12/10/19

My dear Friend and President, DJT,

Did you read my letter yesterday? If so, please forgive me for being such an alarmist. I got carried away. Going to war with China is completely crazy. Right?

Today my attention is on Russia. I just read the piece in today’s WP about the 14 Trump associates who had conversations about a possible Trump-Putin meeting. I felt like I was reading War and Peace with all of those wonderful Russian names. Oleg Deripaska, Dmitry Klokov, Konstanin Kilmnik… It doesn’t get any better than that!

You’ll remember that my grandpa was from St. Petersburg. When I was little and visiting him in NJ, he’d take me to parties where all of these intense looking people would be talking passionately in Russian. For all I know they were talking about the weather, but it was clear that they disagreed about it and enjoyed the debate. He was the most intellectually curious person I’ve ever known. He was intrigued by electronic music in the early 60’s. He engineered a ski binding/boot combination that foreshadowed today’s snowboard binding. He restored old paintings. He spoke 7 languages and dominated most chess games. He was exceedingly charming, too. Not a man to mess with.

My take on this whole Russia thing is that you had no intention of winning the election. You were leveraging your candidacy to make a deal to build a hotel in Moscow. You anticipated making your negotiations quietly during the campaign and then go about your business while Hilary ran the country. I’m sorry that things didn’t turn out that way.

Now we get to read all those wonderful Russian names in the news, bringing back fond memories of my dear grandpa who was the only person to call me “beautiful”.

Stay warm!

RCA

PS - I hope they pass that Criminal Justice Bill. It would be nice to have a bi-partisan success, don’t you think?

PSS - The WP says you are having trouble finding an “apparatchik” to be your chief of staff. Don’t you just love that word?