Because I have an early dentist appointment, I wrote the following post, which was intended as satire, last night . . . only to wake this morning to Billy Bush’s op-ed piece in The New York Times. It took courage to write, and it brought to mind Hans Christian Andersen’s story, “The Emperor’s New Clothes.”

Billy Bush says he now doubts Donald Trump was with him on the infamous Access Hollywood bus, where the future president allegedly described his dating technique.

“I’d thought it was Trump,” Bush told reporters, “especially after he said, ‘I said it, I was wrong, and I apologize.’ But now it seems the president is suggesting that’s not his voice, and who am I to doubt him? I mean, if Susan Collins can abandon her courageous commitment to affordable health care by voting for a tax plan that will cause 13 million people to lose coverage because of assurances Donald Trump made to her, who am I not to take him at his word?”

In other news, Barack Obama responded to reports Trump still questioned his birth status, by acknowledging he probably was born in Kenya.

“All these years I believed my birth certificate,” said a visibly contrite Obama. “What was I thinking?”

“If a principled conservative like Senator Flake can vote for a tax bill that will add $1 trillion to the national debt because Donald Trump gave his word he’ll support the Dreamers, then his word is good enough for me. I just hope the new law will cover me.”

“Obama’s admission validates what Mr. Trump has been saying for years,” said White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Saunders. “And it’s why this president has been so diligently erasing the last eight years. When he’s finished, there’ll be no record Obama was ever president, which he legally wasn’t.

“President Trump believes that one day America will elect a black president,” she concluded, “but it must be someone who was born in America.

“Like Frederick Douglass.”