Dear President Trump,

I think you were telling the truth, for once, when you said “So all I can do is say, ‘Did you?’ and ‘Don’t do it again.’” I believe it’s true that this is all you can do to confront Vladimir Monday if you want to wake up Tuesday or if you want your favorite grandchild to wake up Tuesday. In addition to allowing you all sorts of illusory goodies (riches, bad-boy snatch and grab powers), I think Vladimir is also using serious sticks to control his pet monkeys. For all the neglect of Russia’s people and mismanagement of its natural resources, the Kremlin does seem to have perfected the ability to track, terrorize, and terminate turncoats and adversaries and their loved ones. This is an overly dramatic sketch of what I imagine the situation to be, but it’s as though every person in your family is being tracked through a sniper scope and you are being fed images of them all with a target constantly hovering over their hearts. Or maybe in your case, all they need to make clear is that there’s a target constantly hovering over your heart – that would probably suffice. Maybe there’s audio too so you can hear when the sniper is locked and loaded (or whatever it is when everything is clicked into place, ready to shoot).

You’ve surely been around little kids when they are confronted with having done something that displeases an adult. Depending on the feared consequence, they can come up with some incredible whoppers, desperately rattling them off with no awareness that they make no sense and are even contradictory. They tap dance as fast as they can to avoid punishment because they are scared. They are lying through their little teeth and not paying attention to what they are saying because they are scared out of their minds. Literally, they are out of their minds; their pre-frontal cortexes have completely shut down and lizard brain has taken over.

Heading into Monday’s meeting with Vladimir and as Mueller closes in on what went down, the number of contradictory, illogical, stupid lies coming out of your mouth is increasing daily. One logical hypothesis is that you are scared out of your mind and trying desperately to avoid punishment, whether meted out directly on you or on people you still somehow care about.

May you be safe to come clean and tell the truth.
May you be happy to step out of whatever sick deal you made with the devil.
May you and your family stay healthy.
May you not cave to your fears by starting a war.

Sincerely,
Tracy Simpson