Dear President Trump,

Before I get to the business end of today’s letter, I want to let you know that your contact page and the universe conspired in a pretty funny way. Yesterday’s letter was all about raising an alarm regarding the number of copyediting errors I’ve seen in the WP lately and at the end I indicated that Laura and I had done a careful review of said letter to eliminate copyediting errors. Well, after I’d posted the letter to my blog and was putting it into your contact page, the character count function automatically cut the content off after “copy ”, the space signaling a likely copyediting mistake. What are the odds that my oversight in linking up “copy” and “editing” correctly (the two words were split across lines in my Word doc) would line up dead on with the character limit on your dang contact page? Seriously, it couldn’t have been a more perfect little thwack to the forehead (and my pride).

And the WP mistakes continue as well.

During my morning perusal of the paper I came across three more copyediting errors. One was in a review of John Urschel’s book Mind and Matter: A Life in Math and Football and it included this quote from him: “I’m looking forward to being considered that mathematician who used play football.” Arg.

The second and third errors were in articles I read to find out more about the intended focus of today’s letter (i.e., the business end noted above); namely, the scary shit you Tweeted out yesterday from Japan about your special relationship with Kim Jong Un and how he’s sending you signals.

The first article mainly focused on your sense that you and Kim agree about Joe Bidan (sic), but it also quoted Pete Buttigieg as saying you “….. essentially handling North Korea something they needed, which was legitimacy.” The second was primarily about the disconnect between you and Bolton regarding North Korea’s continued ballistic missile testing and included commentary on Japan’s position: “Japan also described North Korea’s last test as short-range ballistic missiles, in violation of U.N. Security Council resolutions, but noted that they did not land with Japanese waters or directly threaten its security.” Sigh x 2.

You’ve said and done a lot of horrifying, horrible things in the last 856 days, 7 hours, and 1 minute (and sadly, counting) and many of those things are far worse than that Tweet, but it was a doozy. It raises all sorts of alarms, including worries that you’re zinging all over the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders in increasingly frightening ways. It also signals to Americans, to the Kremlin, and to the rest of the world that you see yourself more closely aligned with a cruel dictator than with a legitimate presidential candidate whose name you can’t even spell correctly. The Tweet also dangerously downplays the threat that an emboldened Kim poses to South Korea, Japan, and our West Coast.

So what are you doing? Is this yet another cluster bomb lobbed into the mix to distract us from the Mueller report and the copious pending suits against you and your administration? Probably. But you’re messing with fire and I don’t think you have a clue how to contain it. So, if for no other reason than to grab hold of your attention, I sure as hell hope the House initiates impeachment inquires ASAP.

May we all be safe from our increasingly unhinged president.
May we all be willing to step up and hold you and your coterie accountable.
May we all (especially you) recognize how patently unhealthy it is to mess with fire.
May you not start a war.

Sincerely,
Tracy Simpson