Dear President Trump,

This will likely seem a strange place from which to launch today’s letter to you, but bear with me and we’ll see if I can pull it off. Two minutes ago I gave one of our toilets a “good enough” scrub with the toilet brush. While doing so, I remembered how a plumber we worked with years ago said he was bringing his son into the business by having him pull old toilets. A year later when that same plumber was upgrading our sump pump we asked about his son taking over the business. He shook his head sadly and said his son didn’t have an interest in plumbing after all. He didn’t make reference to the toilet pulling part of the job, but I couldn’t help think that maybe the reality of working hands on with systems that actually clear out people’s shit was too much for his son.

Here’s the big leap to the current national political scene. We tasked Mr. Mueller and his team with the dirty, crappy job of digging into what Russia did to influence the 2016 elections, to figure out whether the multitudinous contacts your campaign had with Russians were improper, whether they rose to a prosecutable level, and whether you did things to cover up what happened. Predictably, the shit-storm has taken on a new level of fury now that the report is out. Some of us (namely you) are indignant that the report includes notes and firsthand accounts from your inner circle about your attempts to have certain people fired. Others of us read excerpts from the report (or actually dig into it ourselves) and are incredulous that no solid determination of criminality was made, that you still have access to the nuclear codes.

And here we all are still stuck in a crappy, messy limbo that no one besides Elizabeth Warren seems to have the will to clean up. It’s dismaying that the Democratic House is waffling over whether it’s politically expedient to initiate impeachment proceedings. Most of them seem to think it makes more sense to entrain attention to “issues voters care about,” like healthcare and infrastructure.

Honestly, I do think most people care whether you and your administration are corrupt and in the pocket of a foreign adversary. In response to a WP poll done earlier this month that asked how findings from the Mueller investigation would influence whether they would vote for you in 2020, 51% said the findings would not influence them, 17% said they would be more likely to vote for you, and 30% said they would be less likely to vote for you. Last time I checked, 30% is a lot bigger than 17%, which suggests to me that it would not be political folly for the House to be bold and begin impeachment proceedings against you. Even more importantly, it would put them on the right side of history rather than besmirched by the cowardice of political expediency forever.

May we be safe from you.
May we be willing to hold you accountable.
May we insist on a full, healthy reckoning with the mess that is your presidency.
May you not start a war.

Sincerely,
Tracy Simpson