23 September 2020

Dear President Trump,

I hope this letter finds you well and looking forward to your re-election in November.

There are four topics I wish to sound off on. First is the nomination and confirmation of a new Supreme Court justice. Second regards the upcoming election and ballot security. Third is the continuing COVID 19 saga. Fourth is the prospect of an actual civil war in our nation.

You obviously understand the simple Constitutional guidance regarding the nomination and confirmation of candidates to fill empty bench seats on the Supreme Court. It’s your Constitutional duty to move forward and make your nomination. Those who say anything different are ignorant, not quite sane, or purely partisan Democrats. It’s also the Constitutional duty of the Senate to give their “advice and consent” regarding your nominee. They should move forward to confirmation immediately after you announce your nominee. We have seen instances where the majority party in the Senate has thwarted the process by either delaying or refusing to examine and vote on the nominee of the President. In certain circumstances, that’s to be expected. A great example was provided when President Obama put Judge Garland up for nomination and the Republican-led Senate refused to hold hearings. In most cases going forward, it’s wise to expect that when the Presidency is held by a member of one party and the Senate majority is held by the opposing party it’s not likely the nomination will move forward in a general election year. Talk of any Senate “rule” or “tradition” is nonsense. Politics being what it is, if one side has a way to block the will of the other side, we should all expect it to happen. There is no longer any appreciable degree of comity in our Legislative Branch of government. The stakes are obviously too high.

I look forward to the coming days and the historic opportunity you have of placing your third nominee on the Supreme Court. Indeed, it will be a great day—for the entire nation.

Your stance on mail-in balloting is the correct one. You’ve been clear in your most recent discussions, and I appreciate the time you’ve taken to illuminate the differences between solicited and unsolicited ballots. The media tends to lump all types of mail-in ballots together and I seldom hear discussions of the usual requirements to obtain an absentee ballot. The lack of specificity in the discussion only serves to sow confusion. You are correct that if a state requires the same standard for any mail-in ballot as they do for absentee ballots, the process can be considered legitimate and generally trustworthy, whereas if the standards are less, the trustworthiness is commensurately less. The very notion of unsolicited ballots is scary. Where are any controls at all when such a method is approved? How will anyone know who filled out the ballot, and how would anyone be assured the ballot forms weren’t replicated and filled out en-masse? The Constitution doesn’t seem to help us much in this instance. It leaves the decision-making authority to the states, and some of our states don’t seem all that concerned about fraud in their election process.

There is a bright side to the issue of voting. To my knowledge, no state that appears intent on certifying a voting system that’s easy to “game” is one controlled by Republicans or likely to be won by the Republican Party. In every case I know of, the state isn’t actually in play. We may not like what’s going on. We may not like the mechanisms being certified to ensure even illegal aliens can vote, but as long as we have the Electoral College and the overwhelming majority of states run fair and accountable elections, the outcome should reflect the peoples' will. The media portrays election fraud concerns as either nonsense or of minimal potential impact. While I feel relatively confident you will garner the majority of the Electoral College votes, the efforts of the Democratic Party appear intended to question the legitimacy of any outcome that’s not in their favor. In doing so, it appears clear their intent is to keep up the campaign against your Presidency that began the day after your election was confirmed. They are clearly signaling that if you manage to be elected for four more years, your future won’t be any more peaceful than the previous ones have been. I believe I speak for many when I state your future is my future in this regard.

I’ve heard many stories regarding foreign intervention in our election. If those stories are to be believed, several nations either are or plan to be involved in attempts to sway voters’ minds regarding the future of the country. My personal opinion is those efforts are a waste of time and money for any nation that engages in such activity. But, it makes for good press stories and serves as handy diversions from the truth of where our legitimate concerns should lie. I think I speak for many when I say I’m far more concerned about the plans of the Democratic National Committee, Organizing for American, and a few other groups than I am of any foreign government. I’m much more concerned that the World Economic Forum (WEF) may be sponsoring an active operation than of any of the state actors. The WEF seems to believe our election is the most important event that bears on the success of their near-term agenda. If you’re re-elected, it will effectively stall their plans to move forward with their so-called “Great Reset.” You went to the WEF Davos Summit this summer. I'm certain you understand their agenda.

