Dear MAGA’s, Help! We need you!
You voted for this guy, we Democrats mostly did not. Because he got elected, he has decided that anything he wants to do are things that you, his voters, support. But we know that many of you did not vote for the things he is doing.
You voted for removal of illegal immigrants who have committed crimes while here illegally, which is an understandable opinion which, guess what, many Democrats also support. And by “crimes” you meant serious stuff like robbery and assault, drug dealing, often with weapons, as opposed to jaywalking or getting a parking ticket, etc. This is what Trump said he would do—the worst of the worst, he said. What most of you did NOT vote for is unidentified masked men pulling your friends and neighbors out of cars and classrooms simply for being brown, and hauling them off to unidentified places with no hearing to determine whether they really are who ICE says they are, and did what ICE says they did, and no one to represent them. Reporting has shown that most of the people ICE has hauled away have done nothing beyond being here without a visa, and many of them do have visas or are actual American citizens. But they, too, get hauled away, just for existing. You also did NOT vote to send American troops into American cities to rough up the locals, especially in response to false stories of widespread violence when in fact the primary event is a man dressed in a frog costume standing across the street from the ICE building. (I know, I live in Portland.)
You voted for a smaller government, which, guess what, many Democrats also support. This is what Trump promised. You probably imagined that the Department of Government Efficiency would go into some department, set up a team to study why there were so many employees, figure out which ones were redundant and which ones were necessary for the functioning of the department, and then lay off the redundant ones, giving them a couple weeks’ notice. What you did NOT vote for is DOGE simply firing half (or all) the people in a department with no thought at all about which people they were, and claiming that they were being fired for poor performance reviews so they would not have to get severance pay. As you may recall, in many cases they fired the wrong people and had to hire them back. And meanwhile, Elon Musk’s goons tapped into secure government computers and simply stole lots of data, including yours, that the government promised would remain secure. You did NOT vote for firing many of the rangers in the national parks, so that when you visit there is no one for you to talk to about what is there. You did NOT vote for decimating FEMA, so that when another tornado hits Arkansas or Oklahoma, or another hurricane hits Florida or Louisiana, or another flood hits North Carolina, there will be no help coming from the federal government.
You voted for less involvement in external conflicts which, guess what, many Democrats also support. Trump was going to solve the Ukraine war on day 1 and make sure we did not get involved in other conflicts. But you did NOT vote for the US to be blasting boats out of the water in the Caribbean Sea and Pacific Ocean, with Trump’s assurance (but no evidence) that all of the dead guys are vicious criminals intent on murdering Americans, but, curiously, when we suddenly found ourselves in custody of two who survived, they were not tried here but whisked back to their country as quickly as possible so that we would not have to present the (lack of) evidence we have against them, and they could not tell us who they are and what they were doing. For all we know they were random people doing random things. There is little doubt that this is cold-blooded murder and against every national and international law. Most of you also did NOT vote to simply abandon Ukraine and ignore NATO. And you did NOT vote for changing the Department of Defense into the Department of War, especially when you consider that this change is costing us S2 billion that could have been spent on something useful. And I’m pretty sure none of you had war with Venezuela on your Bingo card.
You voted for better healthcare, which, guess what, many Democrats also support. Throughout his first term Trump told us that he had a plan that was better than Obamacare, it would be ready in two weeks. There never was such a plan, and there still isn’t. What you did NOT vote for, but what the Republicans passed (against the objections of every Democrat) was to take away the subsidies that have kept your insurance affordable for the past 12 years. Have you seen your insurance bill this fall? Trump did that to you. Why? Because they needed the money to give huge tax breaks to billionaires. Guess who Republicans REALLY care about? Hint: it’s not you. And you did NOT vote for a Secretary of Health and Human Services doesn’t believe in germs and is encouraging people not to get vaccinated against preventable diseases like measles.
