Readers say Andy Borowitz should stop making jokes about alternate universe where Trump is president

MANHATTAN -- Throughout his career, famed New Yorker writer Andy Borowitz has tested the outer boundaries of satire via his exuberantly absurdist takes on American politics.

But since January, even Borowitz's most loyal readers say he's veering too far from reality.

"He keeps on writing about an alternate universe where Trump is president," complained Veronica Horace in a 21,768 word letter to the editor of the New York Review of Books.

"I understand that humorists need to take liberties with the facts. I loved Borowitz's work during the election. But since Hillary Rodham Clinton was sworn in in January, he keeps revisiting this demented counterfactual timeline where Trump won the election. It's just not realistic," she wrote.

She's not the only frustrated New Yorker subscriber. 

In a radio interview on Friday, Walter Kahn, editor of the storied literary blog "Satyrs on Satire," told NPR's Terry Gross that he was aghast last week on reading this surreal paragraph from Borowitz's March 4th story, "Trump Orders All White House Phones Covered in Tin Foil:"

In a frenzy of early-morning activity on Saturday, President Donald J. Trump ordered aides to immediately cover every phone in the White House with tin foil, White House sources confirmed.

Kahn said he was overcome by the desire to factcheck Borowitz.

"LOL, Borowitz, what?" wrote Kahn in a scathing viral Tumblr post that's since reached No. 4 on the New York Times Bestseller List. "Why would Trump be in the White House? Hillary Clinton lives there. It just makes no sense. Has Borowitz gone mad?"

In a curt email, New Yorker editor David Remnick defended Borowitz's artistic choices, saying, "Everyone knows that Hillary Clinton is president of the United States. She won the election by 3 million votes! But it's imperative that everyone understand Andy's work is very meta. You people simply have no sense of humor."