President* Trump,

Hey, I’ve got six new one-way pen pals, or seven if you count the ‘cc line. I’m not sure how long I’ll keep it up but I wrote group emails to the USPS Board of Governors with DeJoy cc’d Saturday and Sunday urging them to kick-start their moral compasses and stand up to the DeJoy/Trump juggernaut that is perpetrating the systematic take-down of the USPS and democracy. None of them has responded yet, but we’ll see. I think their phone lines and email inboxes are being bombarded and you never know which message is finally going to tip the balance so I figure I might as well add to the pile.

Laura read me a very long article by Olivia Nuzzi from the New York Magazine last night about the state of your campaign and oh my goodness does it sound like you’re in a world of hurt there. Even though Nuzzi was remarkably even-keeled in her presentation and took more of a “just the facts Ma’am” approach than a sensationalistic expose approach, it was pretty damning. Staffers in swing states who didn’t remember they’d put out a press release about a volunteer meet-up, to which only the reporter showed up. A campaign manager, Bill Stepien, who could care less about you and your mission/message/whatever and treats the whole thing like a game he just needs to win. It’s a seriously long article crammed full of minute, but very telling, details conveying how badly frayed around the edges the whole thing is. Nuzzi also effectively reports how fatally flawed the campaign is at its core; everyone involved has gotten the memo that you won’t tolerate hearing the truth about the polls or how things are actually going so they’re mostly scurrying around trying to placate you. Good luck with that approach.

And yet, the latest ABC-Post poll shared in the WP this morning still has 43% of committed (‘yes, I will definitely be voting in the 2020 presidential election’) voters saying they’ll be casting ballots for you, which I find horrifying.

What it looks like from here (and yes, it’s obvious as hell so I’m not calling out anything most sentient beings haven’t already figure out) is that you must have something besides the demolition of the USPS and the various well-known GOP voter suppression strategies up your little sleevies. We all know that you hate to lose – losing is for losers after all – but it sure looks like you and yours aren’t choosing to run a real campaign and you clearly don’t feel the need to govern in ways that address the voters’ primary concerns, so how is it that you think you can still win?

Well, I bet if we were to peek up your little sleevies (or at your non-secure cell phone logs) we’d see quite a few of your old friends from 2016 hanging out in your armpit hair. Vladimir is no doubt tickling you with promises of armies of internet bots and trolls working to take Biden and Harris down as we (don’t) speak, Netanyahu is stroking your arm and whispering about the fancy algorithms his old military officers are employing to your benefit, while MBS is asking who you’d like taken out of the way. Then there are the likes of the Mercers, the Koch, and the Zuckerberg, all of whom have ownership stakes in you….

I realize it’s unlikely we’ll ever know for sure who all is propping you up and exactly how they’re doing it, but there’s no way in hell you can win with just the cheating we can currently see so I sure as hell hope someone is peeking behind the curtains (up your sleeves) and doing something about what’s lurking there.

May our democracy be safe from bad actors, to include our POTUS.
May we be willing to keep calling out those without moral compasses.
May we do what we need to repair our democracy before it’s too late.
May we accept that when our POTUS appears lame there’s corruption lurking below the surface.

Sincerely,
Tracy Simpson