26/03/26 United State Of News

 This week's satirical bite out of the far right 

 Insane in the Irane, 

 The People Will Pay, 

 Vance and the Tiny Todger Men 

Transcript

Good evening. It’s the 26th March 2026 and this is the United State of News, a spoof news show that takes a satirical bite out of the far right. I am Johnson Hood and these are the headlines.

·       Trump taking phone calls from journalists on his 0800 Wet President 4 U line.

·       AI loses job for not being profitable enough in delicious irony.

·       Trump so adamant there’ll be no boots on the ground, the only soldiers to enter Iran will be Airborne.

But first

Something is wrong with Trump. I’m not talking about the sallow skin sliding off his face like the dangling sock at the end of a foot. I’m not talking about the rumours that he smells like something that’s been trapped in the walls. I’m not even talking about the angry rash on his neck, on his hand or the angry rash acting as his Vice President. I’m talking about his anger issues.

Things aren’t going Trump’s way. Polling numbers show he’s as popular as the Unabomber, his plan to gerry-mander Texas is backfiring like the clogged exhaust of a Toyota Yaris, and it seems his febrile personality can’t handle the heat. The cracks in his thick orange make-up are beginning to show.

Trump is throwing out insults like last week’s moussaka. This week, he refused to make deals with any Democrats, calling them “crazy, country-destroying, radical left Democrats.” Of James Talarico, recent winner of the Democratic primary race in Texas, Trump said, he’s “got six genders, insults to Jesus, only vegan food, was wearing a mask…” And of Robert Mueller’s recent death – a man who investigated Russian interference on the 2016 election, Trump said, “Good. I’m glad he’s dead.”

It's not normal, is it? And although we’ve moved far beyond normal in this presidency, questions are being asked of his mental competency. He may not be insane, but he’s definitely insane adjacent.

A recent Reuters-Ipsos poll showed 61% of the people asked agreed Trump had become ‘erratic with age.’ Even 30% of Republicans agreed. And although Trump took a Montreal Cognitive Assessment in both 2018 and 2025, the results were not made public. As far as we know, he could have answered every question with a picture of a willy. 

As his frustration mounts, Trump is lashing out and there’s a case to be made that we shouldn’t make Trump angry. You wouldn’t like him when he’s angry, though to be fair, I didn’t like him before or after. The pressure is getting to him and America – and the world – is suffering as a result, but we can’t let up now. Not when he is about to explode like the orange pinata he is.

And now a quick word from me

As part of United State of News, we are about to launch Spotlight On, a limited series profiling 4 right wingers benefiting from the rise of fascism. Some you’ll know, some you’ll have heard of, but all of them are worth your attention. Tune in to find out who wanted to start their business on a Native American reservation to avoid paying tax, who said accommodating schoolchildren with learning difficulties was insane, and who refused to send condolences to the parents of a dead student because they were black.

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And now, we go live to our roving reporter Billy Beans, who carries a knife for self-defence which he’s called Mrs Stabby-Stab. What have you got for us, Billy?

As Trump shuffles ever closer to his end and all the devils of hell are calling for his return to his place of birth, the President strives to make his mark on the world. And he’s achieved this with an economic planet-wide bruise that’s gone all yellow and spongey.

Fatih Birol, head of the International Energy Agency, has stated the crisis caused by the Iranian war will be worse than the oil crisis’s of 1973, 1979 and the Ukranian war combined. But not as bad as the time Thanos clicked his fingers and erased half the universe’s population. So…every cloud…

Not only will it cost more to run a car, an oil shortage impacts the creation of secondary products such as fertiliser, sulphur and helium, which means an end to hilarious squeaky voices at parties.

World leaders are frantically scrambling behind Trump, cleaning up his mess with gritted teeth and a mop. Oil reserves are being released to calm markets, but it’s a short term solution and like placing a sticking-plaster on a bone jutting from your neck.

To avoid deepening the crisis, The Energy Agency has a decreed a number of immediate actions to be undertaken, some of which are working from home, reducing speed limits, using public transport, car sharing, restricting car use in large cities and avoiding air travel.

What do these solutions have in common?

Just like the carbon footprint scheme, as orchestrated by the oil giant BP, where they shifted the responsibility of tackling climate change from corporations to individuals, it is us, the people - the tired, the hungry, the truly pissed off - who are now paying for the whims of a man who should have been hugged more as a kid. It is us who have to avoid flying or have to take a bus with chewing gum hanging from the seats, like raspberry flavoured stalactites.

In pursuit of a legacy, Trump has insured he will be remembered as the worst thing to happen to planet earth, and that includes the extinction level event meteor we’re all secretly hoping for.

Good reporting. Now we join Virginia Cluck-Bucket for an instalment of her series called ‘MAGA Mayhem.’ 

While most of us are worrying about next week’s bills or how we’ll afford our monthly earwax unplugging, JD Vance, the man who puts the vice into Vice President, has his sights set on the 2028 election. JD is currently consolidating power amongst far right tech bros and has recently held a fundraiser with Joe Lonsdale to pay toward his future campaign.

The tickets were a steal at just $50,000 per seat, which, at that price, I’d be taking that seat home with me, but it just goes to show, not everyone is worried about rising fuel prices.

Lonsdale is the co-founder of Palantir, the data collection company snuffling up our personal information like a hairless truffle pig. It is also developing technology to surveil the US public. It’s major customer is the Department of Defence and it has recently won a contract with the UK’s NHS. Put all together, if you ever go to Accident and Emergency with something stuck up your bum, Palantir will know you didn’t ‘slip and accidentally sit on it.’ Just like the rest of us.

Lonsdale is one of those billionaires who is simultaneously worth 3.2 billion dollars, but absolutely worthless as a human being. He founded the Cicero Institute, a think tank that proposed criminalising homelessness and stated men who take 6 month’s paternity leave to be with their newborns are ‘losers.’

He is obsessed with his masculinity. For him, it’s important to be a manly man and this is in no way related to a childhood he described as being ‘very, very competitive.’ For instance, his Irish Catholic father trained him to break a 20 year swimming record, forcing him to perform push-ups and pull-ups. Lonsdale was nine years old at the time.

When the child became a man, his hyper-masculinity was expressed through bigotry and Lonsdale once endorsed public hangings as a way of demonstrating ‘masculine leadership.’ This pre-occupation feels like an overcompensation, suggesting Lonsdale would be one man who isn’t hung.

Nothing in this world is free, which for anyone in America trying to get healthcare can attest. It’s a money-for-favours system and just like us, when the bill becomes due, JD Vance will have to pay, or rather, we’ll have to pay. If Lonsdale and his crew want to turn us into batteries, Vance is going to let them. Because when a tech bro says, ‘Dude,’ we’ll have to say, ‘How high.’

Thank you, Virginia.

And that has been the United State of News. I’ve been Johnson Hood. Good luck.