An open letter to President-elect Trump
If you persecute dissent, here I am. Real patriots don't fear your threats.
Dear TAT readers,
Today’s essay is an open letter to the president-elect and his administration. I won’t speak for others but believe what follows to be on the minds of most Americans who refused to vote for a serial sexual assaulter, racist, treasonous, armed insurrection leader, lifelong conman and abuser of working-class Americans. Yes, this is a harsh sentence but my intention is not to be harsh, but only accurate. Everything I have just stated is absolutely true, can be verified in countless credible sources and within classified reporting.
As the name TAT/ Truth about Threats implies, facts and truth matter. What both Trump and MAGA refuse to understand is that words have meanings, and they are not at liberty to change those meanings to suit their agenda. Hence, the reason that I have used selected, honest words to describe the president elect.
Now for the open letter to the incoming POTUS
Dear President-elect Trump,
As you enter the Oval Office for the second time, I wish to explain a few things to you about real patriots, not the FOX News, spoon-fed fake patriots that you surround yourself with. I was raised in a family of true patriots that believe in the principles of our constitution, and the inherent goodness of what our founders foresaw for our nation. My Dad was a life-long educator, beginning his career in the classroom, teaching history and government.
I sat at his home bookshelf from the time I could hold a book on my own and read history and government. I like to think that his deep interests and beliefs rubbed off on me, at least a little. My mom was also college trained and embodied the values and beliefs of our finest national heritage. Dad was a lifelong Democrat and Mom, a Republican. Both voted across party lines when necessary and there was no political animosity between them. This is the America that I grew up believing in and still do. Both were Veterans, as am I and my son. All military members swear a sacred oath to, “protect and defend the constitution against all enemies, both foreign and domestic.” You swear this oath as well.
Here’s a little something that you certainly won’t recognize but that you must learn, if you have any intention at all, of governing with true American values. Right vs. left, Democrat vs. Republican, liberal vs. Conservative, only goes superficially deep, in most citizens. I grew in a time where no matter which side a citizen was on, they were not sworn enemies. At their core, most still believed in our founding principles. In other words, they were Americans first, party members second. I surmise that roughly 80% of the voters of my youth, would have found your fake patriotism and that of today’s GOP, not only insulting, but laughable.
Those Americans and most of today’s as well, are offended, frightened and disgusted with your bromance with the genocidal, aggressor named Putin. In fact, a natural identity trait for true American patriots, is to be defensive in the face of genocidal autocrats like Putin or any other dictator, despot or similar. There is a freedom gene that lives deeply and securely embedded in the identity of real patriots. You are not leading those Americans because they reject everything about you. You are leading those who have sold their soul to a combination of Russian and MAGA influence operations.
Those true patriots that you do not represent, are the very Americans that will stand in the way of your un-American, pro-Putin agendas. I am but one of this prestigious group and we outnumber those who have been conned by the influence of you, MAGA operators like Brad Parscale and yes, Russia. I know these operations professionally, and the facts are quite clear. As that all of my writing on this and related topics are public and free, you may find the details there.
As that you have threatened with violence and prison, those who honestly dissent against you, I am telling you right now, “here I am.” I fully intend to continue writing about truth. and this is a threat to your administration. I and the millions like me will never subject ourselves to the tyranny of what I have described as, the Four Horsemen of the MAGA Apocalypse, Autocracy, Oligarchy, White Christian Nationalism and your intended political violence.
Please allow me a moment to explain what real American Patriots believe in, since you’ve demonstrated no understanding at all, of our constitutional principles.
True American patriots believe in the constitution, and that it is the very core of American values. You, Mr. Putin, a handful of immoral oligarchs, like Elon Musk, Rupert Murdoch, Peter Thiel etc. don’t even understand these principles. Your God is money, as a tool of power. You have never been responsible with either. In fact, your personal history is saturated with the most callous indifference to those that you intentionally hurt in your business dealings. Historically, no president has come to office with such human traits. Most reject these traits out-of-hand, as do I.
No American president has intentionally sold-out our national security to foreign adversaries, the way that you have with Vladimir Putin. Patriots will not accept this, no matter to what extent you and Mr. Putin continue employing influence operations, to convince them. Patriotism, like national security events, has internal redlines in Americans. You can’t see them because you have no idea what it means to be an American patriot. Just know that they exist and once triggered, become a force of unstoppable commitment to restore integrity to our nation.
The tactics employed during the campaign will not help you now. It will also no longer help down ticket GOP elected officials like my congressman, Tony Gonzalez of Texas 23. Now you must govern, and should you do all that you claim, you will leave the nation and her people in shambles within a couple of years. You will have no one to blame because we have all seen this before, during your first administration. Tragically for the nation, you don’t even understand how deeply you have triggered honest American patriots, and from all parties.
