January 19, 2025
The Honorable Donald J. Trump,
President
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW,
Washington, DC 20500
Dear Mr. President:
Congratulations, Sir, on your electoral victory and successful Inauguration. While I am unhappy with the result, I accept, for at least the next two years (we’re getting the House back in the midterms, assuredly), perhaps four (or eight or forever, if the Supreme Court dispenses with the Constitution to give you a third term), you have near-dominion over the United States federal government. There are few ways for your will to be thwarted, save by reason and moving your heart. It is tradition that each outgoing president leaves a letter for the incoming, and while I am just some guy, I thought it might be a useful exercise for me to do so as well. I have words for you.
Mr. President, I have said unkind things about you and will continue to do so. I have called you a “menace,” “disaster,” and your election a “national disgrace.” But I do believe, without sarcasm, that there stays a narrow road through which your Presidency might still bring about the more coherent, unified nation you undoubtedly demand. For good or ill, you have something unique: the eyes of the world never leave you, and you have the faith of otherwise faithless people. Please, do not use these blessings to create a worse world.
To the extent you seek reckonings against Democratic leaders who previously foiled you, you need not be shy about prosecution wherever you find real malfeasance. You would do the nation a service by helping retire the entrenched, aging leadership through legitimate ends and means. People will present no sincere objection to shackling elite “criminals,” save where you have no honest cause for lawfare, such as in the case of Ann Selzer.
Beware Elon Musk’s advice. He seems unwell—ketamine abuse (you can learn a lot about this drug from “Erowid trip reports,” including that it will one day ruin his bladder), sleep deprivation, hours of Twitter daily, possibly extensive video gaming, the stress of parenting his 12 children, and keeping China happy, in addition to serving as the chief operating officer of SpaceX, Tesla, X (formerly Twitter), The Boring Company, Neuralink, xAI, and his so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), will “cook” any man’s brain in a short time. He has been at it for two years already. (It would be interesting to see his daily schedule.)
Mr. President, you know this. You previously and accurately branded Mr. Musk as a “bullshit artist.” He is “The Snake” you used to sing about, and thinks to treat you like his “tender woman.” Well, do not take him in. You know damn well what he is.
He will ruin your Presidency because he is bored, and when he is removed, he will talk shit online for more hours than most people spend awake.
The DOGE is rabid. It will not be rational or easy to control, and anyone it bites is at risk for disease. The sheer sadism Mr. Musk’s ilk show towards ordinary-ass federal employees doing boring jobs to feed their families is a poison that will kill your government, harm the American People, and torture regional and national economies. It will also make after-work life worse for the hardworking officials of the Trump administration. Severe workforce reductions placing career civil servants on the dole would birth hundreds of “Red Hen” incidents.
I do not understand Mel Gibson, Sylvester Stallone, and Jon Voight’s jobs as Special Ambassadors to make Hollywood “bigger, better and stronger.” But I assume that these “envoys,” your “eyes and ears” in the film industry, are majorly for purposes of repairing and bolstering the American motion picture industry after the Los Angeles fires. If so, Sir, I salute you. I have nothing but patriotism for that.
I hope you do not expect these three friends to plop down in a studio executive’s office, feet on desk, light cigars, and say: “See, the President wants to see a lot less woke. Movies these days, too woke. No more woke, you understand?” If they do, Jesus Christ will damn your soul black, and this will be the first caricature used whenever some sitcom needs to depict a fucking asshole.
The City of Angels burning will be remembered as one of the great, tragic disasters of world history, and the President of the United States’s first obligation to the American People will be to fix it. How you, Mr. President, who once built magnificent skyscrapers, execute on rebuilding these particular towers will define your legacy. If the answer is, “made it worse,” future schoolchildren will find the second chapter on President Donald J. Trump in their textbooks is entitled: “Making America Worse Again.” Multiple hack McGraw-Hill writers will come to this same joke independently, and it will be such a common and boring description of your term that newspapers will consider it cliché. Past the wildfires, no matter what future good you may do, if you fuck up this response, you will go to Hell.1
Mr. President, you pledged not to touch Social Security and Medicare. This promise is inferred by your poorest voters to include Medicaid, SNAP, and the social safety net generally. Your victory was primarily won with real love from these rural Americans who mostly abstain from the ballot box, because while they despise Democrats culturally, they have struggled (likely a family member has, at some point, relied on food stamps or Medicaid) and do not trust Republicans to protect their modest welfare. They gave you this confidence because they believe you alone will defend them from exactly this moment.
Mr. Musk and his billionaire compatriots will encourage you to destroy these communities where the MAGA base flies literal Trump-Vance flags, so that Silicon Valley oligarchs (also called “tech broligarchs”) can claw back needed benefits in order to invest the savings into bullshit cryptocurrency, ultramodern rockets, and blank checks for artificial intelligence that consumers do not want and will not pay for. When they make this proposal, direct the Secret Service to remove them. Never allow them to return. Their plot will ruin you, your Presidency, and the proud Trump family name irreparably. Even your most loyal friends will call you a “sucker” and a “loser,” because selling MAGA to the ketamine-snorting, transnational, richest-man-in-the-world who fantasizes about indenturing Americans on Mars is the stupidest thing a President Donald Trump could ever do. Sir, you earned their votes by explicitly promising you would not do that; do not do that.
