Dear President Trump,

Apparently yesterday I read “CDC” in too many articles about too many unvaccinated people who’d contracted the measles and I was on autopilot when I attempted to shorthand “Cranky Buddha Baby” with just his initials. So, for the record, Cranky Buddha Baby = CBB, not CBC. Laura caught the error immediately when she read the post. At that point it was too late to correct it, but since we have this steadfast correspondence going (if I count the autoreplies back from your contact page), I knew there’d be an opportunity to set the record straight.

Messing around with and messing up an acronym led me to remember the tortured, but still worthy one that Jennifer Rubin (WP) came up with the other day when she was advocating for legislative changes in the wake of the Mueller report. Here’s what she came up with: “The Restoration of Unblemished and Meddle-free Politics (TRUMP) Act.” She said that you like things with your name on them and since any such legislation would be all about plugging the gaps you all exploited in 2016, it does seem fitting. I want to note, however, that the word “Restoration” is a major stretch here because before you and even before the advent of those disgusting “super PACs,” we had ungodly amounts of big money and countless backroom deals blemishing and meddling in our elections for generations. We can’t keep patching up something that’s rotten to its core.

I do want to lift up one particular campaign-related patch that I’m still having trouble believing is really necessary – who knew (except maybe someone clever in your campaign coterie) that while it’s illegal to share polling data and campaign strategies with domestic independent political action groups it isn’t illegal to share such information with foreign governments or their agents. WTF? I’ve puzzled over this for months regarding Manafort having shared your campaign’s polling data with Konstantin Kilimnik. Whenever I’ve read that bit in the laundry list of Russia-Trump crap, I’ve always mentally said something to myself like “How can that not be a crime? Surely it must be a crime.” Did someone in your ranks comb the laws to see if this behavior was or was not covered by current statute or did you just luck out? Either way, it’s an especially damning part of the story and it’s one of the larger items now overfilling the “High Crimes and Misdemeanors” bucket that more than justifies starting impeachment proceedings.

May we be safe from politicians who are willing to do anything to “win.”
May we be willing to step back and rethink our elections from the ground up.
May we insist on healthy, fair, fully enfranchised elections.
May we not make peace with the shoddy version of democracy we have in place now.

Sincerely,
Tracy Simpson