Dear Esteemed Leaders and Mr. Trump,
As 2016 draws to a close, the rest of the world looks on at our great country with combined feelings of ridicule, fear, and glee, for those who desire our demise and see opportunity in our chaos. Americans have been called the ‘best and the brightest’, and the good news is that we still are. 74 million Americans voted to reject Donald Trump as President. 66 million of these votes were for Secretary Clinton. Yet, it seems our Electoral College system, which Trump himself called a disaster, failed…but, not without help.
The GOP spent years cultivating an anti-intellectual constituency and provided a fertile environment for Trump to play his con game. He preyed on the uneducated and the desperate, appealing to the basic instinct to blame, hate and divide, and found an audience well-primed to believe the lies of a demagogue and to be shaped by the propaganda of an adversarial foreign power. This group, the 63 million who voted for Trump, is a minority. Thankfully, the majority of Americans are a thinking people. The public outcry against Trump’s election-countless protests, petitions, millions of letters to electors-is unprecedented, as are many aspects of this election. Do not fool yourself that this is a partisan response against losing an election. Elections have been lost before, even with the rare discrepancy between popular and EC vote, but this phenomenon is quite different. Operating the government in a manner against the express will of a majority this large is a social experiment that will fail, and likely leave our country seriously damaged. This is what we, the thinking majority, America’s ‘best and brightest’, know to be true.
The GOP’s culpability in this train-wreck cannot and will not be ignored. Like the protagonist of a child’s fable, the Republican Party has allowed every wrong decision to be driven by greed and power. This stain will not fade easily, but the longer you place Party over Country, the more we see and the longer we will remember.
We watched as you allowed an unqualified reality tv celebrity become your standard-bearer. We watched as you waffled back and forth between supporting him, endorsing him and shunning him, only to stand with him in the end, despite unignorable and compelling reasons not to. We watched you compromise morality, ethics, character, common-sense, and the well-being of this country, for the chance to push your own agenda through and secure SCOTUS seats. We watched you engage in witch-hunts aimed at Secretary Clinton, turn a blind-eye to foreign election interference, and ignore FBI Director Comey’s 11th hour electioneering. We watched you take advantage of the loss of the Voting Right’s Act to actively suppress the votes of the poor and people of color and purge millions of votes in cross-check. Now you watch on, as we do, as your President-Elect makes a mockery of our country in his transition process, proving his incompetence every day. I teach my children that it is better to right your wrongs, even if that means admitting fault and taking punishment. Our government leaders still have a window of opportunity to set this right and regain public trust and respect.
Mr. Trump, I imagine you are feeling overwhelmed, as you find yourself in a position for which you are in no way qualified. There is nothing similar between running a business and running a country-especially a superpower. There are literally hundreds of millions of eyes on your every move. Your habitual lying and ineptitude will get caught every time. Perhaps you are not finding the job as satisfying as riling up the adoring rubes at your rallies. You claim you do not need to attend intelligence/security briefings because you’re ‘smart’. Your campaign and transition has told a different story. You exhibit the behavior of a pathaological liar. Your vocabulary and communication skills are like a grade-schooler, you are not well read or educated in pertinent matters, nor do you show a willingness or aptitude toward preparation. Poor communication skills combined with your demonstrated lack of self-control is a dangerous combination for diplomacy and foreign relations.
Your reputation for narcissism is your biggest appeal to those around you, both foreign and domestic, who know they can use you as a puppet to push their own agenda. The help you received in your campaign had purpose. Mercer and Bannon used you to raise the visibility and agenda of the alt-Right. Putin wishes to destabilize NATO and weaken the United States, unltimately to regain status and power. Our chaos is what they want. If it was your goal to put together a Cabinet that would systematically dismantle the progress of all our government divisions, then you succeeded.
Just your Twitter use, alone, demonstrates your incompetence to be POTUS. But, this is the reality. This is a country of real people-with real consequences. While you’re tweet-baiting China, whining about the media, and trying to re-ignite the nuclear arms race with Russia, you may do irrevocable harm to our country, and that’s without making a single grossly uninformed policy decision. The majority of the American people knew this danger before the election, more and more realize it every day.
If you truly want to help this country, you should step-down, acknowledge the illegitimacy of an election corrupted by foreign and domestic electioneering and gerrymandering. Go back to your businesses with the goal of utilizing American materials, manufacturing and operations. Use what you learned on the campaign trail to become a better American-pay your taxes, don’t engage in bribery, pay your subcontractors, try being honest (note: creative hyperbole=lying).
As for the rest of our government leaders, realize that you may very quickly have to figure out how to override this election catastrophe. This is not going to sort itself out. A POTUS put in place against the will of the American people and by the combined actions of a foreign adversary, gerrymandering and electioneering is not something our country can come back from. The dangers posed to us are too great, the implications are devastating. The American majority has spoken-we are educated, organized and motivated. We are the best and brightest. We are #TheResistance.
Note to 115th Congress: Make no mistake, we also see that you attempted to make your first Congressional action the gutting of the Office of Congressional Ethics. Obviously, we did not allow that to happen. We are not going to be complacent and you will not be able to remove yourself from accountability. Judging from Mr. Trump’s tweet regarding the timing of this move, it is reasonable to infer that he has signaled his own message to you. If you investigate him (and you must), some of you are likely going down with him. An independent, bipartisan investigation must take place. You were not elected to represent yourselves, Mr. Trump, oil and gun lobbyists, Russia or the 1%-you serve the American people. Do your job, or step down.
Rachel Murphy Azzara 