The third topic is the seeming never-ending COVID-19 response. You know what this entire thing is and what it’s being used for. Somehow we have to end this, too. We cannot be a nation that cowers and hides every time a new microbe comes on the scene. Such things are bound to happen.

When we accept the idea of politicizing diseases, we’re off into unknown territory. I appreciate the difficulty of your position on this. It’s a no-win, no matter what you do or don’t do.

People are adamant that we need to follow the dictates of scientific knowledge, but it’s easy to conclude that science actually doesn’t know that much. We’ve heard multiple recommendations on masking, and yet we’re pretty much all being required to wear them. We know our nation does more testing than any other country on the planet, but we’re also told under normal circumstances the only people who are tested are those who have symptoms. If I wanted to get a test today, I’d need to call my doctor, tell him which symptoms I have, then wait until a testing site calls me to inform me of my time slot to come by and get swabbed. Meanwhile, because people who don’t have symptoms aren’t tested I can’t go into the hospital with my wife when she’s having outpatient surgery. I have to wait outside in the parking lot until she’s ready to be picked up. What are the testing protocols being used and how is that data being reported? Is the test specific to COVID-19? I’ve heard it’s not.

If I go to a restaurant, I’m expected to mask up before entering and to wear a mask anytime I’m not in my chair at the dining table, but I may spend an hour in that dining room space with 20 or 30 other people, none of whom are masked. What sense is there in that? Then, there’s the truth that the masks offer almost zero protection from any virus. What are the real purposes of the mask mandates?

The disease itself is real, of that I’m certain. But nothing in the statistics I see tell me it’s the huge social concern it’s being made out to be. More people are dying of tuberculosis, yet I see no panic in the media or in society over it. It seems to me the greatest danger of COVID-19 is the people may get used to doing useless and stupid things just because some governmental entity tells them to. The danger is Americans are too easily turned into sheeple, with no ability to apply good common sense. If we can be convinced to be afraid of something that’s proven to be less deadly than ten other diseases that were already a fact of American life, what can’t we be convinced of?

My last concern regarding the COVID-19 response centers on death certificates and data collection. My belief is the law regarding compensation to the medical industry is most responsible for the reports of COVID-19 infections and deaths. The law provides financial incentives to diagnose the disease, and more incentives to deal with intensive care patients and to assign it as the primary cause of death. The evidence of all this is mainly anecdotal, but no doctor, hospital, or medical examiner is going to admit they used the disease for financial gain. Yet, those financial incentives are there and common sense tells us the medical profession is making sure they maximize their gain from them. That indicates all the numbers, from infections to hospitalizations to deaths, are inflated. The only question in my own mind is...by how much? That will always be an unknown. But, the phenomenon is not unknown to me. I've seen it at work in government business for over 50 years. We always get what we incentivize. Whenever any law is passed, the best way to understand its supposed unintended consequences is to know what incentives are in the law and then have a good understanding of human behavior. Whenever there is an opportunity to cheat and not get caught at it, you can be assured there are people doing it every day. To a significant extent, the political responses to the COVID-19 pandemic have been and continue to be a giant scam.

My fourth topic regards the prospect of a civil war in our streets. No one should want to see such a thing, but it appears it’s become something of a promise. The only scenario being touted as assuring the citizens of peace going forward is one where you’re soundly trounced at the polls and the Democrats assume control of the nation. All whom I consider my friends are working overtime to see you win by a landslide, which is the primary scenario that’s promised to start the war.

