Dear President Trump,

It appears we both had very long nights last night. I know mine was long because I lived it. We were awake until well after 2am because that’s when the wildly illegal fireworks finally stopped and our poor dogs could settle down. The firework situation here was off the hook out of control – it repeatedly sounded like huge guns were going off just down the block because the equivalent of huge guns were, in fact, going off just down the block. We were very unhappy campers and we made a pact that we will not be in town (or anywhere there is likely to be fireworks, even if that means taking the dogs to Canada) over the 4^th next year. Fortunately it looks like no wildfires were started because of fireworks, but a house South of Seattle did burn down as a result of them.

So, how do I know that your night last night was long too? Well, it’s largely because that speech of yours went on forever . And ever. I just looked up the text of it to find the gaffes and what a drone it was. Dang. I finally found what I was looking for at about the 38-minute mark, starting with the bunk about a place outside of Boston and New York (have you ever looked at a map of the Eastern Seaboard? Ever?) being named for George Washington. It went downhill from there with our Army manning the air, ramming ramparts, taking over airports, and finally being victorious at Ft. McHenry. You’d been doing a nutso amount of time-traveling already in your speech to that point, what with all the zinging around US-history-highlights, but that bit with the airports was something else, altogether. Basically, it’s got Article 25 written all over it, dude. As in, what the hell is wrong with you? Really? You need to get checked out. I don’t care how many teleprompters fail on you, do you not hear what comes out of your mouth? Does it not strike you as even a bit concerning that you could have conjured airports in the midst of the Revolutionary War?

Earlier, when Laura first told me about what happened, I ran through three possible scenarios: 1) your speech writer set you up by writing glaringly stupid things they knew you’d read unquestioningly; 2) you can’t read well and confused something (not sure what it could be) very, very badly, or 3) you went off script either because the teleprompter stopped for a minute or because you just went off script and you said inane stuff that you didn’t recognize to be inane. No matter which of these three (or four, depending how you want to count the options) is closest to the truth, you are an imbecile or you are dementing. Or both. It was problematic when you didn’t know Fredrick Douglas is dead, but no one in their right mind would think there were airports in 1776. There are third graders laughing at you.

I suppose it’s possible that someone (maybe you, maybe Putin, maybe Rebekah Mercer) thought it would be good for you to slip in some egregious gaffs for us all to pounce on so that we’d be distracted from the truly evil stuff you all are doing on multiple fronts. Maybe. It seems like a stretch that you would deign to look so stupid for something like this, but who the hell knows?

Assuming it wasn’t on purpose, whose task was it to fluff you up afterwards and tell you did an awesome job? Did they go so far as to look you in the eye and say something to the effect of “hey, America is so awesomely great, there must have been airports back then, we had them first, you know, even if they didn’t make it into the history books until later – we were probably trying not to brag on ourselves too much. So you totally nailed it Mr. President.” Whoever it was, I (sort of) feel sorry for them; that’s the epitome of the thankless task. Unless…. What if your staff is gaslighting you? What if the speechwriter did write that shit about ramming the ramparts and the airport intrusion? And what if your handlers are mollifying you with nonsense so that you keep sounding like a total dumbass? Not that you need any help, really, but this scenario would cut you the tiniest bit of slack. Sort of.

May we be safe from leaders who are clueless tools.
May we be willing to…. What? I don’t know what we should be willing to do about this.
May we insist that your health be checked by independent physicians.
May we not have to worry that our president is going to blunder us into war.

Sincerely,
Tracy Simpson