Dear President Trump,

I’m going to try to remember to use this great little phrase coined by David Greenberg (WP editorial “When Should Republicans Jump Ship?”) in the future, but want to share it with you now just for the heck of it – “rump devotees.” He was referencing GOP toadies who maintained allegiance to Nixon even as the tape and all the rest torpedoed his presidency. Greenberg didn’t use it to describe your GOP toadies, but it’s pretty dang perfect. Here it is in a sentence: “Trump’s rump devotees are elbowing each other out of the way in their efforts to kiss his ass.” Nice, huh? Sophomoric, for sure, but you all don’t deserve more refined descriptions and it’s important to keep things real.

Did you see the WP article by Jaffe and Dawsey this morning entitled “A presidential loathing for Ukraine is at the heart of the impeachment inquiry”? In it they argue that members of your administration have done a yeoman’s work trying to get you to come around to the notion that Ukraine is deserving of our support. Jaffe and Dawsey also say that most everyone around you has been baffled from Day 1 about your antipathy towards the country. They go into how you’ve apparently bought into the conspiracy theories that Ukraine tried to help Clinton along with the opposing one that it was Ukraine that clumsily tried to tip the scales in your favor, not Russia. The arguments are a mess, which is not terribly surprising since you’re not known to be an especially bright sociopath so folks will be forgiven if they think you believe both sides of an incompatible set of arguments.

Basically, the article did not question that you are dug in about Ukraine because you believe some or all of this crap. Nowhere does the article even broach the idea that maybe, just maybe you’ve been feigning all this righteous nonsense from the beginning because it deflects from your BFF’s interventions on your behalf. Never mind that the troll farm and Russia’s methods have been exposed and arrest warrants are out for a bunch of Russian nationals, you knew from the get go that it was a good idea to plant Ukrainian seeds that would allow you to later harvest some of that plausible deniability on Russia that so sustains you. Another WP article did make this point in passing, but it was primarily about something else and I can’t find it now so I can’t tell you who else is tracking on the obvious. Fortunately, though, someone with some exposure is because that Jaffe/Dawsey article is a disaster.

I thought I might try to get into something more pro social and thoughtful today, but it’s just not going to happen. Maybe tomorrow. We’ll see. Anyway, since I’m staying lowbrow and down in the muck with you, I’ll just tell you that we listened to the recordings posted on Twitter of the UFC crowd booing you probably five times last night. The one where the person was recording the crowd sounds just before you came out and continued recording after you entered the arena was especially telling, and really, quite awful. It is a good thing that people aren’t afraid of you and feel they can boo you in public, but it’s so sad that we have a president who inspires this kind of response. I’m sure there were people in that crowd cheering you, but to hear someone yelling “f*ck you!” at the POTUS must be music to Putin’s ears and that is not a good thing for us.

May we all remain safe to protest.
May we all be willing to do what we can for the good of the community so we can move past this.
May your GOP toadies, your rump devotees, recognize they are betting their grandchildren’s futures on a charlatan.
May you not start another war.

Sincerely,
Tracy Simpson