As Election Day approaches, Clinton and Trump have increased the intensity of their campaign efforts, traveling to swing states, encouraging their supporters to canvass and actively promoting their platforms through the use of social media.
Our team decided it would be an enlightening experience to send an undercover reporter to each of their headquarters. What we found was interesting, to say the least.
In the lobby of Trump’s headquarters hangs a towering 9-by-5 portrait of the business mogul himself. When I asked the secretary if I could speak to the PR team, the secretary held back a chuckle.
“Well, we’re in a bit of a complicated situation,” she said, sipping black coffee. “Mr. Trump decided that his PR team wasn’t doing a good enough job, so he fired them. He is serving as his own.”
I managed to work my way into the strategic planning room, where I found a large white board covered in a flow chart of sorts labeled “DEBATE/INTERVIEW PLANNING.”
All sorts of topics, from immigration to LGBTQ+ rights to fracking, led back to six topics circled and bolded in the middle of the board: “ISIS,” “inner cities,” “building a wall,” “China,” “Hillary’s emails” and “Bill Clinton.”
Certain pathways were highlighted, including arrows from “black people” to “inner cities” and “sexual assault allegations” to “ISIS” and “Bill Clinton.” As I was leaving the debate headquarters, a blonde woman pushed passed me.
“Tracy, wait!” I turned around to see Trump yelling at his youngest daughter. “Tammy!’
“My name is Tiffany, Dad!” She continued walking away. I followed, as I still had to make my stop at Clinton’s campaign office.
A huge banner that said “Hillary wants you to Pokemon Go to the polls” hung outside of Clinton’s headquarters.
Inside of the building, a list of phrases was pinned to a wall, including “trumped up trickle down economics,” “dems out for Hillary,” and “Hillary isn’t clowning around.”
“We had real millennials write these,” a middle-aged staffer told me, gesturing towards a teenager at a desk on her phone. “They’re authentic.” The teen looked up from her phone and held up a poster with Hillary’s face on a frog riding a unicycle. “How does ‘dat girl knows waddup’ sound?” she asked.
After conversing with some more of the staffers, I excused myself to go to the bathroom.
I must have opened the wrong door, because I found myself in a large warehouse-like room, with rows and rows of shelves. Curiosity got the better of me and I decided to take a look. What I found is game-changing for the election.
Rows upon rows of Hillary robots were lined up. They all were completely identical, except each was wearing a different colored pantsuit. All of them were powered off except for one who was reciting answers from the second debate.
What could this mean for the election? Is there a real Hillary Clinton? What does the law say about using robots to impersonate a presidential candidate?
We will surely grapple with these shocking but necessary questions in the weeks to come.
