WASHINGTON (AP) — This year’s Economic Report of the President credits an unusual group of interns that includes the alter egos of Batman, Spider-Man and Captain America, Monty Python alumnus John Cleese, Kathryn Janeway from “Star Trek: Voyager” and the corpulent Star Wars villain Jabba the Hutt.
These names are credited with helping to assemble the 711-page report issued Tuesday on the health of the U.S. economy and President Donald Trump’s economic agenda.
The names appear to be following a similar prank in the intern listing for the 2018 report, in which “Star Trek” luminaries James T. Kirk and Jean-Luc Picard worked for the White House Council of Economic Advisers.
The Twitter account maintained by the council acknowledged the joke Tuesday afternoon.
“Thank you for noticing, our interns are indeed super heroes!” the tweet said. “We’ve thought so all along, but we knew it’d take a little more to get them the attention they deserve. They have made significant contributions to the Economic Report of the President and do so every day at CEA.”
Thank you for noticing, our interns are indeed super heroes! We’ve thought so all along, but we knew it'd take a little more to get them the attention they deserve. They have made significant contributions to the Economic Report of the President and do so every day at CEA.
— CEA (@WhiteHouseCEA) March 19, 2019
Not all the interns listed are superheroes to be celebrated. In the Star Wars franchise, Jabba the Hutt is a galactic crime lord who tried unsuccessfully to feed Luke Skywalker to the Sarlacc, a sharp-toothed beast that lived in a sand pit.
Martha Gimbel, researcher director for the jobs site Indeed, discovered the list of dubious interns and posted a screenshot of it to Twitter.
The Economic Report of the President has revealed that the quality of interns at CEA is much better than it was when I was there….we never got cool ones like Steve Rogers, Bruce Wayne, Peter Parker, Aunt May, and John Cleese pic.twitter.com/qELM2729os
— Martha Gimbel (@marthagimbel) March 19, 2019
