Dear President Trump,

For the first time in a long time things felt light enough around here last night that Laura played me some new music she thought I’d like (which I did). We also looked at pictures of the very cute long-haired Dachshund named Buddy Schweitz on Twitter (our Dachshund is also named Buddy but he’s not quite a photogenic as the other Buddy). We also watched the short campaign ad the Warren team put together right after her Washington Square speech Monday. Warren is sitting in the back seat of a car going through a pile of envelopes in her lap and she tells the camera that lots of the lovely people who waited in line to take selfies with her were kind enough to hand her cards and letters when it was their turn. She then opened several and read them aloud to the camera, thanking each writer when she was finished with their missive.

You will not be surprised to learn that I assiduously avoided any and all of your campaign ads in 2016 and also whatever you have out there thus far for 2020 (and don’t see a need to change this practice), but I think it’s safe to assume that you never, ever read notes from people cold on camera if for no other reason than you wouldn’t be able to. I’m sure you get lots of fan mail from your peeps, but the idea of you pulling a random letter out and being able to read through the first sentence smoothly is laughable (in a tragic sort of way).

There’s more to say about you in a sec, but I want to briefly go back to Warren and her strong showing Monday night, which is likely responsible for the lighter mood and energy here yesterday evening. Warren had to be exhausted by the end of the night between the speech and the four hours with eager selfie-takers on top of whatever else she did during the day, and yet she still smiled at the camera, at us, like she meant it. I don’t want to get too excited about her winning it all because so many other things could happen, but if she does win it all it’s going to be wonderful to have a POTUS who genuinely cares about all of us, the country, the rest of the world, and the planet. It may seem like a damn low bar to mark wonderfulness, but it is so fundamental to all the rest of a presidency and would be such an incredible sea change from you that her ability to radiate such care and warmth gives me a lot of hope for her candidacy and for us.

Plus, unlike you, she’s not a corrupt monster – she definitely has that going for her.

On the topic of you being a corrupt monster, I need to call out the news about the whistleblower within the Department of National Intelligence having sent a concern to the DNI Inspector General apparently about you having promised a foreign leader something inappropriate. You know the whole drill by now about how all this was supposed to go and didn’t so I’ll just say ‘holy shit – what did you do and how can you and Barr and whoever else is involved think you’ll get away with it?’

Ok, so all this has erupted into the public eye and we are waiting with bated breath to see if Schiff’s deadline for receiving the materials is honored. Bad situation – right? A potentially devastating situation for national security and for you and your administration – right?

This morning the WP is running an article about it with an “Exclusive” box hovering above the article so they are clearly on top of it and yet….. Thus far there is no commentary about it anywhere that I’ve seen. Jennifer Rubin, Greg Sargent, Paul Wald, Max Boot, E.J. Dion, Eugene Robinson – the whole lot of them are missing from the Opinion section this morning. What gives? Has everyone decided this thing is just too radioactive to venture any opinions until we know for sure that the complaint is about you? Maybe. That seems semi-reasonable, but what about some commentary about the process and how crazy shady it looks? What about the idea that this is just the one complaint that we somehow found out about and could well be the tip of the iceberg riddled with rotten ice just below the surface?

Later…. Well, Greg Sargent did run a WP piece last night, so I was off there, but really, the lack of commentary this morning was eerie. Since this morning, though, a whole slew of relevant WP opinion pieces have appeared and it looks like this story is going to be plastering the front pages for quite some time. It better. I’m sure the media will have to be careful not to take whatever bait you’re cooking up; we cannot let this one drift out of focus and join the pile under the rug that we are all tripping over.

May we be safe from you.
May Republican voters and donors wake up and say they are done with the GOP’s Trumpian-cronyism.
May we use the shitty lessons we are learning from you to strengthen our democracy.
May we all claim moments of peace for refuge so we can stay engaged over the long haul.

Sincerely,
Tracy Simpson