The Taft joke
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The Taft joke is the scene John Kiriakou reaches for when asked what the two men at the top of the Bush administration were actually like in a room. His characterisation comes first: "Cheney was a mean, cold, sociopathic son of a,. Nothing at all like George W. Bush. Bush was warm and friendly. Not terribly bright, but the nicest guy in the world."

The demonstration is a briefing he attended with a colleague he describes as "very portly" and wearing "kind of a handlebar mustache." The president made a joke about the moustache, comparing him to some entertainer whose name Kiriakou no longer recalls, and the man answered with one of his own.

> "Actually, I think I've got a William Howard Taft thing going."

Kiriakou glosses the reference for the listener, the stories "that William Howard Taft got stuck in a bathtub and it took six men to pull him out. It's probably not true, but this is the story in history", and then gives the two reactions that are the point of telling it: "and W laughed to the point where I thought water was going to squirt out of his nose or something. And Cheney just stood there like a statue."

See also

- Dick Cheney
- George W. Bush
- John Kiriakou