You voted for prices to come down. Trump told you it was Biden’s policies that were leading to higher prices. He said he would bring prices down on Day 1. Instead, he imposed tariffs on many other countries that, he said, are taking advantage of us. He said those countries would have to pay money to us to sell their products here, and we would use their money to lower the deficit. What you did NOT vote for is tariffs that YOU have to pay for, but that is what you got, because that is how tariffs work. And indeed, prices are going up due to imports being more expensive. By the way, the Constitution explicitly says that it is Congress’s job to apply tariffs, not the President’s. Yes, the President can do it if there is an emergency, but it is clear that there needs to be an emergency that tariffs will fix, not that the President can invent an imaginary emergency in order to apply tariffs.
You voted for greater respect in the world. Biden, he told you, was weak and being taken advantage of. But Trump has jerked the world around on a string, imposing tariffs, revoking them, imposing them again, to the point that no one wants to do business with us. He has alienated our closest friends, the Canadians, and cozied up to dictators and murderers around the world.
You voted for less identity politics—not every job has to go to a minority of some type. But you did NOT mean by this that every high-ranking military person who is Black or female got there by being unqualified. Indeed, the military is probably the most merit-based system in the country. But Trump has fired dozens if not hundreds of officers, nearly all minorities or women. And despite complaining about government censorship of conservatives, the moment he became president, he turned around and banned hundreds of words. Useful websites disappeared overnight; research grants were cancelled for containing the words “women” or “gender,” even though it is well-known that some drugs have different effects on patients depending on gender or race; indeed, no drug can be approved without such studies. So where will the next drugs come from? Not America; indeed, scientists are leaving America for foreign universities at an alarming rate.
You did NOT vote for the government to be selling policy to the highest bidder. Yet every time Trump visits another country, he seems to come back with some expensive personal gift, like a plane, and soon after, imagine that, there is a government decision favorable to the country that gave him the gift. Now he is selling pardons to anyone who can come up with the money, and when asked, he says he does not even know anything about the person who was pardoned. Gee, I wonder how he decides?
You voted to release the Epstein files. You did NOT vote for Trump spending the last 9 months desperately trying to keep them from being released. He finally agreed recently to allow Republicans to vote for releasing them (because they were going to anyway), and they did, and the Senate did, and Trump signed it, but guess what? They still aren’t released. The curious thing is, Trump could have released the files at any time, just by telling the Department of Justice to do it, but instead, he signed a bill that instructs them to do it. You can bet that the DOJ will find multiple reasons why they cannot do so, including the fact that there are active investigations open that rely on the files—investigations that Trump himself demanded after the DOJ told us, months ago, that there was nothing in the files that merited a prosecution.
And there is not a single one of you who voted from Trump because you wanted him to tear down a large piece of the White House and replace it with a ballroom, without consulting a single architect or historian with experience with historic buildings.
Trump keeps saying that you, MAGA, supports him, but unless you are named Stephen Miller, I doubt if any of you support all of what I have listed.
Trump has done all these things without asking permission from Congress for any of them. He simply does whatever he wants and declares it to be what you want, and dares Congress to make him stop. This is not how a leader behaves—he is acting like a king, or dictator, like Putin—who even you used to agree was a bad guy.
Of course Congress does not make him stop, because they are scared shitless of him, or, more accurately, of you. They line up to kiss his ass because he tells them that if they don’t, he can get them unelected with a wave of his hand. All he has to do is tell his base (that’s you) to vote them out in the next primary. You get to do that because you are the largest voting bloc in the Republican Party, so you get whatever you want—and so far, Trump has interpreted that to mean, whatever he wants. Trump will continue to make this threat, and members will continue to believe him, until you tell him that he is wrong. He does not control you, you do. Once elected Republicans understand that you do not support some of Trump’s actions, they may grow enough testicles to vote against the things that you do not want the government to be doing.
My point here is that Trump has zero interest in what Democrats think. But he cares what YOU think, because you are his base. (Actually, I take that back: he does not care what you think. All he cares about is that you do what he tells you to do.) As long as he has a hold over you, he has a hold over every other Republican. If you don’t like some of the things Trump is doing, TELL HIM!!! If you don’t, who will?
