Final Analysis: And Now for the (Fake) News

Contrary to what the current presidential administration would have you believe, real journalists spend their time looking for the truth and reporting it fairly. So the opportunity to have some fun on the one day of the year when fake news is actually expected proves irresistible to some in the media.

For instance, on April Fools Day in 1957, the BBC reported that Switzerland was enjoying a bumper crop from its spaghetti trees. Intrigued viewers asked how they could obtain their own pasta plants. In the 60s, Swedens Sveriges Television told viewers that if they stretched nylon stockings over their black-and-white TV sets, they could bend light waves and create a color image. In 1985, Sports Illustrated fooled a lot of baseball fans with George Plimptons classic tale of Sidd Finch, a baseball player who could throw a 165-mph fastball.

In reverent homage to those classics, we present some April Fools headlines wed like to see:

Proclaiming that people who moved to Seattle after 1997 were bad dudes, President Donald Trump ordered Immigration and Customs Enforcement to ship them to the Pataha/Starbuck metroplex in eastern Washington. After a few years there, Trump told Fake News Daily, theyll lose that progressive stink and start voting Republican. City officials declared Seattles legendary traffic mess much improved after the mass deportation. Trump immediately took credit and said, I finished first in my class at traffic engineering school.

President Donald Trump today used the $1 billion he saved taxpayers on Air Force jets and bought the Seattle Mariners. According to Fake News Weekly, the transaction is constitutionally sound and free of conflict-of-interest entanglements because Trump said so. Trump immediately characterized the Mariners as winners and the other teams in Major League Baseball as losers, obviating the need for postseason play. This is the Mariners first championship in their 41-year history. The best victory parade ever will take place next Tuesday. Four million people will attend, including the entire population of Pataha/Starbuck.

Saying he came up with the idea for a wall on the Mexican border when he was defacing a Spanish I textbook in 1959, President Donald Trump sued the rock band Pink Floyd for copyright infringement over its appropriation of The Wall in their concept album and subsequent film. This is the 87,529th lawsuit Trump has been involved in, according to Fake News Monthly. And I have won them all, Trump boasted. A White House spokesperson said the president was also considering seeking damages against Wall Street, Walmart, Walgreens, the Pixar movie WALL-E, a selection of wall sconces and the Green Monster at Fenway Park.

The president of the United States stepped down today so he could lead a humanitarian mission to Mars. I just learned there are no golf courses on Mars. Sad, President Donald Trump tweeted. I must go where Im needed. He told Fake News All the Time the finely tuned White House was running so well that Vice President Mike Pence could easily step into the role of Tweeter in Chief. Asked why he chose to resign, Trump said, Because I am selfless, compassionate and, above all else, humble. My sons have acquired the Peace Corps, which will now be called Trumps Great American Peace Corps, to bring golf to this desolate planet. When informed that golf balls would travel farther on Mars, Trump replied, Who told you that? Thats fake news. Nobody hits balls farther than Americans.

JOHN LEVESQUE is the managing editor of Seattle Business magazine. Reach him at [email protected].