As usual, I was doing my homework for this column at the very last minute, thinking, “Oh, I’ll just talk about something interesting in the news.” The news is still almost all about Donald J. Squirrel-Nest, and that’s a pity because I don’t know the one thing I’d want to know right now to talk about him. At the time of this writing, I don’t know how the Electoral College will vote on Monday.
Therefore, let’s talk about homework!
A couple of weeks ago, some associate of Mr. Not President Yet sent a six-page, 74-question questionnaire to the Department of Energy (DOE). Can you imagine being the person at the DOE who opens the mail? “74 questions? To answer when? We’re going to need a truckload of coffee.”
I have seen the questionnaire. It’s basically an inquisitor’s probe. A typical question is No. 7 “Part of [Energy Information Administration’s (EIA)] charter is to do analyses based on Congressional and Departmental requests. Has EIA denied or not responded to any of these requests over the last ten years?”
“Please tell us all the times you have not done your job, and are you now or have you ever been a servant of Satan? Do you have a familiar spirit? What form does it take, how many heads does the abomination have? How many evil spells have you cast?”
Those are the sorts of questions that would cross my mind in school when the teacher told us we had to write 500 words about what we did for summer vacation.
“Oh no, the teacher is trying to find out about my pact with the Devil, I’ll have to make something up.”
But I couldn’t even guess what else I was supposed to have done during the summer, so I’d turn in a sheet of paper with just the words “I don’t remember. I’ve never even met the Devil” and my name written on it.
After there was a big uproar about the questionnaire, which did indeed look like the beginnings of a witch-hunt, Trump Inc. announced that the sending of the questionnaire was all a mistake by some staffer who hadn’t had the authority to send it. There was nothing to it, no harm intended, go back to whatever you were doing.
Well, you know, someone had to write up that questionnaire, and it’s six pages long. The questions are detailed and break out specific divisions and direct questions at different programs. It was probably written by a team of people who had to research those programs and their purposes. The questionnaire in itself was a big homework task.
It is completely preposterous that somebody spent a month cooking up those questions, without anyone noticing what they were doing.
“Jack’s been locked in his office for days hunched over his keyboard typing and looking up things in government documents. He sure is busy for someone who isn’t getting his regular work done.” And then it’s just as preposterous to think that Jack just went, “Oops. You won’t believe what I just did guys, I wrote a 74-question questionnaire up for the DOE in my spare time, and I sent it to them without being told. Was that wrong?”
Other questions that could be asked:
Who did send the questionnaire? The way things have been going, Trump could have denied that it was sent by anyone at all from his team and his supporters would have bought it. But he didn’t; they came from a member of his team. OK, for 20 points, who does something like that?
Since Obama shut down some projects of the DOE and since there were project managers at the DOE dealing with radioactive waste management — who weren’t happy about their projects being closed — it would have been believable if the questionnaire originated from the DOE itself, in league with the Trump team. For 40 points, make up two more possibilities that would make good fake news stories.
In a completely different vein, Trump told a crowd of mostly White supporters at a “victory rally” that they should thank African-Americans for staying home from the election and not voting for his opponent.
For another 40 points, what president-elect of all the people would say something like that, and why?