Dear President Trump,

Yesterday when I sent your letter I hadn’t seen the Tweet from Melania’s phone. It sure sounds cobbled together from canned phrases from your insanely voluminous Twitter feed, but it also sounds too coherent to have been sent by you. Did you dictate to her and she cleaned it up? Did you dictate to someone else and they cleaned it up? You may be hip to this by now, but a single Tweet that doesn’t sound like the person it’s attributed to doesn’t automatically clear up where said person actually is or if said person is even alive. I’m not saying Melania is dead – I have no idea whether she is alive or dead, ill or well, leaving you or happily ensconced on a daybed in the White House with a good book. I do know, though, that it would be a good idea for her (and Barron) to show up looking normal and healthy right about today.

Moving on, I think I just figured out why I’m in such a bad mood this evening. Part of it is having had a fairly stressful day at work, part of it is the ongoing crap coming out of your administration with bad faith trade wars and pardons, and part of it was having tuned in to NPR in the middle of the recording of Michael Cohen’s obscene rant. I didn’t know what was going on or who was talking until the reporter came on and explained it was Michael going off on him about a story he was writing about you for The Daily Beast back in 2015. I was really shaken by what I heard. It was awful. I don’t think I’ve ever heard anything so hateful and vile that wasn’t in a movie. It sounded like a mad man shaking someone down for his Mafioso master. Turns out I was right.

You know, I shouldn’t be surprised at this point and I guess I’m not really, but the more layers of this rancid onion we peel back, the sadder and more heartsick I feel. How in the world could we have possibly elected you president? Even counting the hefty assist you had from your BFF, Vladimir, how could you even have been in the running with this kind of sick, violent shit at the foundation of your enterprise? Does this stuff go on all the time with prominent people in business and politics? I don’t know, but we can’t let greed and hate best us, so here is a blessing for you to tip things ever so slightly in the direction of love:

May your actions be safe.
May you be happy to compost the rancid onion and start over.
May you have a care for someone, anyone else’s health and well-being.
May you not start a diversionary war.

Sincerely,
Tracy Simpson