By Chris Satullo
Frightening fact: Americans still fall for the old Nigerian prince email scam to the tune of $700-plus thousand a year. (FWIW, the fake Nigerian in the photo is the guy on the right.)
Dear esteemed and benevolent sir or madam,
I am writing you on an urgent matter where your kind help, as a trusted and reliable person, could make a beautiful difference.
My name is Donald. In my native country, I am a most humble servant of stable genius who works day and night – or at least between 11 and 2 (unless the weather looks good for golf) – to make my country great again.
Unfairly, the thanks I get for this amazing service is to be surrounded, bigly, by very nasty people who treat me so badly, the worst you can imagine, or even worse. They are the worst people, and they are also very mean and nasty to the best people who are all around me, since I gathered them in what a lot of people say is the best government they’ve ever seen, since G. Washington at least, maybe longer. Some people say what is being done to me is the HUGEST SCANDAL IN THE HISTORY OF THE WORLD. I don’t know, but a lot of people say it.
I know you are a kind, most trusted person so I’m sure you see how this makes me feel.
To defeat these nasty socialists and anarchists and, well, women who say bad things about me, I am in need of your kind assistance.
So I am writing you in my great humility to offer for your wonderful judgment the most beautiful deal anyone has ever been offered.
Here is the small, accommodating arrangement you must make to hold up your end of our most illustrious and beneficial deal:
Vote for me on Nov. 3. That is all.
Though I regret to inform you that a few very minor conditions do attach to this offer:
If by some ill stroke of luck you live in one of those shithole blue states with one of those Democrat governors who is a steaming pile of cheat and fraud, first off, I feel for you (or would, if I had a shred of capacity for empathy, which, thank God, I do not). Anyway, in those states, and this kind sir or madam is a most important condition of our understanding, you must vote in person on Nov. 3, the real Election Day, the only day on which votes should count.
You must not, under any circumstance, follow the advice of those cheating governors who are now telling you that you can vote by mail, which is just a yuge scam to rig the election in favor of socialist cop-killers like that Harris woman. (Is it just me, or did she have a nose job?)
Now, on the other hand, if you are lucky enough to live in Florida, Texas or Arizona, one of those sunny states with lots of nice golf courses and loyal Republican governors, you may, kind sir or madam, feel most free and permitted to vote by mail. That is perfectly fine.
In fact, if you can swing it, vote two or three times. (You know those lying Democrat socialists will be doing that all around those steaming black holes of carnage they call cities. It says in the Constitution that in such circumstances, it’s only right that real suburban Americans like you get to vote as often as you like. Or so people say, so many people.)
And when you vote, remember, kind sir or madam, don’t wear a mask. First, it makes you look like a wimp. Second, it’ll clash with your MAGA hat. So be a real patriot, show your chin for America.
If you do this little thing for me, what, you might ask, might I do for you in return, you, my most trusted and reliable friend?
Here is the beauty part of this most beautiful deal you have ever seen: I have already done it. All you need to do is to thank me.Here’s what I’ve done: Last weekend, I signed four bills, or orders, or memoranda, or whatever the pinheads in my lawyer’s office insist on calling the things this week.
Together these four whatchamacallits make up the greatest thing a president has ever done for real American people in a crisis. So many people are saying that. I don’t know, but that’s what they say. Here’s what I did:
- I saved you from being evicted from your home. (Or maybe not so much really, but I did ask some of those Cabinet flunkies who sharpen pencils for me to think really, really hard about how much it must blow to lose your home. I mean, most of us own four or five houses, or seven, so it takes a lot of brainpower for us to imagine what it’s like to be such a loser that you get booted out of your only one.)
- I got you 400 bucks a week in extra unemployment comp. (Or I would have if those loser Democrat governors would ever quit bawling about being broke and fork over their share of the money. Tell that Annoying Andy Cuomo you don’t buy his whining and he owes you. If he’s really broke, he should be a man, like me – declare bankruptcy.)
- You know that horrible payroll tax you pay? I made it so you don’t have to. (At least for the rest of the year. It’s not like you’ll never have to pay those taxes; you will, but not until next year. After you’ve voted for me and I get four more years, if you catch my drift. Who knows, I might even decide just to let you off the hook and never pay. You’re welcome. And you know me, when have I ever failed to deliver on a promise? Just like that one I made about protecting your Social Security.)
- Also, I did something complicated with your student loan debt. (I don’t quite get what; I never had any college loans, you know. But I hear it’s quite a wonderful thing, what I did, the biggest thing a president has ever done for higher education since Jefferson laid out the University of Vermont. You know, nobody knew that about him until I brought it up; we’re just learning that Jefferson did things with colleges, really beautiful things. Just as I’m doing with this thing I did. Ask Betsy to explain it to you.
- At the end of the day, most benevolent and trusted sir or madam, these are the kind of unbelievable things I’ve done for you and will keep doing if you give me your vote (or two or three) and help me annoy those fake news clowns who keep coming up with those phony polls saying I’m about to get my tail whipped.
So, most kind friend, I close by thanking you for your most wonderful support, your most genial loyalty and your most glorious gullibility, which has been like wind beneath my wings these last four years.
Your most obedient servant,
D. Trump
p.s. Covfefe
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Chris Satullo, a civic engagement consultant, is a former editorial page editor/columnist at The Philadelphia Inquirer, and a former vice president/news at WHYY public media in Philadelphia.