Dear President Trump,

There’ve now been a handful of rat-sightings around our next-door neighbor’s house, which probably means they are scurrying around ours too. My favorite sighting was the other morning first thing when I let the dogs out in the front yard. It was still dark but with all the street lights it’s never completely dark so I got treated to the sight of a rat scampering along the inside lateral beam of our neighbor’s front fence. It was actually going quite fast, but when it got to the vertical beam just before the gate it smoothly hopped down, hustled across the walkway, and then – and then! – hopped up onto the lateral beam on the North section of the fence to complete the run. It was so great! I know that the rat could have cared less that I was watching (fortunately our dogs were oblivious), but it really seemed like it was showing off, like it was showboating for someone. It certainly wasn’t the easiest way to traverse the yard and it couldn’t have been the fastest, but hey, it was probably fun and maybe it impressed another rat along with me.

So why bring up a showy rat on this Friday evening in mid-November? Well, for one thing, I thought it was a pretty cool thing that rat did and I didn’t want to forget the feat. And for another thing, it just seems to be a good day to call out showy rats, don’t you think? For instance, you yourself were a showy rat today, just flipping going for it and attack-Tweeting about Yovanovitch at the same time she was testifying as to how awful it was to see your comment to Zelensky in the 7/25 call transcript about how she was going to be going through some things. Actually, a real rat wouldn’t have been so stupid (nor so sick) as to do that, but you can’t seem to help yourself. I imagine it played well in certain corners, but even other GOP people couldn’t bring themselves to give you a pass on that one.

You engaged in the sickest, most chilling showboating of the day, but your GOP props did their very best to make you proud – in a word, they were assholes. They (mostly) pretended to be “nice” to Yovanovitch since they knew how bad it would look if they were overtly disrespectful or boorish, but Stefanik disingenuously played the process cards to the hilt as she went after Schiff like a rabid terrier and Conaway was a sick snake in his line of questioning. I wanted to reach through the radio to choke Conaway (or to at least shake my finger really, really vigorously right in his face and tell him he should be ashamed of himself). I couldn’t believe how sleazy he was, insinuating that in landing at Georgetown with a light teaching gig with the same salary as before that Yovanovitch made out just fine in the end. He didn’t come out and say it, but his tone and the wheedling sequence of questions made it abundantly clear that he was trying to frame what happened to her as a “no harm, no foul” sort of deal when there was clearly harm to her and there was tremendous harm to the State Department and to America’s interests. Absolutely disgusting.

Conaway’s twisted insinuations line up really nicely with your props’ insistence on Wednesday that you did nothing the least bit wrong because, see – the military aid money was released and Zelensky insists he felt no pressure whatsoever. And I’ve got a bridge in Brooklyn that I’ll sell you real cheap. OMG.

Oh, for the day when the only rats I have to see are flitting across my neighbor’s yard.

May we all be safe from you.
May we be willing to hang tight and watch carefully.
May we be checked in on what is going on.
May we never make peace with what you are about.

Sincerely,
Tracy Simpson