• by Bob Garfield , Featured Columnist, July 19, 2015

To: Donald Trump, next president of the United States

From: Michael Cohen, executive vice president, special counsel, The Trump Organization

Re: media/marketing strategy

July 20, 2015

Donald,

First of all, congratulations on another super strong week, profile-raising-wise! You are out there saying the things only you have the courage to say. Going to Iowa and letting the Family Leadership Conference reflect on the outrageous amount of pussy you’ve enjoyed was utterly unexpected. It was particularly counterintuitive to stand before an Evangelical audience and dismiss the notion of seeking God’s forgiveness for your supposed moral trespasses. And the “eating the little crackers” description of Holy Communion! This firmly established you as the first presidential candidate in modern history to ridicule religion to Iowans.

I wonder, though, if we’re not possibly getting off track a bit strategically. 

You recall we went over the list of issues that our base cares deeply about. High on that list was losing the white Christian country they grew up in to hordes of highly suspicious Spanish speakers hell-bent on stealing their jobs, raping their women and putting chimichangas on the menu at Ruby Tuesday’s.

Well, you crushed it there. You clearly internalized our discussions about “dog whistles” -- the code words that real Americans understand but can’t be entered as evidence in the court of political correctness. “Illegal immigrant” obviously means “immigrant.” In fact, it means everyone including third-generation American citizens and Supreme Court justices defiling our culture and racial purity, often by sneakily working long hours for minimum wage.

By talking about the rapist “illegal” immigrants, you very subtly and deftly struck a nerve with your constituency of angry, aging, xenophobic, poorly educated, Bible-thumping white males who just want somebody to speak truth. Like Jesse Ventura or Glenn Beck or Sarah Palin, but famous from prime-time network TV, not cable channel 631. And the beauty part is that the struck nerve also triggers spasms of anger about the blacks, the gays and the uppity non-fashion-model women who have emasculated us before the world. So, way to stay on message there!

Naturally I looked forward to the rest of the high-emotion topics we discussed: tax-and-spend Democrats, gun confiscation, Caitlin Jenner, quinoa, NPR and those repulsive Greek freeloaders. (Yes, to answer your incisive question, you can talk about the Greeks as much as you wish, knowing that your audience will blow aneurisms about our own swarthy domestic welfare addicts). So much red meat there, as they say. I must remark, so naïve and narrow am I in the face of your unerring political instincts, when we spoke about the new week’s talking points, I entirely did not pick up on the McCain thing.

I suppose I wasn’t paying close enough attention when you said to me, “Mike, watch me burnish my diplomacy and national-security credentials simultaneously -- while also eliminating a major primary opponent.” Donald, I stupidly assumed you referred to someone actually seeking the current nomination, not the 2008 one. Also, in a country that worships its military nearly as much as Big Macs and the NFL, it didn’t seem to me the most obvious thing to (bravely, of course) take on those obnoxious grandstanding ex-P.O.W.s.

But as I say, you never fail to surprise me. By calling out McCain for his cowardly getting shot down over Vietnam and being held 5-½ years in sadistic captivity, you won another news cycle. Big time. It’s entirely possible that the denunciations from even the most unhinged primary opponents, and the drone strike the Republican Nation Committee tried to order, will just establish you as the celebrity among mere apprentices.

But let’s just savor this one, okay? Let’s hold off on the “Jew York City” stuff till at least the fall. Likewise the cage match with Caitlin Jenner. (Or did I misinterpret “Yeah, I’d totally hit that shit.”)

Thanks, Donald. As you say, you are indeed a genius.

Two more small agenda items: The wind is becoming a problem. Please double down on the scalp Velcro. Also, for the Tourette…the Concerta isn’t working. You might consider adding the Haldol.