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Dear Mr. Trump

Just One Last Question

By Herman WilkinsPublished 3 years ago 7 min read
First Place in Goodbye Donald Challenge
75
Language of The Oppressor

Dear Mr. Trump,

On this evening, the last of your presidency, I was going to rant, rave and recall everything that has happened under your watch over the last four years. But I shan't do that. You see I write to you exhausted and embarrassed from an apartment in Mexico City. Far from my home town of Los Angeles, I have been able to get some semblance of peace in one of the busiest city in the Americas. The irony doesn't escape me that I came here to get a respite from my own country. You see in the days leading up to the last election I became exhausted. Exhausted is an understatement. The initial depression of your election to the office grew to despair and anger, ennui and contempt. It was a very long four years that I would not wish on another country. So after I was sure that the now President-Elect would be just so, I threw in the towel on the good old US of A, I got a Covid test and boarded the next plane I could find to Mexico City. In your loss of the election, I took some comfort in the fact that the last days of your position were at hand and that every tweet, post or news of your presidency were simply the last vestiges of a crippled water fowl. You would swiftly become irrelevant. Of course now I know I was mistaken. There was no swamp you couldn't foul more as was proven on January 6th and probably until the very moment you leave an office you have stained forever in a country you nearly brought to its knees, you will find a way to sully more, insult to injury, flies to shit. I do have one last question for you Mr. Trump.

In the interest of full disclosure, we have met before. We have actually worked together. You see on the first season of your reality show, The Apprentice, I was a lowly but eager production assistant-slash-coordinator who held an umbrella for you on the beach in Malibu as we filmed promos for the upcoming season. You were friendly and cordial to me as I held the wind at bay for you and your perfectly coiffed and now all too familliar comb over. You remarked how well-dressed I was and I replied that's why I got the good gig of the production assistants. I thought you perfectly polite, courteous and professional. I even proudly told my mom that night after we wrapped.

A decade or so later, when I learned that you had won the nomination for your party I was actually elated as I thought no one in their right mind would pick you for the highest office in the world over the woman who was perhaps the most qualified person in the history of the country to actually lead it. But I was wrong and you won. That night I fell into a depression that never really left. As the count down began to your official inauguration, I did not resign myself to accepting your presidency. In fact, the day you were inaugurated, I boarded a plane for France. It was more for work than any trepidation in your holding the office. Yes, I was embarrassed that so many in America were polar opposite in mindset to me and anyone I knew, but I was still willing to let this scenario play out as it had when I'd voted for Gore and subsequently Kerry over Bush. Having to explain you to the French did more for my language skills than my old French teacher Monsier Lemeland ever could. But family brought me home and I watched as everything I'd been taught about my country became apparently and abundantly clear, was only propaganda. As you called brown people "rapists and murderers", and peaceful protesters "sons of bitches" from "shithole countries" I flinched but remembered to breathe. As evidence of your shadey disregard for rule of law in dealing with elections and national security became more apparent every day, and incitement of violence from "very fine people" who actively chanted anti-semitic jargon made headlines all I could think was, "This is who they thought was better than the thirty year veteran of public service who first tried to give us health care as First Lady and last I checked had stood up to Vladimir (I poison my opponents) Putin on the world stage as Secretary of State?

I can't even list the ways that you have tarnished this country, my hopes for it and the office to which I don't believe you ever actually wanted. I mean from pornstars being paid off with campaign funds, children in cages, kissing up to dictators on the world stage, all of it reprehensible and all of it overlooked by so many. The grif-graf, the violation of emoluments clause by you and your entire thuggish clan that we didn't even get to mention because it seemed the least of our worries with people like Bannon, Kushner, Devos or Flynn taking over the news of any given day for their disdain for the offices which you appointed or the country they were supposed to be serving. So many names that you never should have been allowed to say because they were better humans than you could even conceive of being. Kaepernick and Yovanovitch and Vindman come to mind. While I am at it, what in the hell could Meghan Markle have done to you to make you sully her beautiful name with your rancid tongue by even mentioning her? I'll wait.

I digress. History does not need me to enumerate what you did with what you were given in holding the office of the presidency. The only number I wish to recount is 400,000. That's the number of Covid-19 deaths that I would be remiss were I not to count for you and for history on this eve of your eviction. You see I started crying when the numbers had barely broken ten thousand, when I couldn't attend the funeral of two loved ones due to Corona Virus. I watched as Chicago burned from racists flames you fuelled as the number of Covid deaths past 100,000. You didn't wear a mask until it was 200,000. But that's enough numbers for me, if you'll look over the amount of Covid Relief Funds that are missing at the hands of your family. 600,000,000 I believe is the number unaccounted for. Or the number of people arrested in the insurrection that you incited as the most ingracious political tool in history. Maybe the number I will remember most is the six Americans who died at our nations capitol while your children danced grotesquely at the sight of the violence you caused. Again, I digress. Apologies, I am quite tired. Je suis fatigue. Tengo cansado.

After four years, all the fight in me is gone. I am exhausted and I pray with every drop of hope I have left that I never have to hear the sound of your voice again. Even knowing that people whose shoes you were never fit to clean, much less wear, will be back in power. I get no solace from the knowledge that hope and love and community springs eternal. But now I know that half of this country wishes what you wish. Half of this country sees me as less than. Half this country would bow to a demigogue rather than equality. Half this country would see the last four years as something to be proud of. Half of this country would rather stand behind confederacy than these United States.

As I sit here in Mexico with nary a hint of racism, or a Mexican-funded wall, I am reminded that the American dream was a myth they used to keep people getting up and spending their lives working so that the rich could get richer with hopes of one day getting some comfort in solace in the land of opportunity. I realize it was all a lie. It was a lie that you helped expose. Now that I know the truth I have but one last question for you, Mr. Trump. Was destroying the myth of America worth it for 20 more minutes of fame and a swank post-presidential apartment in St. Petersburg? If your Russian gig doesn't work out, I would suggest you try Mexico, but I wouldn't want you to ruin another country for me. I wish you all the peace you deserve as long as I don't have to hear your voice ever again.

Sincerely,

A Californian in Mexico City

P.S. Black women were the reason you lost and a black woman will have your old job in due time and will do it better than you, though your followers will never give her credit, so you'd probably still consider that winning.

P.S.S. Tell your wife, "Yes, I really did care."

trump
75

About the Creator

Herman Wilkins

It all starts with a good story, who's telling it, how, when and why, then all that's left is what it takes to get it heard. Any way you hear a story, in print, Blender or 65mm, it starts with words. Any writing you keep reading is art.

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