By Tobye S. Stein
January 12, 2021
Dear Donnie,
I’ve thought about writing to you many times, but I wasn’t sure you were ready for some good honest feedback. I realize that you don’t know me personally, so let me introduce myself. I am a licensed counselor in the Great State of Michigan. It’s the one where the Lower Peninsula looks like a mitten and is surrounded by the Great Lakes. It’s the one with the women you hate, especially the Governor, Secretary of State, and Attorney General. During my long career in human resources, I’ve worked with a lot of executives like you, incompetent, self-serving, and like you, eventually fired. They each had trouble with the managers reporting to them and experienced frequent turnover.
Donnie, you’ve just experienced another failure. Your coup attempt was a total disaster. You not only lost the presidential election, the popular vote for the second time, but this time, to use your words, you also lost the Electoral College in a landslide. In addition, you helped the two Republican Georgia Senators lose their runoff elections, in large part because of their loyalty to you. If we’ve learned one thing during the past five years, it’s that you value loyalty above honesty, integrity, and competence. I’m not sure you understand the last three.
The bigger problem, Donnie, isn’t just your recent failure; it’s all of your failures over the years. You’ve bankrupted casinos and stolen money from your own charity, and gotten caught. Your vodka business went bankrupt, as did Trump University and your steak business.
You’re known for your failure to pay contractors for completed work and then bleeding them dry in court when they try to collect. You’ve failed to pay attorneys, who will now no longer represent you, and you’ve built quite a reputation for doing that.
But enough about your little failures. I don’t think Dad would be happy that you failed to match up to the big boys you so admire, including Vlad, Xi, and Kim, your little Rocket Man, to name just a few. Those guys have guts. They poison, behead, and jail those who oppose them. They know how to get the job done. They don’t like journalists? No problem for them. They lock them up or kill them. You don’t like protestors, well, they don’t bother with tear gas and rubber bullets, they use lethal gas and real bullets and tanks. You wanted to be a badass, and you had a little success, but when it came to having a kill shot (as they say in tennis and you play almost as much tennis as golf), you just didn’t have it in you. You wanted to be a dictator and president for life, just like those guys, but you failed again, you failed bigly. Those damn Americans and their Constitution. Repeatedly, you’d say, the Constitution is getting in my way.
I’ve seen people fail in their jobs when they really had no idea what to do. Your job as president was to govern our country. Unfortunately, you had no idea what was required at the bare minimum, and you have no leadership skills. You could have surrounded yourself with knowledgeable people, but you failed in selecting your cabinet as well as other senior-level positions. You hired yes-men and women, which might have worked if any of them had the knowledge and skills to do their jobs, but again you failed in selecting competent people. Anyone who was competent but disagreed with you was fired.
While some turnover in the White House is expected especially between the first and second terms of a presidency, you had a constant revolving door for cabinet members who stole from the government (we the people), chiefs of staff, intelligence and military personnel. Those you fired or who left, because they realized how inept you are, were always criticized for not being up to the job and being disloyal. Your first national security advisor lasted less than a month. Really Donnie, after a while, you have to realize it can’t be everyone except for Javanka who is wrong.
I think this is a good time for an intervention. You won’t concede your loss, but you did say there will be a peaceful transfer of power. Now it’s time to hold you accountable for all of your failures. It’s time to hold you accountable for treasonous behavior. I know you watch a lot of TV. Did you watch what happened at the Capitol Building on Wednesday? You promised your faithful that you would walk with them to the Capitol. I imagine you were envisioning Martin Luther King, Jr. and John Lewis walking arm-in-arm in our nation’s capital or Selma, Alabama leading their people and getting into good trouble. Donnie, is that what you had in mind? If you did, again, you failed. You didn’t even show up. And after roving bands of anarchists broke into the Peoples’ House, defaced and vandalized it, and threatened the lives of your very loyal Vice President, as well as fellow GOP elected officials and Democrats, all you said to the anarchists was, I love you, now go home. Oh, and how can I forget your reference to the allegedly stolen election?
Donnie, accept it, you failed. You failed to get the popular vote again, and this time you failed to earn the Electoral College vote. You FAILED. No one stole anything. You actually gave the election away with your failure to manage the coronavirus, your failure to help the working-class people you claim to love, your failure to safely keep schools open, and your manifest failure to enact any legislation that helped anyone except your family, corporations, and the very wealthy in our country. You failed to protect America from Russian interference in our elections and to protect national security. Donnie, you failed in business, you failed as president, and you failed on the international stage with our allies.
Donnie, I have good counseling and management skills, but I don’t think I can help you until you accept that no matter what you’ve done in life, the only thing you’ve achieved is FAILURE.
If you’re ready to do some really hard work, call me, I’m one of those smart, articulate women in the Great State of Michigan.
Honestly yours,
Tobye Stein
Tobye S. Stein retired as Chief Human Resources Officer from a California-based financial services organization. She once landed a job by replying to the age old question, “Why should I hire you instead of the other two candidates” by simply stating “I’m funnier than most people.” It worked.