WASHINGTON D.C. – Officials inside the Trump White House are beaming with pride after US Secretary of War Pete Hegseth was able to complete the classic Canadian children’s book Franklin Fibs without any help from aides or outside consultants.
“Come here, look,” said Secretary of State Marco Rubio, as he ushered reporters into a room in the Pentagon with a rocking chair in the corner. “He’s doing it.”
“Ffff-fffff-Fffraaanklin,” said Hegseth from the lap of the noticeably uncomfortable Admiral Frank M. Bradley, as a coterie of senior Pentagon, Republican, and White House officials looked on encouragingly. “Ff-Ffranklin c-could slide! Slide… down… a river-riverbank!”
“Well done!” cheered an impressed Megyn Kelly, before others shushed her so the Secretary of War didn’t lose his place.
Senior aides report convincing Hegseth to read Franklin Fibs after luring him into the room with an AI-generated book cover featuring Franklin firing a bazooka at “narcoterrorists”. They were eager to promote Hegseth’s progress as a major win for the Trump administration, following a series of major Democratic victories in the recent off-year elections.
“You should have seen when we started,” said Vice President JD Vance. “The tears, the screaming. Normally you only hear wailing like that when Stephen Miller is visible. And then we had to get another copy from the library because he threw up Jack Daniels all over the first one.”
“Normally, this would be Linda’s [McMahon, Secretary of Education] job,” added White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles, “but he wouldn’t stop pawing at all the women in the room, so we all had to leave. We didn’t want to distract him.”
Hegseth finally settled down when Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. dangled a bottle of Everclear in front of him and said he could have it after he finished the book, at which point several sources confirmed Hegseth was “locked in.”
Despite the pride many feel for Hegseth’s accomplishment, sources said there was still a lot of progress to be made with the other newer members of Trump’s administration.
FBI Director Kash Patel said “it was boring” and “hard” and “wanted pictures” when federal investigators tried giving him a Hardy Boys novel.
Meanwhile at the State Department, Special Envoy Steve Witkoff is reportedly able to correctly name the continents correctly on a globe, but sources say that no matter what they do he still says “Russia” when they point to Ukraine.
After a brief round of applause and adoring compliments from the assembled onlookers, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt stated that Hegseth was “a big boy” “who did it all by himself”, before concluding with: “Well, we gotta be off. We got the president at home and he probably needs his diaper changed.”
