Portside Date: May 19, 2017

Author: Andy Borowitz

Date of source: May 18, 2017

The New Yorker

WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report)—House Speaker Paul Ryan has set a Google News alert to notify him of the instant that Donald Trump becomes unpopular enough to turn against, Ryan revealed on Thursday.

The news alert, which Ryan said was set to the phrase “Trump approval rating falls below fifty per cent among Republican voters,” will inform the House Speaker of the precise moment “that I can bail on President Trump at no political cost to me,” Ryan explained.

“There’s this sense out there in the media that Washington is consumed by drama and nothing is getting done,” Ryan told reporters. “I think it’s important for people to know that important things are, in fact, getting done, and setting this Google News alert is one of those things.”

Asked by a reporter when he anticipated turning on Trump, Ryan dismissed that as a hypothetical question, adding, “There is no timetable for my inevitable betrayal of him. Once I receive that Google News alert, it will most likely happen a split second after that.”

Ryan ended his press conference by reassuring the American people that he is hard at work for them. “I am checking my phone every ten—and sometimes every five—minutes,” he said.

Andy Borowitz is the New York Times best-selling author of “The 50 Funniest American Writers,” and a comedian who has written for The New Yorker since 1998. He writes the Borowitz Report, a satirical column on the news, for newyorker.com.