Dear President Trump,

This morning…..
Happy Valentine’s Day. I’m guessing you aren’t exactly feeling the love from your loudest peeps as they attempt to raise the freak-out level over the compromise budget bill that most certainly will not buy you or them a wall. In fact, I bet you’re getting many a nasty-gram as you list towards signing the bill to avert another government shutdown. Wouldn’t it be nice if we could breathe a collective sigh of relief and conclude that you’ve come to your senses and are putting the American people above a stupid idea? On this one, though, I doubt anyone is going to make much more of it beyond you choosing the most politically expedient path currently available to you. In other words, if you were to balk and veto the bill, causing another shutdown, you and the GOP would be utterly burnt toast for the foreseeable future.

You know how nasty burnt toast is, right? No matter how much of the ashy bits you scrape off, the toast still tastes awful and is so dry and brittle it might as well be composted outright. I personally think you all are burnt toast whether you cause another shutdown or not, but for you, it’s really about whether the wafflers in your base perceive you as burnt toast and you can’t afford to have any more of them defect. So good luck dealing with your anti-Valentine’s Day wishes from Hannity and Coulter and whoever else makes their money by inflaming all that is mean and small about America.

This evening…..
Of course I should have seen it coming this morning and called it ahead of time. Definitely a “duh!” thing not anticipating that you’d hand us a sick two ‘fer: pass the spending bill to avoid the wrath of the people and call for a national emergency to build your unnecessary vanity wall that won’t do jack. What did you promise Mitch to get him to go along with this hogwash? Are you going to pardon him when things finally come to light showing how deep in he is?

Maybe there’s small consolation in that the political and legal fights over whether you’ll really get that funding will almost certainly mean that there won’t be an inch of wall erected with it in either of our lifetimes. You get to slime out from under your stupid promise and we get a protracted, insanely expensive, battle that you’ll probably find a way to personally profit from. Totally predictable and totally disgusting.

May we be safe from you.
May we be happy to continue resisting you and your power grabs.
May we stay clear that healthy governance is possible and looks nothing like what is going on now.
May you not start a war to top this off.

Sincerely,
Tracy Simpson