Mr. President, I recognize you may feel some solidarity with Mssrs. Zuckerberg, Musk, the TikTok guy, and MySpace Tom, for all I know, because you own TruthSocial, another major alternative social media platform. You must be aware that they are likely laughing about techniques to “butter you up” for a “special feast.” Requests for favors from them should ring alarms. These smart people are pretending, badly, to be very stupid and loyal, but they intend to rob America and blame you.
And Mr. President, I know you do not hate gay, lesbian, and transgender Americans. The Village People will play your Inauguration, you have gone viral doing the YMCA dance, endorsed Caitlyn Jenner’s bathroom preferences, and you were mentored by Roy Cohn. Your supporters, however, are very hateful to that community, even though you were historically the first Republican president to recognize LGBTQ Pride Month.
There is a way to resolve this conundrum. Ban TikTok. Families who are seriously aggrieved by queer visibility are mostly seeing it on their iPhones or Samsungs, not the local Macy’s, and if we could stop having culture wars over random short-form viral video content, America might survive your term.
I would finally—and Sir, please understand that I say this with total obsequiousness—suggest that you not use the military on American citizens. I understand you told rallies that you wanted to order the United States Military to fight the “Enemy Within,”[i] which I assume to mean killing some designated group of Americans.
I believe, very, very strongly, that you should now “pivot” and become against doing this. Forcing the brave men and women of the American military to shoot their countrymen dead in the streets would be catastrophically divisive and lead your critics to conclude, once and for all, that Generals Mark Milley and John Kelly, as well as Secretaries Rex Tillerson and Mike Pompeo, and Ambassadors John Bolton and Nikki Haley were right, that you were a fascist all along and you probably killed your ex-best friend Jeffrey Epstein. Instead, you could be in annals as having not been a dictator, which would be a credit.
Mr. President, the We The People will talk some shit about you no matter what—critics will always find faults, as they say—but you can easily brush that dirt off your shoulders. They do not have to die or be punished for it.2 That would be fundamentally un-American.
Thank you, Sir, sincerely, for this opportunity to wish success to your stewardship of this great land. After your historic Inauguration, I will continue regard you with total antipathy, but I believe that, as Americans, we have one fundamental common dream: we want to get through the day with minimal irritants, and that can only happen if everything else in the world chills the fuck out and stops harding our mellows. Well. You ought to make sure the people you have surrounded yourself with share that agenda, because instead, the ones on our screens seem intent on getting all our damned goats.
Mr. President, eventually, the “tech broligarchs” will screw something up, pin responsibility on you, and then light your ass up about it online, possibly while wearing a “V for Vendetta” mask. The Trump Train, as you used to describe it, is now poised to crash, and with it, the people who love you most. Do not be “Sleepy,” as President Joe Biden was, and recognize that faction’s folly before they have committed you to do something unsellable and terrible.
To my overwhelming disappointment and shame, Mr. President, I will not have the privilege of attending your Inauguration. Sir. Although I had made plans to wear two coats, some Under Armour, two layers of socks, and goofy texting gloves to watch you swear your Oath of Office, under the sky, before God, in the frigid heart of Washington, as I have watched each other president in my lifetime, you wisely instead chose to offer your Trump Army seats at the indoor Capitol One Arena so they could watch you do the thing.
Mr. President, critics on the far left and the far right who insinuate that avoiding standing for many hours in icy 20-degree weather is unmanly are unfair; in fact, it was honorable not to ask people to risk their health in freezing temperatures. Sir, I praise you for that. I had already made an appointment to get my hair cut that Monday prior to the election certification, so I will not have the opportunity to watch you address the nation before the Daily Show. I hope the speech is beautiful, and that everyone has fun.
Later, I hope not to be embarrassed for this appeal to your better nature, Mr. President. I do not believe you are so far indentured to Mr. Musk that you have no agency or hope of freedom. Please, Sir, curb the malice of the “tech broligarchs” and instead practice leading with wisdom and compassion. You promised to be a populist, and handing America’s fucking ledger around a table of billionaires is the least populist picture that has ever been painted. In fact, it is a clear plagiarism of a more famous work of art:
Sorry, I could not resist a parting zinger. With that, Mr. President, I shall leave you to the task of leading this great nation. God help us all.
Sincerely,
- Hex
tl; dr: Stop fucking with that Elon bullshit and go make California good.
In the event you do ask the United States Military to purge the Enemy Within, Mr. President, please do not include bloggers on the kill lists. At least, spare me. I have no higher ambition than to pay off my mechanical keyboard and sell a few offensive t-shirts.