Dear Wealthy Businessmen of America,
First of all, congratulations on all your success. I mean that sincerely. I might be the epitome of an Ivy-educated, East Coast liberal weenie, but I do believe in capitalism. I believe that you should be taxed a hell of a lot more because some luck plays a role in every great success story, and I believe that our laws should help level the playing field between poor kids and your kids to make sure income inequality isn't self-perpetuating, but even if some of you grew up with advantages that most people didn't have, you still out-performed most of your peers to reach you level of success.
Before going on, I want to make it clear that the intended audience of this letter is wealthy Republican businessmen. I know not all of you are Republicans, so if you happen to George Soros, Tom Steyer, or a West Coast tech billionaire not named Peter Thiel, you can stop reading now.
Also, I'm going to keep referring to you all as businessmen, because let's face it, the glass ceiling is a real thing, and just about all of you are dudes. After all, they don't call it "the old boys network" for nothing.
OK, so let's get down to brass tacks. We need to so something about Donald Trump. I know a lot of you gave money to Donald Trump in the last election, but I hope some of you are beginning to realize that Donald Trump is bad for your business. Yeah, yeah, I know - that giant tax break Trump signed into law was great for you business, but do you really think Donald Trump deserves any credit for that? After all, any Republican president would have signed that tax bill.
So, sure, Donald Trump signed a tax bill that any other Republican president would have signed, but he's also done a lot of things that have hurt you bottom lines. Trump's tariffs have already hurt the stock market and soon will hurt most of your businesses. I know you guys are not happy with these tariffs because every GOP candidate you supported before Trump was in favor of free trade. I would also imagine that you are not fans of Trump's immigration policies, because less immigrants means less cheap labor for you to exploit.
So, what to do? Well, I think you should do everything in your power to get Trump out of office ASAP. No, I'm not suggesting that you support Democrats; I'm just pointing out that it would benefit you greatly to have any other Republican in the White House. If Donald Trump gets impeached ( and convicted by the Senate ) or resigns, it is not as if Hillary Clinton will become president. A more conventional Republican president like Mike Pence would reverse a lot of Trump's policies that are hurting your business.
Of course, getting rid of Trump is a lot easier said than done. He's too much of an egomaniac to resign and even if the Democrats take control of both houses of Congress, it will take a each least 67 votes to convict him in the Senate of the House impeaches him. In the very best case scenario for the Dems, they'll only have 51 Senate seats ( most likely 50 or less ) , so Congress couldn't get rid of Trump unless at least 16 Republican senators are on board. That seems like an impossibility, but if all you Republican billionaires put your heads and resources together, nothing is quite impossible.
It was clear from the early days of the 2016 primaries that most Republican Senators could not stand Trump and just wished he would go away. None of them have the courage to stand up to Trump now, but big enough campaign contributions ( or the threat of pulling campaign contributions ) could buy a lot of courage. Of course, even that won't be enough unless some scandal that is finally big enough to stick to Trump. You guys should use your power and influence to dig up anything your can and forward it to Mueller's team. Maybe there's some info about his tax returns out there. Maybe the women who he sexually harassed could file some lawsuits with your financial support. Maybe enough payoffs to people familiar with the Russian mob and oligarchy could unearth some evidence of Trump's collusion with Russia ( or maybe it could uncover a certain video tape? ).
Look, I know this is all a pipe dream and the chance that a Koch brother actually reads this are practically nil, but I am really surprised that the ridiculously wealthy arm of the Republican establishments is just willing to sit back and let Trump hurt their businesses with his tariffs just for tax cut that any Republican president could have provided them with. I also know that Pence is no prize and would probably be a little tougher to beat than Trump in the 2020 election, but when a president is calling himself a "nationalist", refers to Nazis as "fine people", inspires people to commit hate crimes, inspires people to try to kill his political opponents, and calls the free press "the enemy of the people", we need to do everything in our power to get him out of office before the 2020 election, even though those efforts will almost certainly fail and extract a huge political cost on those that oppose him. There was a time I was happy he won the GOP nomination, because I thought he was the only GOP candidate Hillary had any chance of beating ( I still stand by that ) and I thought he wouldn't be significantly worse that any other horrible Republican president.
I was wrong. *
Rich
* Wrong about him not being significantly worse that any other GOP president, but he'd still be my ideal GOP opponent for Hillary if Hillary got do the 2016 election again. I really don't think she could have beaten any other GOP candidate in 2016, but she came within a whisker of beating Trump ( For what it is worth, I think she would have beat McCain in 2008 ).
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