Russia, If You're Watching

Dear President Putin,

I know you and your associates are toasting each other with glasses filled with Stolichnaya at the images of the U.S. being torn apart. Once again, a cold-blooded murder of a Black man at the hands of a white police officer has triggered unrest throughout our country.  The footage of the protests is heartbreaking to us because the anger was a result of this senseless tragedy, one that has been repeated for too long, but it must be heartening to you.

Your goal to sow discontent in the U.S. is working. So while the glasses in Russia are clinking now, please know it won’t last.  #hocopolitics

As you are well aware, you helped Donald Trump get elected as President. While he calls the “Russian thing” a “hoax,” we know better. Special Counsel Robert S. Mueller III, though limited because of a bureaucratic impediment that prevents a sitting U.S. President from being indicted and whose investigation had been under a direct threat of abolishment by President Trump himself, confirmed what our intelligence agencies concluded. The Mueller Report found that the Russian government “interfered in the 2016 presidential election in sweeping and systematic fashion” and “violated U.S. criminal law.”

Accordingly, 26 Russian citizens and 3 Russian organizations were indicted. The investigation also led to indictments and convictions of Trump campaign officials and associated Americans for unrelated charges. The report relayed two methods by which you guys attempted to influence the election: 1) a robust social media campaign to damage Mr. Trump’s opponent Hillary Clinton and 2) the hacking of email accounts by your own GRU and the release of the consequential damaging information by WikiLeaks also to damage Mrs. Clinton. But you know all that.

Thus, Mr. Trump squeezed by with an Electoral College victory though the majority of voters preferred his opponent. With him in the White House, you have what our intel folks refer to as a “useful idiot.” You knew he would be so tethered to his business holdings so that he would put his own interests ahead of our country’s. You knew he would ensure that our Congress and related departments would not be too harsh on your country in retaliation against your interference in our democracy.

Many Americans believe that Mr. Trump as well as leading Senate and Congressional Republican leaders, such as "Moscow Mitch" McConnell, have been compromised by your government and/or have received laundered money in the form of donations for their campaigns. This explains their determined opposition to safeguard our upcoming election and allowing you to repeat the same operation with impunity.

You also helped install Mr. Trump because he is a divisive figure by nature and would cause chaos in our country. In the three and a half years in office, he has validated your assumptions.   

He has never attempted to unify our country; he only serves his base of support. President Trump vehemently attacks the opposition and attacks our free press. Sound familiar, President Putin?

President Trump has served you well by keeping the chasm in the U.S. deep and wide. At no time during his presidency did a majority of Americans approve of him as President.  This divisiveness has continued throughout the Covid-19 pandemic whereby he was slow to react to it, failed to develop a national strategy to address it, assumed no responsibility, and blamed everyone else.

The divisiveness is on full display during the protests concerning the murder of George Floyd. To be

Murder victim Goeoge Floyd

clear, the scourge of systemic racism has existed long before there was ever a Donald Trump.  But throughout his career, he has fomented racial animosity with his calling for the death penalty on wrongly accused Black and Latino men in the Central Park Five case, amplifying the birther crusade against President Obama, his reference to neo-Nazis in Charlottesville as “very fine people,” separating kids from their parents and placing those kids in cages at our southern border, and speaking down to African American journalists among other instances.

He has given a voice to extreme racist groups and individuals whereby they can display with pride their Confederate flags and symbols and at times, swastikas, without any condemnation from our President. White nationalists know President Trump has their backs.

During this sad chapter in our history, instead of rallying the country and attempt to heal it by promising vigorous police reform, he calls for “tougher” response by our state governors.

President Putin, with your puppet Donald Trump doing your bidding by keeping our nation divided and in the throes of chaos, I understand why you are celebrating. However, we expect Mr. Trump will be defeated by Joe Biden in November and with that, we hope the demise of Trumpism will also occur. Our country will slowly heal, come together through competence and a renewed determination, we will once again be the United States of America.

Then it will be our turn to toast with glasses of Stoli.