Photo by: Barak Tzori
President Trump has enacted another gag order, this time on official D.C. Fact Finder Jerry Verum early Tuesday morning, silencing Verum from communicating with the public and the press. This order comes after Verum was, according to press secretary Spicer, “unable to meet his quota of alternative facts found. Seriously, guys, why are your hands up right now? That was perfectly legitimate answer. You should be ashamed of yourselves. No real media outlet asks questions when presented with a legitimate answer.”
Verum, who only served in an official capacity for a week, has since been unreachable through social media, and was unavailable for comment on the details surrounding the sudden order, making it difficult to determine exactly why he was silenced. In an effort to shed light on the events surrounding Verum’s brief career, investigators are retracing his movements leading up to last Tuesday, and have so far uncovered several email and phone correspondences, a daily schedule for the week, and three hardcover copies of Judy Blume’s “Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing.”
Verum’s Google search history has also been leaked by an unknown source, and is being studied by several journalists and news networks for any possible information. Out of the searches released, queries of particular interest include “largest amount of space that a person can possibly take up,” “how many people could fit on the Washington lawn if they were all making grass angels,” “how do error bars work in crowd estimates,” and “alternative forms of counting that make the numbers bigger??????”
Several of Verum’s closest friends and a few people he was in contact with leading up to Tuesday have also come forward for interviews about their interactions with him. Brenda Guerrero, an EPA worker, seemed very confused by his line of questioning when he called her Monday morning.
“He seemed really distressed,” she reported. “He was very fixated on this theory that an increase in numbers, if measured differently, could also be a decrease in numbers, and asked me if that was sufficient to make something that seemed to have a strong positive correlation actually have a negative one. After I responded that I didn’t think that was how measurements work, he just asked me how likely it was that CO2 was just a myth and that it didn’t actually exist. I told him it wasn’t very likely.”
Verum’s friends and family have all commended him on his strong work ethic, and were shocked to hear about the gag order.
“I just don’t understand why anyone would be dissatisfied with whatever it was he found,” explained his wife, Shannon Verum. “He would always work tirelessly, and late into the night every day, as if he was glued to his computer. Although, it did seem like the task he was assigned was near impossible. No matter how much he searched and researched, it seemed like he could never find what he was looking for.”
Interim D.C. Fact Finder Jerry Higgins released a statement late Tuesday night in response to the gag order, claiming, “There are a lot of possible explanations for Verum’s break from communicating with people in any form, and we’re currently looking for the best one. For all we know, he could have developed a sudden cold that made him sound like a witch and would have scared children if he were to give a press conference.
“I prefer to think that Verum enacted this gag order on himself in order to take some time for self-reflection and internal meditation,” Higgins continued philosophically. “There’s really no way to ever know what happened to him, or his opinions on the matter.”
At press time, Verum was still unavailable for comment on Higgins’ statement.
Hannah Rosenblatt is an MQ alum. She was the 2017-18 Editor-in-Chief.
