Liar, Liar, Pants on Fire

Dear Donald,

Well, the last year has certainly been a bit of a roller coaster hasn't it. And what a crazy ride it's been.

This year has certainly flown by!

I, like most of the world, watched the debates and followed the news leading up to your "victory" in November 2016. I don't think I took you terribly seriously Donald. A lot of what I knew of you at the time came from watching reruns of The Apprentice on our good old BBC, that beacon of classic British television and news provision. When your candidacy was announced I almost laughed out loud. "He's a reality star!" I guffawed "What does he know about politics? You cannot be serious!"

I think I may have been channeling John McEnroe at the time.

I was surprised when Bernie was knocked out of the race. I thought he was a great candidate, spoke with passion and had the people's best interests in mind. He also had a fair amount of grass roots experience in politics. Experience, Donald; because that's always a desirable thing for an applicant to have when they're applying for a job isn't it? Enthusiasm is always welcome but experience, that's the swinger isn't it? I wonder if it worried you that you knew nothing about what you were letting yourself in for? Did you care, Donald? Did it keep you up at night? Does it still keep you up at night? You do tweet rather voraciously at 2 AM these days? And you've amassed the lines on your face in 12 months that it took Barack eight years to gain. Maybe someone needs to top up your Ovaltine supply. A lack of sleep can often be blamed for the stupid things that come out of people's mouths (and fingers — remember #covfefe?).

Hillary came and went.

Even with her establishment ties, I thought she would have been a better option than your questionable self. After all, she never called Mexicans rapists and drug dealers, never openly alluded to committing sexual assault or talked about grabbing women by the pussy, never offered to pay bail money for anyone beating up pro-Trump supporters. She wasn't divisive the way that you were, didn't talk about spending money on a wall or deporting those pesky foreigners, instilling a travel ban. I wonder how your beautiful wife Melania felt when she heard the things that you had said?

The words that have been recorded for all posterity. When you in effect supported the sexual degradation and humiliation of women as being your right as a wealthy, influential and powerful man. I wonder how your wife felt, or your daughter Ivanka. How does your daughter feel when you say things like "I would sleep with her if she wasn't my daughter" on a public television broadcast? Is she proud? She looked fairly uncomfortable to me. I wonder if at any stage in the campaign they considered voting for Hillary, perhaps in the hopes that this would prevent the normalisation of that type of abhorrent behaviour; a president after all should lead by example do you not think?

Would it be right for someone to grab your grandchild Arabella by the pussy? Would it be acceptable if they were rich like you?

But I digress.

Hillary didn't win. Even though she got more votes than you she didn't win. The Electoral Colleges decided your nation's fate and subsequently, it looks like, the rest of the worlds. As in your numerous descriptions via tweets, when discussing a tragedy, how "wonderful" that you won. I send my "warmest condolences" to the populous of America.

Within hours of your speech in Washington, all talk of the LGBTQ community and their rights was stripped from the White House official website.

Erased and forgotten.

You promised that you would be different. You held up a Pride flag during a campaign debate, promised to embrace the community, vocally defended the right for the trans community to use whichever bathroom they desired. You tweeted at the time:

"Thank you to the LGBT community! I will fight for you while Hillary brings in more people that will threaten your freedoms and beliefs!"

Yet just six months into your administration, you had announced a ban of trans military service men and women, allowed the Department of Justice to file a legal brief arguing that anti-gay discrimination is legal under federal law, pulled back an Obama era guidance protecting trans children from discrimination in public schools and have appointed a Supreme Court Justice who opposes LGBTQ human rights, Mike Pence, a man who effectively supports tasering the gay away. Even the vapid waste of skin Caitlyn Jenner, one of your major supporters, has called you out on your hypocrisy, citing you as the worst administration ever for LGBT+ rights. Shame she didn't realise this a year ago. My God, even Nixon was more discrete in his duplicity!

This isn't the first pledge you've reneged on. You've broken quite a few promises to your faithful followers, haven't you Donald? Your travel ban on all Muslims for example. Please note, I have never supported this frankly ludicrous idea of yours. Do you not understand Donald? Let me whisper it to you, let you in on the secret.

Not all Muslims and foreigners are terrorists.

I know, I know. It's frankly a very novel concept. It goes along with the thought process that not all Germans will be Nazis, not all black people are rap stars, not all Swiss people enjoy skiing and not all Slovenian women are ex models who like to f*** orange property magnates. In fact we can probably remove your wife Melania from this last generalization also. A girl can only fake it for so long. I'm shocked she doesn't have an Emmy too.

