This article was published in coordination with presidentlardass.com, Propublica did not contribute to this article and will not return our calls.
By Joe Fotalatte
Hanoi, Vietnam –- January 6 insurrectionists who previously fled the U.S. to teach English abroad find themselves re-evaluating life decisions following rumors of a forthcoming presidential pardon. “Teaching here was supposed to be my safe harbor,” lamented Todd Flake who was photographed in Nancy Pelosi’s office with a “Don’t Tread on Me” flag wrapped around his neck. “But now, it feels like breaking my contract is harder than breaking into her office to take a dump on her desk!”
Flake’s English teaching gig had been smooth sailing at first, until he heard whispers of Trump’s plans to pardon those charged in the January 6 Capitol riot. “I thought I’d be hiding out here for a while,” he sighed. “But the idea of being pardoned feels like a chance to make a run for it back to the U.S. I might as well bring a jackhammer to my contract because, much like the Department of Education, it’s going to get obliterated!”
In a bustling café just off Hoan Kiem Lake, former rioter Mike “The Patriot” Johnson said that he never intended to leave his beloved NFL fantasy football league, yet here he was: an English teacher in Vietnam, desperately longing for touchdown updates. “I punched a cop for menacing my freedoms, and boom! Now, I’m teaching second graders about past tense verbs instead of discussing why the refs are blind as bats,” he grumbled. “I traded in my flag for a chalkboard, and the only thing I miss more than the gridiron is a good American cheese! You know, real cheese. Not that weird Happy Cow pasteurized stuff they sell here.”
Johnson reminisced about the heavenly taste of a melted cheese sandwich, performing an improvised culinary soliloquy over pad thai and spring rolls. “I miss that gooey goodness like I miss my right to tackle people who don’t respect the Constitution. It’s a travesty! Was I a patriot or a cheese connoisseur? You can be both!”
As these ex-patriots navigate the complex life of teaching English while dodging their past, they are reportedly brainstorming ways to combine their new student lessons with some good old American values.
Meanwhile, Flake plans to conduct an online workshop titled “How to Break Contracts and Not Your Spirit,” free to all interested in Appalachian outlaws-turned-expats. He hopes it will go viral, fuel his return to America, and sell some of his self-published pdfs with a title that will surely feature “pardon” prominently.
As these former rioters quest for more than just cheese in one of the most liberated environments on Earth, they remind us all: freedom may be just a flight away, but so is the absurdity of teaching English in a country they thought would never tolerate such rhetoric—or in their case, behavior.