Dear President Zelensky:
What America’s barely-elected president is trying to do to Ukraine and the world order is a disgrace, and I want you to know that most Americans are horrified. Even as Trump/Musk/Putin conspire to force their naked oligarchy on the world, most of us have grandparents who remember how fascism works, and we don’t like strongmen.
As our hearts break for you, America, and every democracy now fighting for its life, millions of people have reached out to you in solemn solidarity. Democracy is under threat around the globe, and, though it took longer than it should have, the educated half of the US is finally paying attention.
We know Putin is a KGB-trained thug who disappears his critics, and that Trumpadmires him for it; we also know that Trump keeps declaring national emergencies to give his criminally unqualified Secretary of Defense on-the-job training. Secretary Hegseth, a Fox News airhead with white supremacy ink all over his body, needs to learn early which military commanders will go along with Trump’s second violent coup, and which ones he needs to terminate (or worse).
We also know Russia invaded Ukraine, not the other way around; hundreds of millions of people around the world have seen the videos and won’t be gaslit, despite Trump’s shameless lies. Please, whatever you think of Americans, do not think we are all as stupid as Trump assumes we are.
Trump has no mandate
Also, as Trump tries to demean you with Putin’s false claim that your approval rating is at 4%, keep in mind that Trump barely won. He won 49% of the vote compared to Harris’ 48%, a difference of 1%.
America’s biggest challenge isn’t MAGA, but the plurality of 90 million qualified voters who didn’t bother to vote at all in November’s election despite the stakes. American apathy has many root causes — that’s another thing on our to-do list, but love of an unhinged strongman isn’t one of them.
We also have a media problem, thanks largely to Trump's/Musk's/Putin’s relentless efforts to flood the zone with disinformation. The right-wing controlled media (Fox, OAN, Newsmax, X, and nearly 2,000 right wing radio stations) runs pure Trump propaganda. That’s because, under our current legal system, corporate-owned media is not required to tell the truth. It’s not like in the UK where the law requires fairness and impartiality in reporting the news; Fox and X are more like Putin’s State TV, where corporate owners dumb down their viewers and prop up politicians for their own corporate interests. Restoring truth in the news is another thing on our to-do list.
Trump’s pettiness and lust for vengeance are un-American
Like white on rice, Trump is all over you, President Zelensky. It’s not a new obsession. Did you, like France’s Macron, lock eyes with Melania and kiss her, I wonder? Trump really is that small, but in his defense, any playground bully would be aggrieved. Too many people love you, and admire your peoples’ struggle.
Your youth and good looks surely don’t help in Trump’s grievance department, and, no doubt, your 2019 refusal to manufacture “evidence” to hurt Joe Biden still chafes. Trump got caught trying to blackmail you with funds Congress had already approved, and he’s still blaming the victim, as any abuser would. His efforts this week to demand half of Ukraine’s rare earth minerals, like you owe something to the mob boss because presidents before him had principles, was next-level embarrassing. All I can say is I’m sorry.
Not only is he mentally unwell, he is laughably but dangerously petty. He nurses old grudges like a dementia patient and lives to hurt anyone who shows him up, and right now, tag, you’re it.
Educated America knows we are in a coup
The problem in America, as you’ve surmised by now, is that extremely wealthy men have orchestrated a coup to further enrich themselves and their greedy families.
Back when America really was a great superpower on the rise, the wealthiest industrialists paid their fair share of taxes. The Rockefellers and Vanderbilts built the nation and shared their wealth, and the nation benefitted for decades. At the apex of our rise, wealthy Americans paid effective income tax rates as high as 94%. But Republicans changed all that starting in the 1980s and insisted that deep tax cuts for the rich would trickle down. They never did.
Today, men like Elon Musk pay an effective tax rate of 3%, and his companies, like Tesla, pay almost nothing in taxes. That is why they spend so much to get Trump and other republicans elected: to keep their unjust tax cuts and write their own regulations.
Musk is end-stage Citizens United
Republicans’ tax cuts to the rich morphed into selling election outcomes. In 2010, Citizens United held that the uber rich could select our national leaders by donating undisclosed millions to candidates who would do their bidding. After Musk paid $48 billion to ruin Twitter and another $300 million to get Trump elected, Republican Congressmen today are frightened, afraid to do their jobs. Musk has credibly threatened to primary any Congressman who criticizes Trump’s power grab, and when the world’s richest man aims his money at your head with the trigger cocked, you freeze.
When he ran for re-election, Trump promised $1 billion fossil fuel donors that they could ruin the environment without regulations, and here we are. We have entered the final stage of Citizens United’s oligarchic takeover, with its infectious spawns Musk, Vance and Trump at the helm.
As the world’s wealthiest men team up to impose maximum harm on the world by embracing Nazism and partnering with Putin, one of the world’s most lethal dictators, please take heart. It’s obvious violence is coming to the US, but America will sort itself out. We always do the right thing, as Churchill reportedly said, after other possibilities have been exhausted.
I close here in shared weariness in knowing there really are evil men in the world who will do anything for power and wealth. Also, in sympathy and apology, heartbroken for both our countries, but not defeated.
You may never see this, President Zelensky, but it will be published with national reach in the Chicago Tribune, Salon,Raw Story,OUT South Florida, Windy City Times, MSN, Alternet, and Smart News.
I just want you, Ukrainians fighting for their freedom and their lives, and democratic forces around the world to know: Most Americans see Trump. And we see you.
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Sabrina Haake is a 25 year trial lawyer specializing in 1st and 14th A defense. Her columns are published in the Chicago Tribune, Salon,Raw Story,Out South Florida, Windy City Times, MSN, Alternet, and Smart News. Her Substack, The Haake Take, is free.