President* Trump,

Looks like I’m late to the party, or at least to the pre-funk where we get to savor the idea that you’ll make good on your threat to leave the country if you lose the election. Yesterday I got a Daily Kos notification about your quip during the super-spreader rally in Macon, Georgia last Friday where you said you wouldn’t feel so good if you lost to loser-candidate Biden and that you might just have to leave the country when that happens. Somehow I missed that juicy bit and thus missed out on four whole additional days of nursing that pleasant thought. Sigh.

When I saw this in my in box, my initial thought was to wonder (for a nanosecond) where in the world you might go. Of course, the obvious answer is somewhere in Russia and I think I found just the spot – the Caucasian Riviera. It’s for real. It’s on the Eastern shores of the Black Sea near the Caucasian Mountains – I’m not making these names up at all – and apparently it’s a ritzy tourist destination so you’d probably love it there. I don’t know whether there’s a golf course (probably, but if not, you do know a thing or two about ripping up pristine wilderness to install chemically sustained monoculture golf lawns), but according to the region’s Wikipedia page there’s downhill skiing and paragliding, both of which are nice and dangerous. Plus, as luck, and the gods of absurdity, would have it, the main port there is called “Port of Poti” so if you cruised there you could cross the Black Sea, arrive at the Port of Poti and start your new life in the Caucasian Riveria. I don’t think it gets any more perfect than that.

And yes, this did occasion a mini-laughing fit. Silliness is a good thing.

What I didn’t think of until just before I played travel agent for you is why, other than the embarrassment of losing to Biden, might you be foreshadowing to your peeps that you may well be exiting stage right when you lose the election. Well, an HP article by S.V. Date gives a ginormous clue. Get a load of this headline:

“Most Presidents Who Lose Deal With Shame.
Trump Could Have To Deal With Prison.”

Date goes through just a handful of your widely known scandals and illegal behaviors and shows how the statute of limitations would run out on most of them if you were to win a second term (though of course there’s no telling how many more you’d rack up in a hypothetical second term). He argues that your desperate, manic behavior around trying to win is fueled in large part by your desire to get a second POTUS “(stay) out of jail free” card. I suppose they aren’t too, too hard to find, but Date even quotes some prominent GOP people who say that the level of corruption and criminality you’ve engaged in is so over the top that it can’t go unaddressed.

Assuming you do lose (which you must), it’s actually unlikely you’re in any real danger of going to prison, but swatting down endless indictments and suits would be a drag so why not hightail it to a cushy spot in Russia where you can hobnob with other filthy rich people who are propped up by Putin (and who prop him up in turn)? You’d fit right in. You could try your hand at fleecing them too, though they might play rough so you probably better be careful lest you end up wearing cement shoes at the bottom of the Port of Poti at the edge of the Black Sea.

May we be safe from corrupt, malign leaders.
May we be willing to shore up our systems against future would-be versions of corrupt, malign leaders.
May we be strong and smart about holding you to account.
May we accept that you’ll likely fly the coop and that we’ll need to extradite your ass back here.

Sincerely,
Tracy Simpson