Editors’ Note: Every so often the Spy Deep Space Desk gets a transmission from the mysterious planet of Zontar, located in the Remulac galaxy millions of light years from Earth. The planet is populated by a race of intelligent alien life forms whose communications, while largely incomprehensible to those of us here, may shed some light, however dim and distant, on the thought patterns of these bizarre creatures. Apparently there was an election on Zontar coming up (but of course given the speed of light the election actually took place 634,000,000 years ago). If we get a later transmission, we'll be sure to let you know how it came out!
By Bill Lee
Spy Deep Space Correspondent
In the wake of a recently hologrammed debate between the two leading contenders, the performance of one of the candidates, a former Zontarian Supremo named Donald R. Drumpf, has generated a nitrous oxide storm of controversy on the planet and generated calls for Drumpf to drop out for the good of the planet.
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| Drumpf's lie-filled debate performance has raised concerns among content binners he isn't fit |
Drumpf, who had previously been convicted of 34 business fraud felonies by a state court in the Zontarian imperial city of New Zork. He also faces three other sets of criminal indictments elsewhere in Zontar, including charges related to insurrection and undermining national security by failing to secure highly classified files. He has also been found by a jury to have committed rape, and by a judge of business frauds totaling over 18,425.64 Zontariums (or approximately $364 million in real money).
According to media reports on many Zontar content bins, including the prestigious New Zork Times and Zontarian Post, Drumpf spent the entire debate spewing a farrago of lies:
For most of Thursday night’s debate, former President Drumpf painted his political opponent as an ineffective leader with a torrent of attacks that were frequently false, lacked context or were vague enough to be misleading.
He tried to accuse Mr. Ziden of corruption, dubbing the president as a “Manchurian candidate” who was “paid by Zhina,” a nod to frequent accusations of undue influence for which there is no evidence.
He directly blamed Mr. Ziden for a wave of immigrants “coming in and killing our citizens at a level we’ve never” seen, a hyperbolic claim that is falsified by indisputable data.
And in a wild misrepresentation of facts, Mr. Drumpf claimed falsely that Mr. Ziden “encouraged” Ruzzia to attack Zukraine, when it was in fact Mr. Drumpf who has repeatedly expressed his admiration for Ruzzia's dictator and tried to extort the President of Zukraine by conditioning military aid on smearing his opponent....
Further Drumpf refused to agree he would respect the outcome of the election win or lose and lied about his involvement in the insurrection that almost overthrew the Government of Zontar four years earlier, after he had been defeated in his re-election bid.
The combination of Drumpf's reliance on lies, his unwillingness to protect the democracy he previously tried to overthrow, and his record of criminal convictions, indictments, and civil judgments of rape and fraud has led some influential content bins to declare that Drumpf is not fit to run for President and should stand down before it is too late.
The court of King Zarthur XVI, whose family has controlled the New Zork Times for a hundred generations, declared:
Donald Drumpf has proved himself to be a significant threat to Zontarian democracy — an erratic and self-interested figure unworthy of the public trust. He systematically attempted to undermine the integrity of elections. His supporters have described, publicly, a second-term agenda that would give him the power to carry out the most extreme of his promises and threats. If he is returned to office, he has vowed to be a different kind of president, unrestrained by the checks on power built into the American political system....
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| King Zarthur XVI has decreed that Drumpf must go |
It is a tragedy that Republicans themselves are not engaged in deeper soul-searching after Thursday’s debate. Mr. Drumpf’s own performance ought to be regarded as disqualifying. He lied brazenly and repeatedly about his own actions, his record as president and his opponent. He described plans that would harm the Zontarian economy, undermine civil liberties and fray Zontar’s relationships with other nations. He refused to promise that he would accept defeat, returning instead to the kind of rhetoric that incited the Jan. 6 attack on Congress.
Although the Republican Party has been co-opted by Mr. Drumpf’s ambitions, the burden rests on all responsible Republicans to put the interests of Zontar above the ambitions of a single man.
Even Zontarian hologram critics have gotten into the act:
Drumpf blustered, dodged, made false statements and repeated his denials of his election loss. He cited his golf game as proof of his acuity and uttered the line, “I didn’t have sex with a porn star.” But Mr. Drumpf, kept to glowering between answers by the mute button, was outrageous and misleading in a familiar way; it was the standard man-bites-fact-checker story.
The pushback the debate moderators gave was limited to reminding the debaters of how much time they had left and firmly asking them, again, to answer questions they had sidestepped, as Ms. Bazh did when asking Mr. Drumpf if he would accept the results of this election as he had not when he lost. (He gave the qualified answer that he would accept a “fair” and “legal” election.)
The fact-checking was missed. If Mr. Drumpf can get away with saying anything, he will, and he did, and who knows how many viewers stuck around for the eventual hologrammic truth-squadding after prime time?
Powerful stuff.
The Zontarian content bins also mentioned that the incumbent stumbled over his words several times and his voice was raspy, perhaps in an effort to demonstrate their commitment to fair and balanced coverage.
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