History is instructive for leaders who behave as you and your party. Your legacy will deservedly be pure shame, as are Hitler’s, Mao’s, Stalin’s, Putin’s the N. Korean dynasty, Iran’s Ayatollahs, Caligula etc. etc. etc. Their progeny knows this all too well. Your children already wear this shame, albeit willingly. Your grandchildren though will bear extraordinary derision, just by association to you and their parents’ legacies.
For example, Stalin, in many senses Putin’s prototype, is exemplary of what will occur to you, your family and those closest to you who do your dark bidding. “Destalinization” after his death, became the primary focus of the Soviet Politburo. His successors called his reign of fear, a “Stalin cult.” It wasn’t until the last few years that Putin reinvigorated Stalin as a hero of sorts, that he received any post regime accolades. After losing the 2020 election, you turned the Oval Office of the “people’s house” into a close comparison of “Hitler’s bunker” complete with a follow-up, armed insurrection on January 6th, 2021. Most of the American people were horrified at what you planned and executed. It would take your Russian and MAGA supporters nearly four years to overcome the disgust of your first coup attempt.
I don’t offer you these miniature history lessons to teach you history. You apparently have zero interest in it. I tell you about it as prophecy, for your un-American agendas. To be bluntly clear. If you push Americans too far, their real identity will spring to life and there will be nothing to hold back their fury. As is, moral Americans operating on our founding principles, are fully engaged in every legal means, of forestalling what you intend, on all fronts. Protests will ensue and strengthen every time that you and a Republican Congress, continue robbing the working class, to increase the wealth of a handful of oligarchs. These oligarchs should pay heed to what Putin did to his own oligarchs, after his invasion of an innocent Ukraine.
We will rail against you and your party for rewarding Putin’s aggression. Likewise, an army of lawyers will fight relentlessly, the objectives of Project 2025. No matter how much your MAGA congressmen, Governors and local officials try to implement unconstitutional objectives like ignoring the Establishment Clause or realigning the three branches of government, we will be there. If you attempt to silence the people, we will be there. Attempting to rob taxpayers by giving oligarchs more tax breaks, will meet with fierce resistance for every single Republican congressman or Senator. Just like 2018 and 2022, you will be a loser in Midterms.
The advantage that honest Americans have, is that we believe in what our founders bequeathed us. You only care about you and your global oligarchical powermongers. No goal can be attained and sustained, unless it is tied to morality. That’s what being an American means. It’s not the military desertion of your grandfather nor the brothel he ran. Nor is it the white supremacists that your father fought alongside in Queens. It is definitely not the long list of your bankruptcies you used to not pay the thousands who worked for you. In the American people, there is a finite number of bridges you can burn. Stealing our Social Security, increasing the age to claim it, and the overwhelming tax burdens you will impose on all working Americans by not requiring the 1% to pay their fair share, are all redlines. No amount of influence operations will save you, once you have crossed these lines.
Finally, Mr. Trump, keep in mind that the ideology of the Confederacy pre, during and post-Civil war, looked, tasted like and smelled a lot like what you are selling. That war cost the nation more than 600,000 dead and unbearable tragedy and a full generation of progress. President Kennedy said it best during his inaugural speech in 1961.
Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe to assure the survival and the success of liberty. This much we pledge—and more. - John F. Kennedy’s Inaugural Address - President John F. Kennedy - January 20th, 1961
As I conclude this open letter, please understand that should you decide, you too could be a president of worth, if… you first embrace all represented in our Constitution and Bill of Rights, rather than attempting to destroy them. You must also give up your bromance and subjugation to a genocidal despot named Putin. Add to this, listening to experts rather than your cabinet full of political hacks. These things will be a decent start but there is far more to go, before you will be pursuing the ideological path our founders chose for our nation.
These things are a short list but one you are fully unfamiliar with. If you don’t learn from me, you will meet resistance by all legal means, to thwart your intended dictatorship. Even your base will falter because your agenda is focused on abusing the working classes more than at any other time in US history. American DNA has never been a fit for serfdom, no matter how much Putin tells you that it is possible. As a people, we have never had that experience, although most Russians have. This makes a big difference in how we as Americans, respond to further Putinesque oppression.
The last point is the most important for you. It is best for our nation that you learn these lessons before pursuing your agenda. It will end poorly for everyone, should you ignore this advice outright. We’ve been through one civil war and the good guys won. We will again and there is not one thing that you can do to change the odds. It is simply, what it means to be an American and it is high time that you learned this. As I noted earlier in this correspondence, ““here I am.” I fully intend to continue writing about truth.” If you are serious about silencing dissent, you won’t have to look hard for me. Patriots, don’t hide, run or go silent. Like Lexington Commons, all true patriots turn into Minutemen, publicly standing against oppression.
Sincerely,
Paul Cobaugh
US Army Retired
Thank you as always for reading these essays. As that this is an “open” letter to the president-elect, I would be humbly honored if you would share. I would love to see us all standing shoulder-to-shoulder for what real patriots believe in.
My very best for your weekend,
Paul