Dear President Trump,

You just can’t help yourself, can you? The last several days must have been miserable as you held yourself back from blasting Dr. Ford. I bet your blood pressure went up at least 15 points. Apparently today you had to let off steam so you let her and the rest of the world know that nothing and no one will get in the way of installing your guy. Through this whole thing, even before Dr. Ford’s allegations were on the table, you, McConnell, and the rest of the gang were all slathering to just be done with it, bypassing the usual procedures, making sure thousands of documents were unavailable for review, glossing over inconvenient inconsistencies in Kavanaugh’s testimony. You really must be desperate for the cover you think he will give you if the Democrats flip the House and the Senate, so desperate you will do anything to make sure he gets installed before November. This really could have gone no other way. You haven’t a shred of integrity whether anyone is or isn’t watching, so of course you aren’t willing to slow things down, direct the FBI to investigate, or compel Mark Judge to testify. Doing any of those things might surface information none of you wants to hear and that would be unacceptable, wouldn’t it?

I realize all of the “of course we want to hear from Dr. Ford; her allegations need a fair hearing” sort of talk was really about keeping as many white women mollified as possible because you can’t afford to lose all those votes. But there sure have been some weird mind-f*ck tactics and actually, they feel really familiar. There’s this strange veneer of reasonableness framed as generosity such that you all are willing to let her testify, except that gosh, no, you can’t possibly push past next Wednesday to hear from her because, oh my, you have to get your nails buffed. Or whatever. It’s on the same continuum as police body cameras and the veneer of accountability they provide when pretty much no matter how sick and egregious a police person’s shooting of a black boy or man is, if the cop can claim he was scared he will get away with murder. It’s all about going through the motions of mouthing what one is supposed to say to keep polite company polite and then going ahead and doing whatever the hell you want.

May we be safe to call out the mind-f*ck tactics.
May we be willing to stop putting up with them.
May we insist that our leaders lead with integrity rather than base self-interest.
May those who need to make peace with sharing power equitably do so.

Sincerely,
Tracy Simpson