WASHINGTON, D.C.—Vice President Mike Pence has finally released the fart he has been holding in for seven years.

At a breakfast for small business owners this Friday, Pence paused in the middle of assuring attendees that the President does not intend to declare war on Australia. He furrowed his eyebrows, looked pensively at his shoes, and let a big one rip. 

When he looked up, his formerly permanent look of pained euphoria—like a marble statue squinting into the sun, or a constipated clown trying to make a bowel movement behind a circus tent, or a self-serving politician pretending to experience human emotion—had already begun to fade. 

Jimmy Brooks, a mechanic from Iowa, sat next to Pence as he released his historically overdue flatulence. "It's an honor to have smelled it," Brooks told reporters after the breakfast. "That's the toot of man who is going to Make America Great Again."

Anna Jones, a florist from Kentucky who had the misfortune of standing directly in Pence's drift, offered a different opinion. "I thought he looked like that because he injects his face with rat poison every night as he renews his pact with the devil and throws toad feet into a cauldron," she shrugged. "I didn't realize he's just been trying to pass some gas."

February promises to be a month of firsts for the Vice President. According to White House aides, Pence plans to show his teeth when he smiles for the very first time next week. By the end of the month, he intends to try out empathy.