Someone at the Secret Service has a sense of humor.
As I noted the other day, the Washington Post’s Laura Blumenfeld revealed that Secret Service agents pretending in training exercises to be white supremacists called Rahm Emanuel the Antichrist.
Apparently, it’s not a one-off.
In a front page feature today on how actors are recruited into realtime training exercises in and around DC, Blumenfeld recounts the following. ("Gideon Caine" is the creation of Barry Spodak, a psychotherapist who has helped run these role-playing exercises since after the attempt on Ronald Reagan’s life in 1981.)
In one session, two trainees visit Caine at his mock home. As they sit down, Caine refuses to talk to, or look at, the Hispanic female trainee. He calls the president a "mud person," puppeteered by the "spawn of Satan." The trainees assume the spawn of Satan is Vice President Biden.
"Wrong!" snaps Spodak, playing Caine. "In Hebrew, do you know what the word ‘Rahm’ means?"
"No, sir, I sure don’t," says trainee Vincent Seymour.
"’Rahm’ means exalted. You know what ‘Emanuel’ means?"
The trainees stare.
"The anointed lord. Rahm Emanuel — the exalted, awaited lord. He is the Antichrist himself!"
Here’s Spodak, spookily embodying Caine and other imagined threats:
As if being the Antichrist wasn’t enough Politico claims that Israelis have "soured" on Emanuel, although read it through: The hedder might more accurately have been "a few Israelis on the right and commenters on the Ha’aretz website."
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