5th Column

My dear Donald,

I thought I must write to you after hearing that you are about to lose your job as arguably the most powerful person in the world – although your performance exceeded most expectations and for a moment, many people were worried that you may get another four-year term at the White House.

You sent that chap Mike to visit us just before your election but that was too little, too late. If only you had sent him earlier, we could have given you a few tips on how to handle this. After all, we have a former US citizen leading us and a current US citizen is pulling all the strings behind the scenes!

Consider the coronavirus pandemic, for example. You were the focus of all the attention during the pandemic for the past few months, holding media briefings regularly and telling us what you were doing – or not doing – about the pandemic, while thousands were dying every day in your country.

That is not how it should have been done. You should have appointed your top military man to take on that job. Now, you may ask how appropriate it is to appoint a soldier, no matter how decorated he is, to take on what is essentially a task for a doctor, but I’ll explain why this is best.

The problem with doctors is that they deal with the pandemic scientifically – if they do not belong to a trade union. If you appoint a soldier, he does the job the way you, his Commander-in-Chief, want it done. If it goes well, you take all the credit for appointing him. If it goes wrong, it will be his fault!

We also saw that you were very much against lockdowns and I think it was the wrong strategy. If you had a lockdown, you and your supporters could still go about and campaign using your authority but your opponents won’t be able to even hold a rally. That is how we did it over here – and it worked!

One tactic that you did get right was not to care too much about minority communities. A majority of voters are from the majority community, so you have to be on their side, even if you sound racist. That is probably why you got so may votes, surpassing all expectations and proving the polls wrong.

Now, had you won, you could have proudly said in your inauguration speech that you proved you can win without the support of the minorities. Then, when people accuse you of being racist for saying that, you could have appointed someone from a minority community to head the Justice Department!

One trick that you definitely missed in your first term, Donald, was to amend the Constitution. I know that this is rarely done in your country, but we in Paradise firmly believe that Constitutions are meant to be amended – and if previous amendments are problematic for you, you amend those amendments!

For instance, in most of your states, those in the electoral college have to vote for the candidate endorsed by their state. If you had amended the Constitution allowing them to vote according to their own wishes, anything could still be possible. We know from experience that every man has his price!

Another strategy of yours was to hurriedly appoint a judge to the Supreme Court in the last days of your term of office. That was no doubt a smart move but I am not sure whether appointing just one judge to the Supreme Court is enough to tilt the balance in you favour at this election, Donald.

Ideally, you, as the head of the government, should have the power to hire and fire judges to the higher courts. You can also expand the number of judges in those courts. That way, when you seek legal intervention to block votes being counted in certain states, you will get the desired outcome!

Donald, I am sorry that all this advice is coming a little too late for you. However, you need not despair. You can go to your hometown, make an appearance, speak to your supporters and tell them that you were defeated unfairly. You might look a little pathetic doing that, but believe me, it works!

Besides, Joe Biden is not known as a strong leader and was chosen to run only because the Democrats couldn’t seem to find any other. We have been in situations like that and there is every chance that, four years from now – when you will only be a year older than Biden is now – they may want you back!

Yours truly,

Punchi Putha

PS: I get the feeling that when you sent Mike to visit us recently, he met the wrong brother. Had he met the ‘other’ brother, Kamala Harris would have defected to your side by now arguing that you, as the leader, should not be thrown into a river and asked to swim with your hands and feet tied!