The White House Tapes

(Rush transcript - Oval Office recorder 1.4 - start time 14.29, 1/23/10)


RAHM EMMANUEL: You wanted to see me, Mr. President?

PRESIDENT OBAMA: Yes, Rahm. Take a seat. We may have... (Oratically brilliant Presidential pause) ...a rather significant problem.

EMMANUEL: Yes sir. Can I take it you're referring to the column in today's London Observer?

PRESIDENT OBAMA: It's a Goddamn disaster, Rahm! Nick Cohen has sunk this administration! Why, with his incredibily accurate skewering of our moral cowardice and insane urge to assist the Chinese with their inhuman oppression of Tibet, he's utterly crushed my presidency. (Panic-stricken relativist sobs).

EMMANUEL: It does rather look that way, sir. Have you considered how we're going to explain this to the Bien-Pensant Liberal Leftists, Whose Tendency To Pay Lip Service To Human Rights Is So Common In Our Times?

PRESIDENT OBAMA: Never mind them. What are we going to say to the Superficially-Leftish So-Called Progressives Who Believe That Democracy Is An Imperialist Ideology? I mean, this Cohen guy is telling his readers that I didn't mention women's rights in my Cairo speech!

EMMANUEL: Well, we checked that sir, and it appears that you dedicated a whole section of your Cairo speech to women's rights. It looks rather like Cohen may have brutally fucked the dog on that one, since your remarks are on page seven of the text Cohen links to. We don't know whether that's part of his fiendish scheme to undermine you, or possibly that he decides what's going into his columns before he researches them, like a second-rate hack who can't be fucked to check his sources.

PRESIDENT OBAMA: Obviously it's the former, Rahm. This guy is too smart to be just some second-rate hack who can't be fucked to check his sources. I mean... (Charismatic yet some how effete and elitist flourish) ...My God, he's put the Henry Jackson Society on my case!

EMMANUEL: There's no disguising it sir - your presidency can't survive a bad write-up from a tiny clique of pointy-headed, no-dick academic ideologues prattling about war and swooning over belligerent-sounding bullshit.

PRESIDENT OBAMA: That's the whole point! I knew I should've spent less time dealing with the catastrophic financial and military clusterfucks I inherited and much more time barking and woofing like a demented chihuahua. I mean, you remember what the Republicans did when the Russians invaded Georgia?

EMMANUEL: I sure do, sir - the Republicans all sat up on their hind legs and began yammering about how Putin was Hitler and how he'd better quit it right now, or else! Then the Russians took a huge, steaming dump on the White House lawn by smashing the Georgian military, then occupying South Ossetia and proclaiming it independent.

PRESIDENT OBAMA: Exactly! Those fruity Republican losers might have achieved exactly bugger all and wound up looking like prize chumps, but they sounded tough, damn it! (Sneers at liberal values) ...And now this Cohen guy is telling the world that I cancelled our missile defence scheme to get into Putin's good books!

EMMANUEL: I guess when we told people we were cancelling missile defence because it was a ruinously expensive and totally unworkable pile of utter, useless bullshit designed entirely to enrich weapons contractors, Cohen just saw right through our story. I have to admit, he's good.

PRESIDENT OBAMA: Too good. This stuff about how I failed to support the Iranian opposition in their hour of need... (Operatic flourish, twirl) ...Not only that, I referred to their country as The Islamic Republic of Iran, as if the ayatollahs owned it.

EMMANUEL: Yes. Why did you do that, sir?

PRESIDENT OBAMA: (Thumps desk in puny outburst of impotent rage that wouldn't frighten a Jihadist mouse) ...Because I've wilfully blinded myself to the urgent threat of Islamist fascism and fallen prey to the language of appeasement and easy moral equivalence, that's why! Don't you remember anything?

EMMANUEL: Of course, Mr. President, I forgot.

PRESIDENT OBAMA: Cohen's right. If only I'd gone on television and thrown an epic tantrum, calling the mullahs bastards and telling the protesters we'd back them up with nuclear warheads, Iran might be an oasis of tranquility and democracy by now. (Shakes head, sneers at the oppressed) ...You know, I feel pretty relativist, ergo racist and disdainful of brown people's freedom, right now. I've got to do something to regain the initiative.

EMMANUEL: Might I suggest that you arrange a press conference and call Mahmoud Ahmadinejad something like Arseface McStalin? You could call him a Nazi and a totalitarian, then everything would work out fine.

PRESIDENT OBAMA: That's just for starters! (Suddenly engorged with masculine vigour and dictator-repelling moral certitude) ...I want you to order our ambassador in Beijing to construct a fifty-foot tall papier-mache human hand giving the finger on the roof, then have the staff stand around shouting Fuck you Chinese Commie arseholes! into megaphones.

EMMANUEL: Brilliant, sir. The Communist regime will fold instantly and the Chinese will surely elect a pro-western liberal democratic government within days. Anything else?

PRESIDENT OBAMA: Send a photo of Hillary Clinton's sagging, pendulous ass to Kim Jong Il... And nuke Antarctica. It won't achieve anything, but it'll make us look tough and manly, and isn't that the important thing?

EMMANUEL: It certainly is, Mr. President.

PRESIDENT OBAMA: Oh, and phone Hugo Chavez and tell him I think he's a fat, tedious cunt.

EMMANUEL: And what will that achieve, sir?

PRESIDENT OBAMA: Absolutely nothing, Rahm! That's the whole point of empty, bellicose rhetoric and foolhardy gestures designed to impress cretins! (Testosterone explosion devastates Oval Office causing women to swoon, overcome by presidential machismo, as far away as El Salvador).

(Transcript ends)