Washington Post (Democracy Dies in Darkness). By a Senior Correspondent October 20 2017 at 9.28 PM ✉️

The story around the salons of Georgetown, the horse farms of Virginia and the antique filled apartments of the Upper East Side of New York is that the favoured friends of the administration have each been receiving a crisp white card through the mail over recent days.

It reads as follows.

The President and First Lady of the United States request the pleasure of your company on November 8 2017 to celebrate the anniversary of the election of Donald J Trump as the 45th President.

As with any White House function, Washington is gossiping. Who is in, and who is out. Who has an invitation. And who wishes they hadn’t received one.

There has been unsourced gossip. But little hard information, until now. Fortunately, to shed light on this emerging story, the following internal memorandum has come into the possession of your correspondent.

“To: Leatherneck Turtle – Chief of Staff
From: White House Social Secretary

You wanted an update on the anniversary celebrations on the election of the President.

The invitations for the celebration of 45’s election have been sent out. The President was persuaded that the phrase “greatest President ever…” should not be used – although I am sure we will revisit this issue in November 2018.

As you know, the President had said that he only wants guests who love ❤️ him and respect all he has done for the country ??✅.

That requirement did create an initial problem.

However, as you suggested, I had a chat with the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the Secretary of State and the Secretary of Defence. You were right! There is no need to take the President’s words literally. They can be ignored in their detail.

So, I have therefore gone ahead and invited the First Lady. ?

For her part, the First Lady finally agreed to come – on the usual conditions – no hand holding or vacant looks of adoration. We tried for a handshake, but it didn’t work recently. Too much touching I guess. And script approval of his welcoming remarks. However, these events have certainly become easier since we licensed the photo altering technology from the KGB. Who says that Russia doesn’t help this country.

This more flexible approach to guests also means that we can extend the guest list out beyond coal miners, the KKK and Steve Mnuchin and his wife. Steve Cohen, the Republican leadership and former Miss World Contestants can now be added to the invitation list.

As well as celebrities and “real Americans”, the original plan was to have currently serving members of the administration attend. However, as the event is still three weeks away, it was proving difficult to estimate numbers. We have therefore also invited those who have served the Administration but have since left. Obviously, that change in plan necessitated a much larger venue. A large tent will be on the South Lawn.

This is a special event and we have tried to foresee and avoid problems – thought was given to not inviting the President, or arresting the press corp, or both. But while these options were attractive to you as Chief of Staff, it was we now accept, unrealistic not to invite the President to his own party. However, the press arrests are still being considered with the Department of Justice.

But we also included a special instruction and explanation slip into some of the invitations.

For those guests from the Departments of the Environment and Commerce, it was explained that the celebration party was an exception to their previous instructions from
the White House that they should sabotage all activities of the Government organisation that employs you.

For those who work at the Department of the Treasury – they had been told to treat the celebration as if it was a request for a private plane charter for a Cabinet Secretary. No expense is to be spared.

However, unfortunately there had been a printer mishap and the instructions to Treasury were just a collection of unintelligible words and random numbers. We have since learned that the Treasury thought these were the President’s comments on the Federal Budget and changed it accordingly. It also seems that no one has noticed.

A similar thing happened with the instruction slip to the Office of the Majority Leader in the Senate which led to the latest proposed changes to Obamacare.

As always, there have had to be compromises. The President wanted a classy event. I have asked Steve Bannon not to wear cargo pants – there was also a measure of confusion as Steve had said that “the Trump Presidency we fought for is over” and I think was a little surprised we were still in Office, without him.

A general note about ? – unfortunately Scaramucci is still coming.

Steve Mnuchin was sure he had a Yale class reunion that night – but apparently hasn’t seen an invitation yet so he thinks it must have been cancelled and so will probably be able to come if he and Louise can find a Government helicopter to get them to the White House from Georgetown.

We have got some great photos for the room.

For the inaugural crowd photos, we initially thought about using those from 1961 as a reflection of the the new world we are creating – that feeling of living under a constant threat of nuclear annihilation! ?

Then we tried using 1985 – the last time America was great. But the big hair and shoulder pads tended to obscure the people.

We needed a photo with a large crowd so we went with 2009 and the touch up artist who worked on the Dove advertising campaign did a good job on the faces.

We could have added crowds to 2017 photos but the only quote we got for the retouching was from the guy whose main previous work was adding pictures of landing craft to photos of North Korean beaches.

On the introductory speech, we needed an administration official who would speak favourably of the President (easy to find), with conviction (more difficult) and who had not been questioned under caution by Mueller or the FBI (impossible). It looks like Vice President Pence again!

Finally, you asked if I knew what the Crooked Hillary campaign was doing to remember the night. Those liberals are a miserable bunch and would have been keen to refine their lines on blaming an ignorant electorate, Jim Comey and a couple of spotty faced teenage Russian hackers. However, I think the recent Hillary book tour has exhausted even the Democrats capacity for self examination. So it looks like Bill Clinton and Harvey Weinstein will have to spend the night alone in front of a television in Chappaqua remembering when the rules were different.

I will continue to monitor acceptances. It is always hard to know how things will be on the night – at least we no longer need a separate room for McConnell and Ryan – but there is still three weeks to go.

Very truly yours”

The Washington Post will continue to follow this story. A few initial comments.

As readers familiar with this White House will have noted, there is no mention of Jared or Ivanka, or whether Arabella and Joseph will perform for the President in Mandarin – so it may be that cute children moments truly are unscripted.

There is also no mention of the Goldman Sachs set – maybe the well done steaks and lack of French wine is slowly beginning to demotivate them in a way that the Alt Right never could.

And finally, it is nearly three weeks away.

Just what might happen before 8 November?

Ends