Dear President Trump,

I am still feeling under the weather and stayed home from work again today. It’s been strange being away from work so long. I don’t like it. I miss my co-workers and I miss having things that feel important to do both for their own sake and because they help distract me from all the nasty politics and scary things going on, like the awful weather cycle on the East Coast and your dangerous posturing over the size of your nuclear button. I did do a little bit of work today, but I couldn’t concentrate well at all so it was clear I made a good call in staying home. Unfortunately though, my first patient scheduled for this morning didn’t get the message from the clinic manager yesterday that I would be out sick today so she made the trek in from Tacoma. I know I did what I could to prevent that from happening, but I still feel badly and will need to repair things next week when I’m back in the office.

How are you holding up? From the headlines it looks like your troops are rallying around you and abandoning Bannon. It even looks like his tenure at Breitbart may be coming to an end. You must be quite the kingmaker to be able to flail about so wildly, take so many hits from former loyalists, and still be the one the 1% props up. Granted, it’s probably the case right now that you are the only viable game in town and they will back you until someone better comes along. I imagine it doesn’t hurt at all that the stock market topped 25,000 today, though I don’t understand how there were enough people at work to make that happen with the bomb cyclone bearing down on you all out there. Apparently, sadly, moneymaking really does trump everything else and you are delivering spectacularly on that count so chances are you can do pretty much whatever the hell you want and stay in the donors’ good graces. Which means the rest of us are stuck with you. For now.

The one bright spot from today was learning you disbanded the bogus Voter Fraud Commission because there were just too many legal challenges to their tactics. I don’t think this means you are done attacking voting rights so we’ll have to watch you carefully on that front. But, still, it feels like a mini victory and I’ll take it.

May you and the others on the East Coast be safe.
May you all be happy to shelter everyone from the storm.
May you all stay healthy through the ordeal.
May you, in particular, see how bomb cyclones are related to climate change.

Sincerely,
Tracy Simpson