Who's the Fool Now?

All day I have been looking for the perfect April Fools prank to pull on my visiting mother. Alas, I have found none. Which is probably for the best since the closest I came to pulling a prank on her was telling her today was April 3 (her wedding anniversary), when she asked what day it is. And when I tried to correct her and tell her it is April Fools, she didn't hear me.
CNN may have inadvertently fooled me though. For a few hours their story titles said, "Ryan: I really misspoke." followed by "Romney gets punk'd." For a second I thought it was going to say Paul Ryan punk'd Romney with his endorsement. But no, that wasn't it at all. And sadly, I didn't think to do a screen grab while I had the chance, and now it is gone.

But at least someone did get to play the April Fool today, and that was Romney. While stumping in Wisconsin, his staff pulled a pretty good one on him. They set up an event room identical to the room where the candidate was to meet with voters later in the day, complete with signage, drapes, etc. They even managed to pull off canned applause. 

Two Romney surrogates were in on the joke. Rep. Paul Ryan and Sen. Ron Johnson played their parts well, doing the intro, and walking out with Romney, per the usual campaign custom. The staff even played Kid Rock's "Born Free." Romney had no reason to suspect anything. 

The key detail may also be that the staff warned him that in spite of his good numbers in Wisconsin, the event had a poor turnout, and the room wouldn't be packed.

So Romney walks out to loud applause, and a wailing guitar, and the room is empty.

"I go in there, and it's completely empty. There's nobody there!" Romney giggled, as he later recounted the prank to his audience at the real event. "I thought, oh boy, this is going to look really bad on the evening news, let me tell ya."

The only thing the campaign didn't pull off? No press cameras to catch the priceless moment. 

"They turned me into the April Fool this morning! This is known as forgive, but remember. I tell ya, we're going to remember this." Romney laughed later.