‘We want you think of this home, 1599 North Colonial Terrace, as the center of Election 2020,’ Jack Burkman said, as he and electoral housemate Jacob Wohl welcomed the press to a suburban abode in sleepy Arlington, Va.
‘Is the Holiday Inn not allowing you anymore?’ a reporter asked.
Cockburn was standing in Burkman’s driveway before a handful of reporters, a couple of taser-wielding rent-a-cops, and some curious neighborhood teenagers who probably should have been in school. Burkman and Wohl had called this houseshare presser to defend themselves against allegations that their claim to have unearthed a rape accusation against Democratic candidate Peter Buttigieg was a hoax.
Burkman and Wohl, as befits the dignity they bring to all their political acts, declared that their allegations, rather than being libels, represented a ‘high calling’ to expose the bottom of Mayor Pete’s character.
‘Our goal,’ Burkman insisted without laughing, ‘has been nothing but the truth.’ Meanwhile, media reports allege that he and Wohl had pressured Michigan student Hunter Kelly into providing a false allegation against Buttigieg.
A small television monitor played a hazy signed confession from Kelly, screenshots of texts confirming his age, and uneventful video of the three having a get-together in someone’s apartment. But Burkman and Wohl had promised ‘evidence that will make 100 percent clear’ their claims. Their version of events is still found wanting.
As to the media allegations about their allegations, Wohl and Burkman insisted that their allegations were true and the media’s allegations were false.
‘No one was coerced, no one was even so much as encouraged to take a particular action,’ claimed Burkman, who trained as a lawyer before joining the circus. In his telling, it’s not Burkman and Wohl who’ve been using strong-arm tactics, but the all-powerful Buttigieg machine. Burkman claims that while he was building up Kelly’s claim — a period of ‘nine-or-ten hours’, apparently — the student was on the receiving end of ‘any number of threatening calls’ from unnamed people trying ‘to talk him out of telling his truth’.
‘Some of those calls were from his parents,’ Wohl added. Wohl, a fresh-faced, nervous twenty-something famed for his bat-like ability to hear liberals saying nice things about Donald Trump in coffee shops, would step meekly away from the podium for Burkman’s many interruptions of his testimony.
‘Reporters were calling his parents endlessly,’ continued Wohl. He implies that the notoriously pro-Buttigieg media had its hand in the cookie jar as well. ‘We don’t know who else got to his parents,’ said Wohl. But he was happy to speculate in the public interest, and surmised that it was ‘perhaps functionaries from the DNC’.
‘We don’t care what happened to you,’ Wohl recalled Kelly’s parents saying. Rather than being heartless, they were worried; Wohl explained that ‘they were going to lose their jobs’ as the long and vindictive arm of the all-powerful Buttigieg campaign began to probe the innermost recesses of their lives.
But enough about Kelly. The young man is old news by now. Wohl and Burkman promise Cockburn that they are shovel-ready with another serving of fresh dirt. More ‘Mayor Pete’ investigations are in the works: ‘We’ve heard all kinds of rumors,’ Burkman enthused giddily. ‘People have said he’s been to bisexual orgies, been with shemales, all kinds of stuff.’ A hush fell on the driveway as Cockburn and the other reporters visualized these scenes. Wohl’s left eye twitched.
Nor is the rest of the Democratic field safe. ‘We’ve initiated hundreds of FOIA requests,’ said Burkman. No rumor is too spurious, no whisper too evanescent for these fearless probers of the truth. ‘Pocahantas’ Warren, they claim, ‘lied about her ethnicity on loan forms’. Burkman has already filed a request with the Small Business Association to get ahold of these oddly-inquisitive applications. And Joe Biden’s son, Burkman claims, ‘married his other son’s widow’, in brazen contempt of medieval laws against incest. Will Joe Biden lose the Renaissance Fayre vote?
Kamala Harris may have it worst of all. Politicians are notorious for doing anything for money, but Harris, Burkman suggests, was ‘a longtime prostitute’. Burkman also says that her past lover, former San Francisco mayor Willie Brown is a witness. He’ll find out soon enough.
The only Democrat who has passed the Burkman and Wohl test of probity is Bernie Sanders. The best-selling author from Vermont, Wohl says, is ‘thus far the only candidate we’ve been able to vet.’
‘There are rumors, but the rumors aren’t true,’ Wohl said, as though the untruthiness of rumors should be allowed to get in the way of a fearless investigator and a good story. But Sanders remains ‘the only one to receive the Wohl-Burkman seal-of-approval, as of now’.
Oh, and ‘obviously the president already has been vetted,’ Wohl said.
‘Lord knows he doesn’t need us to do that,’ Burkman humbly admitted, in brazen contempt of medieval laws against base groveling.
Got a candidate you’d like to have checked out? ‘Come here to 1599 and we will investigate,’ Burkman kindly proposed, like a plumber with a plunger. ‘We offer the Wohl-Burkman seal of approval. We offer our investigative services.’
How fortunate we are, Cockburn thought as he made his way towards the first cocktail of the afternoon, that Burkman and Wohl, our very own Holmes and Watson, are on everyone’s case. Reports that the neighbors have seen an Amazon truck delivering a home torture chamber to the basement of 1599 North Colonial Terrace have yet to be substantiated. But as Burkman and Wohl know, that’s no reason not to print it.
