I think you missed the joke. The thing that was funny about it to him when he said it was he knew it was a natural extension of his public position, yes an extreme version of it, but he knew it was also true and’s logical and it was funny to get away with saying it behind closed doors. An honest person would recognized the truth behind the joke and change the position that it stemmed from because they cared about making the world better. The fact that he recognized he was making the world worse AND continued in that path is what is so blatantly evil and revealing about this memo.

If Kevin Spacey had written a private note to Woody Allen that said, "Now that we've been chased out of the film industry, let's become day care workers," then it would be a very different kind of "joke" than The Onion writing the same as a headline.