To: He who refuses to concede appropriately (as in, at all)

The relief and modest jubilation phase is officially over and I’m settling back into worry mode as you drag this out and your faithful bootlickers elbow each other out of the way to prove their fealty to you and your lost cause. Lyrics from Elton John’s song Sorry Seems to be the Hardest Word capture the depressing, pathetic aspect of what’s going on:

“It’s sad, (so sad) so sad
It’s a sad, sad situation
And it’s getting more and more absurd
It’s sad, (so sad) so sad”

What you’re doing is sad and absurd; you’re acting like a petulant child who’s refusing to leave the playground when it’s time to go, pitching a fit and first grabbing at the supports of the swing set and then grasping at the monkey bars in a last ditch effort to avoid the far more mundane reality that awaits you (if you’re lucky and avoid prison bars, that is).

If this were all it was I’d say it makes sense to ignore you while you do your tantrum thing since you thrive on attention from a captive audience. Unfortunately, though, it feels like every time I turn around there’s another scary-ass angle being trotted out that we urgently need to consider. Yesterday you fired Defense Secretary Esper and replaced him with yes-man, Christopher Miller, someone who hawks think is hawkish and who you’ve no doubt quizzed about his willingness to deploy troops to quell domestic conflict should it arise (e.g., when you refuse to leave office). Maybe this is just you exercising your bully muscles while you still can, but a nontrivial number of people think this is a scary, provocative move on your part, especially now that three more top civilian Pentagon officials have either been fired or have resigned suddenly. Someone was quoted as saying “These are dictator moves.” Shit.

Plus, there are stories about how even short delays in initiating administrative transitions put our national security in peril. The Bay of Pigs and 9/11 were both orchestrated during new presidents’ first terms (and the latter after a delayed transition). They’ve even got George W weighing in, saying that the election was free and fair, that Biden won and there are no grounds for contesting it (and thus, no grounds whatsoever for stalling out the transition). He’s made it abundantly clear that he doesn’t like you and is way more sympatico with Michelle Obama than you or Melania, but he’s a GOP diehard and even he’s not on board with what you’re doing.

The topper for me, though, is the WP piece by Shane Harris about how as ex-president, you could disclose all sorts of top secret things to all sorts of bad actors (https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/trump-possible-security-risk/2020/11/09/f19c853e-229e-11eb-952e-0c475972cfc0_story.html), whether for a price or just ‘cuz you’re feeling malicious. Harris didn’t talk about the additional possibility that you could easily be tricked out of secrets by any old flatterer or schmoozer, but we clearly need to consider that angle as well.

I’d have to have been living under a rock for 4 years not to know that the country will be at risk from your racist, nationalistic provocations until you croak so I’ve been bracing for that eventuality, but damn if it didn’t occur to me that as president, even a stupid inattentive one, you’d have access to all sorts of invaluable information that could be sold to pay off debts, leaked for favors, or shouted from the rooftops to thumb your nose at the Dems. We simply can’t just ignore this one and hope to extinguish the behavior.  No, this one is deadly serious. It’s also one for which we don’t have good remedies other than hoping that the NY District Attorney can pull a miracle and put you away for life without access to a phone. Very, very scary.

May we be safe and may my fears be overblown.
May we be willing to stay alert and on guard just in case.
May the integrity of our systems and our people hold strong and fast.
May we accept that our POTUS appears to be trying to take US down.

Sincerely,
Tracy Simpson