Dear President Trump,

You will no doubt dismiss the new WP-ABC poll numbers as so much fake news, but I’m sure you are studying them carefully to figure out how to best calibrate the next round of divisive fear mongering. As usual, people of color are the canaries in the coalmine in that over 80% of them disapprove of your performance. Not surprisingly, 93% of Democrats disapprove of you as do 59% of Independents. This is only one poll (based on just over 1,000 people), but if the pollsters did a good job of getting a representative slice of Americans, you should be plenty worried since there’s no way your Trump base can overcome the combined energy and matter of the Democrats and Independents voting together.

If we actually turn out to vote. And if we are actually allowed to turn out and vote.

It clearly doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out why you all are upping your attacks on voting outlets in predominantly African American jurisdictions, throwing Latino US citizens under the bus by denying or confiscating their passports, and making an example of someone like Crystal Mason, the Texas woman who mistakenly voted while on supervised release for a felony charge and is now facing five f*ucking years in prison. It is beyond insane that someone who mistakenly voted should be so severely punished. How can this be happening in America? This is the stuff of pogroms. And these blatant abuses of power are just the ones that have oozed to the surface of the cesspool. Then there’s all the stuff beneath the surface like social media influence campaigns and ongoing threats to the voting infrastructure brought to us by Russia (and likely Iran and China) that your administration has at best ignored and at worst covertly encouraged.

This is like the schoolyard bully who knows he can’t win in a fair fight so he sucker punches his adversary and then has his buddies hold the victim down so he can beat the living shit out him (or her). To top it off he then tells the schoolyard monitor the victim started it and taunts and shames the victim. I’ve no doubt you got a lot of practice perfecting these tactics when you were a boy since you are too good at this to have just started it in 2017.

May we be safe from cowards.
May we be happy to stand together to face down those who abuse their power.
May we do everything we can to reclaim the ideals of a healthy democracy.
May you not take the next logical step in this sick sequence and start a war.

Sincerely,
Tracy Simpson