Washington, D.C. - President George Bush spent Tuesday morning waiting for a local Bank of America Representative to give him his ATM card back. Apparently the President had forgotten his PIN number and didn’t realize it until after he had inserted his card into the machine. After three failed guesses, the machine ended Bush’s transaction and kept his card. Some ATM machines are programmed not to return a card for a number of reasons, to prevent fraud or people from leaving their cards accidentally.

The President described the ordeal to the White House press corps this afternoon. “I was trying to use my machine in the card [sic], when I realized, wait, I don’t know my number. So I pressed some buttons, you see, a couple different buttons, 4231, 5555, 4444, I tried em all. But I guess I didn’t get them right, because next thing I know the person behind the machine had kept my card.” When asked by a member of the press if the number ever came to him, the President said “Yes ma’am. Two days later it suddenly came to me—1234! I’ve never been a person with numbers[sic].”

Bush later elaborated on the difficulty caused by the accident, “It was bad. Because it was a holiday weekend, I couldn’t get any money until Tuesday. Here we are, we’ve got a war to pay for, and the machine has my card.” As of Tuesday evening, the card was returned and funding for the war had resumed.