Dear President Trump,

Yesterday Macron said to you “Let’s be serious and worthy of our people.” I don’t think you heard him. Really, I don’t think you are capable of hearing him let alone heeding those words. I actually do think you are serious though, I think you’ve been exceedingly serious and strategic about achieving Vladimir’s ends. Vladimir or no Vladimir, it’s the “let’s be worthy of our people” part that’s foreign to you, that might as well have been beamed down from some distant planet in a language never heard on Earth.

Have you even read the Charlevoix G7 Summit Communique that you signed onto for a nanosecond and then pulled us out of in a feigned fit of pique? Reuters is carrying the whole thing (https://www.reuters.com/article/us-g7-summit-communique-text/the-charlevoix-g7-summit-communique-idUSKCN1J5107) and after reading about half of the 28 sections it was clear you were never serious about signing onto it, that you needed to pick a fight with Trudeau to give you cover for pulling out. The accord is essentially a series of beautiful aspirational goals aimed at creating a universally livable world and every one of them is antithetical to those of your administration (and the Kremlin). But you didn’t have the gumption to refuse to sign it in front of the cameras so you put a sham signature on the dotted line and waited until you could tweet from the safety of your lair on Air Force One to retract it, ostensibly because someone dissed you.

You could probably have found ways to quietly blow off nearly all the goals laid out in the accord, but I’m guessing Vladimir was not willing to let you just bluster through because of sections 16 and 17. Remember those? 16 insists on North Korea’s full, verifiable denuclearization and calls out the regime’s human rights abuses and 17 ticks through a litany of offenses committed by Vladimir and condemns them all even as it attempts to lay out a path back for him/them. Had you remained a signatory to the accord it would have forced you/us to publicly take much stronger stands on North Korea and Russia than Vladimir was willing to tolerate. So, his Manchurian President pulled out, jeopardizing literally everyone on Earth.

May we be safe from dictators.
May we be happy to patriotically call BS on our dangerously crooked president and his GOP props.
May we protect our own and one another’s mental health by calling out the lies being foisted on us.
May we not let you drag us into a war.

Sincerely,
Tracy Simpson