Empire actor Jesse Smollett's story about being the victim of a hate crime seems to be unravelling.

At first, Smollett told Chicago police that he was attacked on the street by Donald Trump,

who shouted racial and anti-gay slurs in a language believed to be ancient Babylonian

spoken backwards while his head rotated 360 degrees.

Mainstream news agencies, of course, immediately ran with the story, and Congressman Adam Schiff

called for the appointment of a special prosecutor to imprison the president, telling CNN he had

personally seen evidence that the attack was real, but couldn't reveal what it was,

because then everyone would know he was lying.

After police began to investigate, Smollett changed the story, saying his attacker wasn't Trump,

but just someone who shouted, this is MAGA country, narrowing the suspect list down to people

who didn't realize they were in Chicago. Smollett said the attacker hadn't used a racial slur

exactly, but had harshly criticized the season one finale of Empire as implausible.

Then demanded Smollett put the accent of his name on the first syllable,

like a normal person, and stopped trying to be such a fancy pants.

Police identified two amorphous shapes of interest on a blurry security video,

and Smollett said he was sure they were the attackers because they looked exactly like two guys no one

would ever be able to find. Then the Chicago police, who said they had nothing else to do since most

of the city's other residents were dead of gunshot wounds, for some reason, actually found the shapes

who turned out to be two African dudes who say Smollett hired them to attack him.

In the aftermath, Don Lemon went on a show he apparently has, and denounced President Trump for

being so evil that people have to make up stories about him just to describe how evil he is.

So basically it's another typical news day. Trigger warning, I'm Andrew Cleven, and this is the Andrew

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