An Open Letter to President Donald Trump

Dear President Trump, 


          I was horrified to see you encouraging chants of "Send Her Back" at your rally in Greenville, North Carolina. This kind of nativist rhetoric echoes the vilest dogma of the political past. Whatever rationalizations you might offer for these expressions, there can be no doubt that they are intensely encouraging and exciting to the white nationalists and Neo-Nazis that inhabit the lunatic fringe of our politics.

          We have seen how this plays out before. On May 7, 2018 Jeff Sessions gave a speech announcing a "zero tolerance" policy at the border. Following that were family separations, tweets about "infestation" and MS-13, troops at the border...a steady series of escalations and incitements, driving white nationalists into a rising crescendo of manic excitement. On October 27, 2018 Robert Bowers walked into Tree of Life synagogue and killed 11 people, citing Jews' support for Latin@ migrants as his motive.

           When you came to console the congregants at Tree of Life you pleaded innocent of any intent to stoke hatred and violence. I cannot open a window into your heart, and thus I would concede that you must be given the benefit of the doubt on that score. But with your recent racist campaign of provocations and agitation, you are stirring the same passions and leading us down the path to the same end. You cannot claim ignorance of the consequences of your actions a second time.

           If you lead us to the point that tragedy strikes again, there can be no doubt that you share in the guilt. You may travel to the point where the needle you have set spinning comes to rest and play the mourner, but nothing will be able to dispel the stench of rank hypocrisy. No one can be consoled by that kind of "sympathy". As an American and a Jew I plead with you, stop! For the sake of your daughter, her husband, and their children, stop!

           This is a moral imperative that transcends politics. You are not simply stirring the tensions between "right" and "left," you are slashing at the very communal fabric that makes us human beings. If you do not desist, there will be mortal consequences, and you will not be able to reject any responsibility.


                                         Sincerely,


                                          Andrew Meyer