Those who are paying attention understand the mechanism that will stop the rioting in America. All that needs done is to shut off the cash flow to those who are now occupying the streets in many of our cities. No cash—no riot. We all understand those people are paid to play the roles they’ve assumed. It’s easy to accept that nothing short of a convincing Biden victory will cause the payments to stop. If a civil war is to be avoided, those who are being paid need to be sent home. I’ve heard the Attorney General has the FBI hard at work tracing the money to sources. But such things often take years. If enough is known about how the money shows up in the cities where the street activists are operating, perhaps the cash can be interdicted—at least for sufficient time to cause most of the problem children to go home and reassume their lives in the basements of their parents’ homes.

For the past four months, it’s been almost impossible to get certain calibers of ammunition. The most popular and least available are .223 Remington and 5.56 NATO. Those are the calibers used by most AR-style rifles. In the past couple of weeks, there’s been such a run on guns and ammunition that many sporting goods stores report being totally out of any stock other than odd calibers of ammunition and some hand guns. Shooting ranges are beginning to report that people fitting the profiles of Antifa and Black Lives Matter street activists are showing up with new weapons to learn how to use them. All these realities indicate the level of uncertainty about our future. They indicate a fight is not just predicted, but planned. I heard a radio commentator state the excited talk in the country is similar to that heard in the South just before the outbreak of the Civil War. The notion of an unavoidable war is being accepted. That’s a dangerous thought.

The Democrats have been trying to get you to take action according to the Insurrection Act. I view it as wise that you’ve held back. Taking positive action against the street rioters now would allow your adversaries to paint you as a totalitarian. Yet, we need to put down all the violence. We need to ensure things don’t progress to the point where armed cadres square off against each other and begin killing. We cannot have a civil war! I have one thought on it. My thought is the day after the election is called a Trump victory is the day you should invoke the Insurrection Act and mobilize military units. Occupy the streets and push the anarchists out. If that thought doesn’t suit you, I have a backup idea. If you were to press local police and sheriff’s departments to solicit volunteers to augment them in a reserve capacity such forces could be the key to ensuring local law doesn’t get overwhelmed, and it may allow enough armed citizens to take to the streets and back the activist anarchists down. Every police and sheriff’s department should have a contingency plan to help them in case Antifa, BLM, the New Black Panthers, and other groups descend on them in force. We’re already hearing of activist plans to increase street activity all over the nation on Election Day and our locals will need good, reliable help. That help is there, but it needs to be authorized, planned, trained to some extent, and be ready to mobilize. We barely have enough time. You can help just by openly suggesting that contingency plans be developed to ensure peace and voter security for the election. It doesn’t need to be more specific than that. The planning could be done to augment their existing city and county Emergency Response Plans. A lot of patriots I know are willing to help. Most are former and retired military people who have the discipline needed to help law enforcement in positive ways.

Allow me to add one more topic; one that's become the most important one to me—Education. It's come to my attention from several sources that new curricula is being introduced in many schools in the nation through efforts of teachers' unions. Traditionally, the unions haven’t involved themselves in curricula, but in recent years they've been very active in pushing lessons meant to give positive views of their own pet philosophies. Most recently, it's apparent that pro-Black Lives Matter material has been showing up in classrooms. So has rather blatant pro-Marxist material. I've seen Secretary of Education DeVos on camera admitting that she's aware of the material and is seeking ways to deal with it. This is one instance where decentralization works against the interests of parents and society as a whole. My only recommendation on this topic is to put Mrs. DeVos on the road. She should develop a virtual town-hall program that reveals what the teachers' unions are doing and present it to each state level school board, then urge them all to intercede. She should then address each state’s legislature and give the same presentation. Put the onus squarely on the states to deal with the issue through their own mechanisms. Ensure no state official involved in education can say, "I didn’t know!" Sec. DeVos needs to ensure they all know.

You’ve done a great thing by banning the presentation of Critical Race Theory in the Executive Branch. Now, we all need to find ways to stop it in our schools. If we can’t stamp out all aspects of cultural Marxism, including Critical Race Theory, our country will not know peace.

I understand nothing I’ve stated in this letter is news to you. But, I do appreciate your time and attention.

In Liberty,

Steve A. Stone