This monstrous force is hurtling towards its final reckoning

An Open Letter to Donald J. Trump, a.k.a. The Man Who Won’t Be King.

Mr. Trump:

It’s just me, one of the many American citizens who suffers from Trump Derangement Syndrome. Yes, that’s right, I suffer because you’re deranged, while the MAGA hordes supporting you pretend you’re actually human. Crazy, huh?

This letter is not an appeal but a testimony. It is not written with the expectation you will see it, or reflect on it. I know that’s not your thing. I craft it out of sheer disgust and a cathartic need to unload what’s been building inside me for a decade.

You are not simply a leader who has failed his country and the world. You’re a fraud who through a series of astonishing circumstances achieved faux-legitimacy and unprecedented power. You are a grave accident whose time in office history will record as a massive breakdown of our system of checks and balances.

History is not confused about figures like you, Mr. Trump. It will count the thousands of sins you’ve committed, the tens of millions you’ve harmed, the grinding cruelty you’ve demonstrated, the breathtaking indecency you’ve worn like a badge. And it will document it all indelibly.

You will not be remembered as a strongman but as the weakest of men. You will be recalled as someone who revealed how fragile norms become when ambition far outdistances character — and the volume of damage one person can cause when shame no longer applies.

You didn’t stumble into destroying democracy. You enthusiastically embraced it. You didn’t accidentally corrode public trust. You mined it, sold it, and called the wreckage “strength.”

You mistake fear for loyalty, truth for whatever flatters you, patriotism for praise. You demand respect while showing contempt for every person who opposes you and every institution that limits you.

You claim to respect “law and order” while making a mockery of both. At every moment that demands character, you’ve chosen theater, stagecraft, bullying. Everything you touch rots. Rather than preserve and protect what’s great about America, you’ve chosen at every turn to burn it down. And what you don’t incinerate, you cover in fake gold and name after yourself.

You have turned vengeance into the centerpiece of your administration, because it’s all you know how to do. You operate the highest office in the land as if it were the lowest, running it as a criminal enterprise. You dangle pardons like bribes and reduce justice to a personal service industry for the powerful and connected.

You have so blatantly normalized conflicts of interest that they no longer require concealment. Influence has grown transactional. Your financial benefit from the presidency has shredded centuries of precedent, and this leaves you prideful. Ethics, after all, have always been for suckers in your world.

You’ve treated government as a shield against responsibility and taught a generation that deceit is more than acceptable if performed brazenly enough. It’s always been about the grift with you.

Your sole asset is an uncanny ability to exploit and self-enrich. You charge everyone with corruption while bathing in it yourself. Your default is to lie about everything. You decry elites while living off their indulgence.

Your legacy will not be policy or achievement or advancement but malice, devastation, misery.

You have turned dissent into a criminal act punishable by persecution, sometimes arrest or even death. The deplorable way in which you have divided the country has left our future as a united republic in doubt. There has never been a more harmful force in the nation’s history. Your putrid stench infects every area of society.

The good news for the rest of us is that time is no longer on your side. Diet and age and inactivity are starting to catch up. When they do, perhaps you’ll be able to fully grasp the immense horror you’ve perpetrated, even if regret isn’t baked into your DNA.

I know you believe yourself immortal, your authoritative control unstoppable, but that’s all just a function of your megalomania, Mr. Trump. Adolf Hitler believed the same thing, and things didn’t turn out terribly rosy for him, did they?

I only toss the Hitler reference in here because I know how much the comparison excites you.

Here’s the thing: you aren’t fooling anyone. We’re onto you.

Also, whether or not you committed crimes akin to those committed by Jeffrey Epstein is less relevant than the fact you were best pals with him and approved of what he was doing. You have your own history of adjudicated sexual abuse.

Yep, time is tapping you on the shoulder all right, Mr. President. Karma is calling, and it would like a word. You have escaped accountability – real accountability – for so long, from so many, for so many depravities, and the bill is coming due. You can continue to run, but you won’t be able to hide forever. Not a whole lot longer, I suspect.

It is for this reason that you are alone among presidents whose service should not be acknowledged this Presidents Day weekend. Instead, the holiday signifies our ongoing struggle in defiance of your best efforts to take the nation down, while understanding you’d love nothing more than to pervert the celebration as President Trump’s Day. I know how much it pains you to acknowledge the contributions of others.

When your world finally crumbles, no one will be there to cushion your collapse. That’s the price you pay for being a lowlife. Your moral reckoning long ago arrived but whatever is heading your way will be well-deserved. You are a tyrant, a racist, a misogynist, a homophobe, a sexual abuser, a coward, a fascist, a hypocrite, a con artist, a traitor, and the ugliest and most dangerous person this country has produced.

It won’t be pretty when you’re finally held accountable for your countless offenses against humanity. But it sure as hell will be satisfying.

Yours in contempt,

Ray Richmond

• Ray Richmond is a longtime journalist/author and an adjunct professor at Chapman University in Orange, CA.