GLEN SPRINGS, NEW HAMPSHIRE — Former Florida Governor and 2016 Republican presidential hopeful Jeb! has a very famous brother, though Jeb! tries to keep that connection as far down on the list of things that people talk about as possible. He’s done so using rhetoric that pins the blame for the rise of the Islamic State, or ISIS, on both President Barack Obama and former Secretary of State and current 2016 Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton. By absolving his brother, Jeb! hopes to pin the blame for the current unrest in the region not on the failure of the Iraq War to accomplish the goal of regional stability, but on Obama and Clinton alone.
It’s not just matters of foreign policy that Jeb! is trying to deflect criticism away from his brother on though. Sources close to the Jeb! campaign relayed to The Political Garbage Chute the details of an encounter in an elevator at a posh, $1500 a plate fundraiser being held for Jeb! last week in Galveston, Texas. It was after Jeb! and his brother had both finished their speeches and their meals that the Republican hopeful, his brother the former president, their wives and three reporters got into an elevator to go up to the hotel’s rooftop bar for a nightcap and impromptu Q&A session with the brothers.
According to sources, it was in between the 8th and 9th floors that something started to go horribly awry. A noxious odor was first detected by Jeb!’s wife. She turned and asked her husband if the hotel was built on a sewage treatment plant or something. Jeb!’s brother started nervously fidgeting, according the source. The former Florida governor simply put his fingers to his lips in the universal sound for “hush,” pointed to the reporters in the elevator and tried to cough loudly as a sound that witnesses describe as a “cross between an explosion and two honey baked hams being dropped into a bucket of pudding” crackled though the air.
Those in the elevator car report that for at least 15 seconds, or two more floors, no one said anything. Then, another explosion, followed by what is being described as a “dying trumpeter gasping out the final notes in a Beethoven symphony.” Finally, after another second or two of uncomfortable silence, one of the reporters asked what the smell was.
“What smell,” Jeb! asked nervously.
“That horrid, putrid smell that’s impossible to avoid,” the reporter answered.
“I don’t smell anything,” Jeb! said defiantly.
“Really, because it’s coming from the corner your brother is currently standing in,” the reporter shot back.
“Hmm. Yeah, I still don’t smell anything but a tradition of success and winning coming from my brother,” Jeb! said, this time nervously looking at the floors moving up. He couldn’t understand what was taking so long to get up to the 86th floor.
“Weird, because what I smell is something that reminds me of the time I threw up in my pants while I was sitting down shitting, drunk,” the reporter said. Jeb! was starting to sweat, and the reporter wasn’t relenting.
“Look, maybe you are smelling something foul. Maybe it is in fact coming from my brother, but it’s not his fault,” Jeb! said, hoping the reporter would take him at face value and leave the conversation there. He was not so lucky.
“How is your brother cutting a nasty one in the elevator not his fault,” the reporter asked incredulously. She was pressing hard now, sensing some fear in Jeb!’s responses.
“My brother ate food tonight that made him gassy,” Jeb! started, “but that food was eaten while Obama is in the White House. Did you know that until Obama was the president, my brother never farted. Sure, he’d pass gas. He’d break wind. But he never farted. Farts are gross and stinky. But breaking wind, especially when you’re a Bus-er I mean a member of a family with a pedigree of success and civil service like we are — is like breathing the fresh air of democracy into the world. Now, since Obama’s been in office and Hillary was his Secretary of State, what comes out of my brother’s asshole is toxic.”
Though the answer was nonsensical, it was an answer to the question. The reporter simply closed up her notepad and they all waited until the elevator stopped on the 86th floor, where they got out and decided to cancel the Q&A session, since no one really felt like drinking anything anyway.
