TGIF. This is our Free Press humor column—and the only one of its kind. Any humor you’ve found elsewhere in these pages was unauthorized, and I’m working hard to squelch it. It’s Trump 2.0. If you’re being funny and you’re not me, even if you work with me, we will find you and we will deport you.

On to the news.

→ My stocks! Not my stocks! Trump has been in office for less than two months and already he has made stocks significantly more affordable for the average working American, a joke that’s been made all week but that I’m stealing anyway. You can get your Apple and your Alphabet for a strong discount. GOOG is down 11 percent since January. I love it: loading up my Costco cart with some GOOGs, grabbing extra AMZNs to store on the shelf behind my NVDAs. And throwing in a MSFT to eat on the car ride home.

MarketWatch comes to us with this helpful tip: “March’s dizzying stock-market drop could be a buying opportunity—so long as this doesn’t happen.” What’s the this? It’s a recession! I love finance journalism. It’s always like “The market is up and will keep going up, unless this one weird thing hits.” You click into the article, and the one weird thing is an unexplained catastrophic market collapse.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt spun it this way: “Tariffs are a tax cut for the American people.” Which is not really true, per se. It’s not a lie. But just words that altogether are not the case. As my favorite libertarian Nick Gillespie put it: “On the level of Gerry Ford’s ‘There is no Soviet domination of Eastern Europe’ denial of reality.” Even Fox News’ resident blond male Peter Doocy is mad:

This is a White House that came in trying to get federal workers to retire by the hundreds of thousands, but it’s tough to make the argument that you should retire if your retirement accounts are getting throttled, which is what is happening right now.

Alright, Doocy, back in the salon chair. You’ve lost your press pass, Doocy.

→ Tesla vandalism turns into a Tesla advertisement: Around the country, protesters are lighting Teslas on fire and shooting out windows at dealerships in protest of Tesla CEO and United States President and likely father of your grandchildren (sorry!), Elon Musk. So to counter it all: Trump did a Tesla infomercial with Musk on the White House lawn, announcing that a Tesla would be permanently stationed there, then reading through the prices of various Tesla models. He read from a literal Tesla sales pitch. Frankly, Trump as a car salesman is just too on the nose, even for me. Trump even delivered the lexical gem of the week while looking at a Tesla dashboard: “Everything’s computer!” It is a phrase so of the moment, so perfect, so obviously true, that it belongs up there with Don’t panic and Good morning. Everything’s—indeed, Mr. President—computer.

How have official Democrat accounts been handling this? Well, here’s the main one, commenting on a picture of a Tesla:

On one level, this doesn’t work because it feels like what a millennial would post if they were trying to cozy up to Gen Z. But on a deeper level, now that Republicans like electric cars, the left hates electric cars? Because Sean Hannity this week is posting about buying a Tesla, and the left is going all in on F-150s. I’m buying a #Resistance Hummer.

Meanwhile, DOGE has not been DOGE’ing hard enough, because February saw no drop in spending. In fact, spending rose by $40 billion in February, a 7 percent increase compared to the same month last year, according to the Treasury Department. The DOGE boys are so obsessed with deleting feminist dance classes and lame-sounding cancer research, but they forget: Feminist dance teachers make $2 an hour. These are money-losing, husband-subsidized endeavors. And they probably would still teach queer dance if the positions were volunteer, too. Money plays no part. Checks for these things are just pieces of mail a nanny sorts through.

DOGE boys must contend with the fact that you’re not going to balance the budget by cutting breast cancer research and typing BOOBS (38008) on your calculator. Boys, you must look within—no, not to the part of you that wants to type 6969 on that same calculator. You must look at the Department of Defense. You must look at infrastructure scams. DOGE boys, you must look beyond drag brunches, see further than trans operas. Maybe you came to D.C. just to make fun of me and my people (adults who work but do not code) and you have done that, and I have accepted it. Now I need you to work. Cut the budget, boys. The real one.

→ MAHA™: RFK Jr. went to a Steak ’n Shake with Fox News this week and proceeded to do an infomercial. This is the infomercial presidency, and every news hit comes with a promo code. In this country, it’s always 3 a.m. on the Home Shopping Network.

RFK: Steak ’n Shake just switched out and people are raving about these french fries, you taste them.
Sean Hannity: They’re amazing, they really are.

RFK, a little later: You taste these, it’s a completely different experience. The customers are raving about it. Steak ’n Shake has been great. We’re very grateful for them, for RFK’ing the french fries. They turned me into a verb.
Hannity: By the way, a plastic straw, thank god.

And it looks like someone ghostwrote RFK Jr.’s suspiciously pro-measles vaccine op-ed last week (you can rest easy knowing it absolutely was not me). Because here he is now: “It used to be, when you and I were kids, everybody got measles. And measles gave you lifetime protection against measles infection. The vaccine doesn’t do that. . . it used to be very young kids. . . they were protected by breast milk, and by maternal immunity. Women who get vaccinated do not provide that level of maternal immunity.” This administration is all about two steps forward, three steps back.

He says these things and then won’t own it, so it’s very hard to honestly debate or even properly make fun. Call him anti–measles vax, and there would be uproar from his community that he’s not anti-vax, no, no, just aware, alert, poly-vax-ual. It’s always: “I’m pro–measles vaccine, but also measles is a lie and the vaccine destroys the mother-child bond.” He speaks in riddles wrapped in conundrums. He is MAHA but also Steak ’n Shake and plastic. It’s crystals, but AI. I can’t live like this...