White House Promotes Satirical Article Ridiculing New Budget Blueprint

White House communications staff sent out an email today which, in part, promoted an opinion piece titled "Trump’s budget makes perfect sense and will fix America, and I will tell you why."

Naturally, it sounds like a fervent defense of the administration's priorities — if perhaps a bit too enthusiastic to be taken very seriously.

But it shouldn't have been taken seriously at all; the piece is a work of satire, and it ridicules the administration's recently released budget blueprint from top to bottom. (For more information on this and other political stories, subscribe to the White House Patch for daily newsletters and breaking news alerts.)

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"Office of Management and Budget Director Mick Mulvaney has called it a 'hard power budget' which is, I think, the name of an exercise program where you eat only what you can catch, pump up your guns and then punch the impoverished in the face," writes Alexandra Petri in the piece. "This, conveniently, is also what the budget does."

It only gets more scathing from there:

This budget will make America a lean, mean fighting machine with bulging, rippling muscles and not an ounce of fat. America has been weak and soft for too long. BUT HOW WILL I SURVIVE ON THIS BUDGET? you may be wondering. I AM A HUMAN CHILD, NOT A COSTLY FIGHTER JET. You may not survive, but that is because you are SOFT and WEAK, something this budget is designed to eliminate.

There's nothing subtle about this form of satire. So either the staffer who included the article didn't read it, didn't mind including a harsh critique of the administration in official communications or is unable to discern praise from withering condemnation.

Molly Templeton, a publicity coordinator for Tor.com, pointed out the apparent error on Twitter:

Despite being cited by the White House, Petri mostly seemed disheartened by the incident:

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