Dear President Trump,

It was years (and years) ago when some news outlet, probably the NYT since that’s what I was reading back in the early days of your reign of terror, reported on your habit of insisting that you be served two scoops of vanilla ice cream with your gorgeous, most beautiful-ever chocolate cake, while your guests were served a single scoop. I don’t remember exactly what the context for the story was, but I do recall that you were reportedly smug and shruggy about it, maintaining something to the effect that you were The President (King, Emperor, Ruler on High, wannabe-Dictator – take your pick) and you deserved more than everyone else, including the other heads of states you were hosting.

I scolded you about it way back when and took it to be a very bad sign that telegraphed just how base your instincts are. You’d already tried to enact your “Muslim Ban” and had made various other big show-your-handlers-you-were-all-in-for-them moves that were getting you lots of plugs on the conservative airwaves (and plenty of grief in the mainstream press), but that greedy, entitled little deal with the ice cream felt like it was really all you, a tic or a tell not driven in the least by motivation to keep your money buckets happy. And here we are.

We have a POTUS who was (and probably would be yet if showy events were still possible) happy to flout his privilege over his peers to assert his power, who determined it was a good idea to take twice as much as everyone else even though there was almost certainly a virtually unlimited supply of vanilla ice cream in the WH kitchen freezers – more than enough for everyone who wanted two scoops to have two scoops. And this was with other heads of states and CEOs of huge corporations.

Yes, it could have been just a way to posture and wave your dick around, a way to claim ascendance over people who were threatening to you because they probably had at least a modicum of expertise and legitimacy. But if you were willing to be so petty, rude, and withholding with them, then clearly the rest of us have no chance in hell of getting even a teaspoon of ice cream, let alone an adequate covid-19 testing and contact surveillance system like the one you have in the WH or the economic support we need to stop our free fall into a Depression. Nada. As in we are f*cked with you at the helm.

I still think that the Mercers, the Kochs (now the Koch), the Red Sea Six (leaders of Russia, Israel, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, and Egypt) installed you because they knew you were malleable and that you would be down with trashing America, our standing in the world, and democracy – they picked the right man-child for the job, for sure. These are all smart, cunning folks and so I’m guessing they’d been studying you for quite a while and figured that the combination of entitlement, selfishness, vacuity, desperation, brashness, xenophobia (I don’t think they cared about your misogyny, but that was a bonus), and divisiveness would get them what they wanted – America devouring itself and going down in flames. And the more obvious you are about it all, the better because we are just that much more complicit when we can’t deny that our leader is a greedy, crooked jackass who we nonetheless put up with.

May we be safe from our greedy, crooked jackass of a POTUS.
May we never again be willing to look the other way when our leaders are jerks.
May we engage with the strength and courage needed to transform our democracy.
May we accept that the current version allowed itself to be debased and thus needs a complete overhaul – or to be scrapped.

Sincerely,
Tracy Simpson