RAID ME, PLEASE!

 

A news story had me deeply concerned, so I reached out to my friend Morrie the Mop. Morrie is a janitor at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., and a very wise man. He knows more about what’s up in the nation’s capital than any of the “talking heads” you see on cable TV. Morrie answered my call promptly, and we spent a few minutes getting caught up. Then I went straight to business.

Chuck: Morrie, I’m very concerned about what I see in the news. I need your advice on an important matter.

Morrie: Let me guess, Chuck. I know you live in Southern California. I bet you’re concerned about President Trump saying that Iran could “take out” Los Angeles or San Diego.

Chuck: Well, yeah, that’s a little frightening. I mean, we’d be collateral damage here in Orange County. But that’s not my biggest concern.

Morrie: Okay, then I’d wager it’s Trump’s decision to buy diesel fuel from Russia.

Chuck: That’s a big one. I mean, it’s like the final straw in abandoning Ukraine. But that’s not why I called.

Morrie: Ah, I know what it is. It’s all the mid-term election meddling. Threatening to invoke the Insurrection Act and seize voting machines. Using the Post Office to refuse to deliver mail-in ballots. Threatening to send armed ICE agents to polling locations. The list goes on.

Chuck: All of that is frightening, Morrie. But the reason I called is because of the raid on Minnesota Representative Ilhan Omar’s home in D.C., all those HSI agents carting out boxes and loading them into SUVs.

Morrie: Well, yeah, that was a pretty radical act, especially a couple of weeks before the election. But how can I help you with that, Chuck?

Chuck: I want to know what I can do to get HSI, or ICE, or the FBI to raid my place. I’ve got so much junk here that I need to get rid of—in the house, and especially in the garage. Heck, I’d even pre-pack all the boxes. All they’d have to do is come and get ’em. What’s your advice, Morrie? How can I provoke a raid?

Morrie: Chuck, I don’t think provoking a raid is a very good idea.

Chuck: What if I posted something really snarky about Eric, or Don Jr.? Maybe about Don Jr. having his wedding bash paid for by a Russian oligarch?

Morrie: I don’t think that would work—

Chuck: Or, how about something really mean about the president’s various vanity projects—the Kennedy Center, the White House ballroom, the triumphal arch?

Morrie: Bottom line, buddy, the only way to provoke a raid would be to break the law, and I don’t think you want to do that.

We chatted a while longer, and then Morrie had to go clean Mike Johnson’s private restroom. I scratched my head a while longer, and then it came to me: why not ask all the AI platforms? I decided to start with ChatGPT. I gave it a simple prompt:

How can I get the federal government to raid my home, like they did with Representative Ilhan Omar, without breaking the law?

Within seconds, suggestions scrolled across my screen—detailed, nuanced, provocative, creative. It was amazing, right down to the classic leading question at the close:

Can I suggest where to purchase the best boxes?

I said, No, thank you. I still had to query Copilot, Claude, Gemini, and Grok.   

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