WASHINGTON – President-elect Donald Trump will make history this Friday, when he is both sworn in and assured he has made his father proud, by an actor portraying the late Fred Trump.

“The Trump transition team has spent weeks searching for an actor who can handle this momentous role,” explained Trump spokesperson Katrina Pierson. “This actor will be responsible for not only swearing in a president-elect, but also for providing him with the parental closure he so desperately craves and requires.”

“It’s been a tall order, casting-wise,” added Pierson.

Washington insiders reveal that the Fred Trump lookalike plan was floated after the president-elect rejected being sworn in by Chief Justice John Roberts, accusing him of “looking like a stupid loser”. After rejecting numerous Supreme Court Justices, Federal Judges, and professional athletes, White House strategist Steve Bannon allegedly suggested hiring an actor dressed as Fred Trump, “mostly as a joke”. This suggestion was immediately seized on by President-elect Trump, at which point the casting search began.

With Trump now singularly focused on being inaugurated by a facsimile of his famously-withholding father, a casting call was soon drafted. The call went out to numerous Hollywood and theatrical agents, seeking a suitable physical match for the long-deceased Fred Trump. An offer was reportedly put out to actor John Cleese, who aggressively declined. This refusal may explain Trump’s recent cryptic tweet:

This week Trump officials announced they had abandoned their search for a “Fred Trump-alike”, upon realizing that a day-player wearing a crude Fred Trump mask would be enough to suit the president-elect’s dangerously repressed subconscious desires. The lucky actor to land the role is New York community theatre mainstay Trevor Bradford, 80. Trump officials report he cinched the role due to his “appropriate height, and willingness to be paid in exposure.”

“Our rehearsals have been going along perfectly,” explained Trump strategist Kellyanne Conway on Sunday’s Meet The Press. She explained how the Fred Trump surrogate would deliver the standard oath of office, adding in several passages about how Donald Trump “has made [him] extremely proud,” and emphasizing that he “was wrong to never tell him so while [he] was alive”. Finding an appropriate place and delivery of the final line, “I love you, son,” has been subject to greatest debate within the Trump camp.

Conway enthused, “At this point we just have to make it all the way through a full dress run without the president-elect sobbing uncontrollably or punching the Fred Trump actor in the face.”