On my way into Canada via the Peace Bridge in Buffalo, I stopped at the duty-free shop on the U.S. side of the border. I needed a bottle of gin because it’s gin and tonic weather at the cottage. As I was about to pay, this wonderful treat caught my eye.
It was the Make America Great Again candy bar, featuring a photograph of the 47th President of the United States in his “Scowling Fist-Raised Power Pump Pose” superimposed over the Stars & Stripes.
I wanted to buy two or three, but at $15 a bar, I settled for one. Everything is so expensive these days, although prices will be coming down starting any day now. They need to: at the Thruway service center where I stopped earlier, one puny donut at Dunkin was $2.35. I had to go without.
But I would definitely shell out $15 for a MAGA chocolate bar—Yum! If it tasted as rich and delicious as I expected it would, I could purchase more on my next trip, some for myself, some for my friends.
I was so excited, I tried to unwrap the bar while driving across the bridge. I had trouble with the package fold, it was glued, and so I bit at the crimped end and made a hole that way. I pulled, and the wrapper began to peel off in strips of plasticky paper, one rip cutting the image of his face in two. I did all this while driving, and then I reached the customs agent and had to drop the candy bar and reach for my Nexus Pass, which allows me to skip the long car lines at the customs booths, use a special designated lane, and mostly get waved through after a few basic questions.
One of those questions is almost always: Do you have anything to declare?
I said I stopped at duty-free for a bottle of Tanqueray. The agent looked at the partially unwrapped MAGA chocolate bar in my lap, and I added, “And I got this candy.”
I have to say, I’ve been treated well this summer by Canadians, even though Canada generally hates America now. I’m not sure if they’re jealous of their neighbor to the south that just keeps on WINNING, or if it has something to do with tariffs and tough talk about making Canada our 51st state.
The customs agent gave me what I could only interpret as a dirty look, but he waved me through.
I waited until I arrived at the cottage before I attempted any further unwrapping of my MAGA chocolate. But as soon as I put the car in park, I went for it. True, it was a warm summer day, but I hadn’t expected the chocolate to be so soft and melty. Some more of the wrapper peeled away and some stuck. I ran my finger through the chocolate goo and put it in my mouth. The chocolate didn’t taste like much, maybe a bit like the frosting on a Hostess cupcake. I felt the crunch of the crisped rice between my teeth: this wasn’t just any chocolate bar, it was a chocolate bar with crisped rice.
I looked at the remaining brown, melted soft-serve in the desiccated wrapper. All the other pieces of crisped rice were moving. That crunch between my teeth wasn’t rice, it was some kind of larvae wiggling around.
I knew right away what had happened: someone had sabotaged my MAGA chocolate bar. They unwrapped the bar, injected some kind of insect larvae (which everyone knows softens chocolate to a virtual melting point), then glued the wrapper back shut in a way that made it hard to open.
Communists did it. Or Dumocrats. Or Libtards.
I wasn’t going to let them get the better of me! No sir. I finished that MAGA bar. I ate every bite.