A large percentage of these people that you choose to target, they like to live peacefully, to celebrate their faith and culture in an incredibly non-violent way and welcome those of different faiths and backgrounds. But you don't see that, do you Donald? Maybe you need to pop to the optician, obviously being a massive w*nker has affected your eye sight.

One promise that I am relatively glad was broken was your pledge to repeal Obamacare/the affordable care act and cut funding to Medicaid. When menstrual irregularity (pre-ACA) is seen as a way to make it harder to purchase a health insurance plan, the Cruz amendment is none too tempting.

On the statue of Liberty it states:

"Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free."

Have you forgotten these words Donald? When you tried to impose a ban on those coming in, the asylum seekers, the victims of war, the travelers and tourists that wanted to experience the beauty of your country; when you wanted to take away the aid to your own poor and huddled masses? Where was your recollection of these words then? These words which sum up the ethos of your great nation, that of a diverse and forward thinking, supportive society; are they just lip service to you, like all your pledges and promises to the electorate?

You broke approximately 80 of your campaign promises within the first 100 days in office, downplaying the importance of this total of days to the associated press, calling it an "artificial barrier." You stated though that you'd done a lot. My assumption of this is that you were speaking about all the executive orders you'd signed and issued. 30 in total weren't there? More than any other president in recent US history. You mocked President Obama for this, yet when you do it it's taking "executive action." Shall we have a conversation about pots and kettles now or later?

My main concern in all of this though is that you've broken the promise of making America great again.

America, to me, was already pretty great. For such a young country in the grand scheme of things you have brought so much to the table. You have produced some of the greatest literary icons in the world. Amazing artists and musicians have been born to you, walked your streets, breathed your air. Presidents, politicians, activists and influencers have risen up throughout history calling America their homeland and some of the best people I know reside in your suburbs, small towns and cities. As a major fan of all things retro I have held the firm belief for a while that I was born in the wrong decade and continent and to have lived in Middle America or New York throughout the 50s and 60s, to have been a teenager then, would have been a dream come true for me (although I hope I would have been progressive enough to have marched with the activists or to have later supported Harvey Milk or the Stonewallers in their endeavours).

You denied climate change and mother nature told God to hold her beer. You have done so much that really isn't helping your case. By riling up hatred and divisiveness for Muslims and those of the Islamic faith you did not make America great again. By calling all Mexicans drug dealers and rapists, by attempting to repeal affordable health care for millions of Americans, by attempting to remove funding for planned parenthood and birth control, by putting your nation in the path of danger when insulting North Korea on Twitter, by going after the rights of the LGBTQ community, by not sitting down long before the most recent mass shooting and discussing gun reformation, by basically slut shaming London during the recent tube bombing and Puerto Rico during their recent tragedy in your inane, ignorant and wholly inappropriate tweets... You are not making America great again. You are instead setting up a culture of fear and uncertainty for the populous, for its future generations, and yet you're still a man trusted with nuclear codes. The man who was banned from using his own Twitter account in the lead up to election, like a teenager caught TP'ing the neighbour's house, has been given access to the nuclear codes... It beggars belief at times.

So this is my open letter to you Donald. I apologise for some of the language used at times but then, you know yourself that it's just too easy, sometimes, in the heat of the moment to say whatever pops into your head, however insulting or silly. I will try to be constructive.

You know, it's not too late for you President Cheeto. It is never too late. You can turn this around and learn from the experience. Remember we spoke about this earlier on, that you had the enthusiasm in abundance but not the full on tangible "been there, done that, got the 'I have a tiny penis so I'm overcompensating by angrily tweeting North Korea' t-shirt" experience of being presidential or a politician?

In the words of Ban Ki-Moon:

"Saving our planet, lifting people out of poverty, advancing economic growth... these are one and the same fight. We must connect the dots between climate change, water scarcity, energy shortages, global health, food security and women's empowerment. Solutions to one problem must be solutions for all."

Achieving a better future, it's on all of us, it takes a village as they say. But real change starts at the top. You are a leader, start leading and lead with empathy and intelligence, not bluster, vanity and reckless reactionary behaviour!

Start making America great by being great or else step down. Your nation needs hope and strength, not broken promises and pompous toxicity.