreds of millions in assets and the ability to contract loans worth hundreds of millions – he is not actually a “rich person”.

Lemmy – being a Sherbockowicz – had no reply to such logic.

Lemmy then pointed out that – like half of all Americans – he wasn’t going to vote anyway, but he’d do anything to stop these damn political robocalls! And he was too busy trying to pay the bills created by the coronavirus hysteria and resulting Great Lockdown to care all that much about the Chinese rhino population, either.

Since 2016 I have become a fanatical Russophobe – it was my patriotic duty – and I desperately want to believe that Trump is a poor person, but I simply had to relate the source of the Times’ Trump tax leaks.

Why? Because the integrity of American democracy depends on it! And on a steady supply of rhino horn for Joe.

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This totally unserious piece is dedicated to my beautifully serious friend, mentor and colleague, Andre Vltchek. He tragically died of natural causes at only 57, but after a life overflowing with inspirational leftist journalism that was seemingly without peer. Andre left us too soon, but he left us with so very, very, very much. Read him, watch him, listen – you will remember him.

Rest in Peace comrade.

Ramin Mazaheri is currently covering the US elections. He is the chief correspondent in Paris for PressTV and has lived in France since 2009. He has been a daily newspaper reporter in the US, and has reported from Iran, Cuba, Egypt, Tunisia, South Korea and elsewhere. He is the author of Socialism’s Ignored Success: Iranian Islamic Socialism’as well as ‘I’ll Ruin Everything You Are: Ending Western Propaganda on Red China’, which is also available in simplified and traditional Chinese.