Dear President Trump,

Remember how last February after the MSD mass shooting there were claims that the survivors who were speaking out about gun violence were crisis actors, that they weren’t really students who witnessed the murder of 17 people from their school community? Do you remember when those claims started burbling up to discredit the student activists? I do. And I remember feeling a mixture of outrage and incredulity, with “Who comes up with this shit?” being front and center. Really, it was (and is) so far- fetched an idea that I actually had a hard time imagining who would be able to manufacture it.

There will need to be a careful investigation, but Alan W. Silberberg and an MSNBC reporter are both saying that your rallies are largely populated by hired actors. Silberberg looked up calls for “actors” and “crowd fillers” the week before each of your recent rallies and found about a dozen such advertisements, many with instructions to wear red shirts and promising loudness bonuses. The reporter was at the Ohio rally and talked with lots of people who said they weren’t from there; over 80% of the license plates in the lot weren’t Ohio plates. It sure looks like you all thought of accusing the MSD students of being crisis actors because this is out of your playbook. I wonder whether the people who were being so vile to the media, including cute-plaid-sundress-woman from the other day, were actually paid actors. Either way, anyone who would do that, even for money, I count as being in your base so in a way it’s a wash.

Sort of. Yes, people who would yell and scream for you and hurl obscenities at journalists for pay are likely to vote for you if they vote at all, but if they would not have shown up without the pay and your arena would have been nearly empty (like a certain inauguration crowd), the duplicity is reprehensible. No wonder the unemployment rate is down. Plus, who is paying them?

I sure as hell hope someone digs into this and gets some proof that this is what you are doing. I also want you to be indicted and I want us to go through a formal truth and reconciliation process so that your supporters can be disabused of all the lies and we can avoid losing an entire generation to your self-serving, greedy wickedness.

May we be safe from odious manipulators.
May we be happy to get to the bottom of their lies.
May we stay strong and united and undaunted.
May we believe you when you say what we are seeing is not real.

Sincerely,
Tracy Simpson