Everybody loves Stormy. Presidents and their dogs have a storied history in politics. There was FDR and Fala, Nixon and his Checkers speech, and LBJ picking up a beagle by the ears (not really, but the photo didn’t show that the dog was actually standing on the ground and he just lifted the ears.) Since then we’ve had a ‘controversy’ about the Obama’s dog having a handler and Biden’s dogs biting people. Stormy fits right in. To the best of my knowledge, only Trump has never had a dog, or any other pet.
My dates on the Liberian problem are relatively close to what really happened, and we can assume that enough of a butterfly effect occurred to match the story.