Dear Mr. President

The following is a letter I drafted up to send to President Trump.  I don’t know if I will send it or if I do, if he will ever see it.  I am posting it here so there is some record of my opinion, however insignificant it may be.

Mr. President,

                I am writing in regards to the passage of the omnibus spending bill.  A bill that delivers none of your campaign promises, but gives the Democrats everything they could hope for as the minority party.  I have accepted your promise to stand firm in September and I truly wish for the best.  Unfortunately, I feel you have already set the tone by capitulating under the threat of a “shutdown”.  The Left has a methodology of finding a weakness or a trigger word that gets them what they want and then publicly utilizing said weakness to bend the will of Republicans.  If you cower at being called a racist, they will say “If you don’t sign this bill increasing welfare spending then you don’t care about minorities”.  This causes a knee-jerk reaction from Republicans not wanting to hurt their chances at re-election and the Left completes their agenda. 

This I believe is what just happened with the omnibus shutdown threat.  Senators McConnell, Cruz and the others present during the last shutdown were lambasted by the media and Democratic Senators for the previous shutdown and I think that made the party as a whole a little gun-shy when it comes to the utterance of the word.  There is a method that I believe only you can utilize to diffuse the manipulation of the Left.  That is a televised speech from the Oval Office.  There would be just you, a camera and a message.  No permission necessary, no extra security required, no debate, no interruptions.  You would be broadcast into an overwhelming majority of American homes and be able to deliver your message to constituents of both parties.

The message should be a preemptive strike against the negative press coverage the Democrats are likely to utilize come September.  It should emphasize that the potential government shutdown is not a true shutdown, but a slowdown.  The government will not collapse and we will not be defenseless.  As with the previous shutdown, essential sections of government will be funded to include the military, border security, the FBI, CIA and other entities necessary to national security.  Utilize this as an opportunity to empower the states.  During the shutdown, functions and services not provided by the federal government will be handled at the state level.  Funding for welfare programs, environmental protection and other bureaucratic “unnecessaries” that aren’t outlined as being federal responsibilities in the Constitution should be reviewed by state legislatures and supported or revoked dependent on the will of the constituents of that particular state.  This is a method by which some of your campaign promises can be fulfilled without having to solely rely on the cooperation of Congress.  By allowing the states to make their own determinations during the shutdown, it creates a case for support or revocation once the “lawmaking” begins again.  The will of the states will be visible in their actions.

Once the states make their desires known through action, the Washington career politicians in Congress can no longer cry out about the will of the people if their actions run contrary to what was displayed.  This will help you hold opponents to the America First agenda accountable to the people they supposedly represent.  I personally would like to see more Oval Office addresses from you.  I think some of your charisma and the emotion behind some of your statements are lost when delivered through a Twitter feed.  Some of the most powerful statements of modern Presidents were made through such addresses and those are the ones that stick out through history. 

I pray for your success and the safety and health of your family.  I truly hope that you succeed in the agenda you set forth during the campaign.  However, if you honestly want to “drain the swamp” you are going to need to pull the plug and dry it out.  You will not succeed if you try to play by their rules and muck around in their quagmire.  Their rules and practices were created by them to further enable and proliferate their way of life and government.  You lost this round because you tried to play their game.  It’s time to scatter the pieces and flip the table over.

 

                                                                                                                Very Respectfully,

                                                                                                                C.J. Johnston