White House Suspends Teleprompter Operator For Knowing Trump’s Next Words
The White House announced Thursday that an unnamed teleprompter operator had been placed on unpaid leave for exploiting the closely guarded secret that President Donald Trump generally says the words displayed directly in front of him. Administration officials said the employee earned more than $100,000 wagering on prediction markets involving words and phrases in Trump’s speeches, including “China,” “tremendous,” “beautiful” and “the likes of which nobody has ever seen.” Regulators reportedly concluded that the operator possessed an unfair advantage because the employee knew the prepared remarks, displayed the prepared remarks and controlled the speed at which the president discovered the prepared remarks.
Trump praised the alleged enterprise while agreeing that it threatened the nation’s carefully regulated system of letting ordinary Americans lose money to people with better information. “This was tremendous economic innovation, possibly the greatest, because the operator knew exactly what I was going to say, which frankly made that person unique in the entire White House,” Trump said. Officials emphasized that prediction markets remain a vital expression of free enterprise, provided participants make uninformed guesses and do not interfere with professional investors’ longstanding right to monetize advance knowledge. The administration said the employee’s principal mistake was failing to incorporate in Delaware, retain a former senator and describe the betting activity as strategic consulting.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said new ethical safeguards would require future teleprompter operators to place wagers blindly, relying only on publicly available information, Trump’s speeches from the previous four decades and the statistical certainty that every anecdote will eventually include a large man calling him “sir.” The White House has begun seeking a replacement with impeccable integrity, rapid scrolling skills and no curiosity about why prepared remarks contain seven separate opportunities to praise the speaker. Officials said the suspended employee may return after completing ethics training on the distinction between corruption and capitalism: corruption is using privileged information without first hiring lobbyists, while capitalism is the same transaction with a conference badge and catered lunch.
* None of the quotes in this article were spoken by an actual person. More info.