President* Trump,

Laura and I drove down to Portland this morning to see my mom and then back again this evening. Despite the masks and social distancing, we had a really nice visit and it was so good to see her – it’d been a long time.

There weren’t nearly as many Trump signs along the way as I would have thought, it being pretty rural along most of I-5, but I did see one Trump 2020 flag. It looked like it must have been made of super cheap nylon fabric and printed with super cheap ink since the flapping edge was badly frayed and the words were basically light pink and very light blue – I’m guessing that wasn’t the effect you all were after. It sure fits though; of course you would use such cheap crap that the product looks like what you’d expect a year after the election, not two months before it. Par for your course, for sure.

The wheels are starting to come off the bus, aren’t they? It probably knocked you for a loop-d-loop to have so many Fox News people come to Jennifer Griffin’s defense when you attacked her over her announcement that she’d been able to confirm most of Jeffery Goldberg’s story about you (very badly) disrespecting military people and veterans. I mean, I know you’ve been rattled before by the Fox News folks who passed on the Kool-aid not toeing the Trumpian line, but this is even more serious for you than the occasional strong stand by Chis Wallace. Seven (or maybe more by now) of Griffin’s Fox News colleagues attesting to her integrity and her journalistic chops in reference to a story that puts you in a terrible light and risks undermining support from a key portion of your base seems like pretty bad news for you.

You do realize that you bring this shit on yourself, right? If you didn’t say such callous, stupid, mean things about people then such callous, stupid, mean things couldn’t later be used against you. It’s really pretty simple. As in – hello in there, anybody home? No, I suppose not.

And then there’s the latest dastardly deed brought to us by Steven Miller, the one you are parroting about forthwith forbidding all federal agencies from sponsoring any anti-bias training that talks about white privilege or critical race theory, saying they are divisive, anti-American propaganda. I seriously find it hard to believe that there is an anti-bias training curriculum being delivered in any federal (or state, county, or city) workplace that “involve(s) teaching that America is an “inherently racist or evil country” (https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/09/04/white-house-racial-sensitivity-training/) or insisting that (presumably White) employees say they benefit from racism. I personally believe this is true, but it’s pretty far fetched that something that bold (and true) is going to be vetted for distribution in a government setting.

Your knee jerk, scared-y cat reaction to lots more White people reckoning with race, racism, and their part in it is just further evidence that the wheels are coming off your nasty-ass bus and you are headed for the ditch. Or maybe off a cliff. Good riddance.

May we be safe during White supremacy’s death throes.
May we be willing to add the patriarchy to the pyre.
May we have the strength and the courage to burn it all down.
May we accept that we need to start fresh and build something truly sustainable.

Sincerely,
Tracy Simpson