Mr. President: Please Resign or Don’t Run Again

Mr. President: This is the right moment to resign or signal you will NOT run for re-election. Please hear me out. This is for your own good:

Hillary was up on you by 4 points in the polls at this point. She lost two points by the election and won the popular vote by 2.5 points. Like Sec of State Kerry, it was not enough to win the Electoral College, either time. You had slightly larger margins where it counted for the EC win in 2016.

That is different now. Your base, whom you call poorly educated, is still cult-like in their adoration of you but vastly diminished. You are not going to win this time. That much is clear. 

Look at this poll aggregation. Down by ten points now? There is no coming back from that, especially given the news (COVID, unemployment, industry uncertainty, the Bounty issue, the racial issues ...). Real Clear Politics leans right. Look at their aggregate today:

RCP Average	6/17 - 6/30	49.3	40.0	Biden +9.3
YouGov	6/28 - 6/30	49	40	Biden +9
IBD/TIPP	6/27 - 6/30	48	40	Biden +8
Monmouth	6/26 - 6/30	53	41	Biden +12
CNBC	6/26 - 6/28	49	41	Biden +8
USA Today	6/25 - 6/29	53	41	Biden +12
NPR/PBS	6/22 - 6/24	52	44	Biden +8
The Hill	6/22 - 6/23	43	39	Biden +4
CNBC	6/19 - 6/22	47	38	Biden +9
NYT/Siena	6/17 - 6/22	50	36	Biden +14

Electoral College	222	125
Battlegrounds	Biden	Trump	Spread
Florida	49.0	42.6	Biden +6.4
Pennsylvania	48.7	41.7	Biden +7.0
Wisconsin	48.5	42.0	Biden +6.5
North Carolina	47.2	44.2	Biden +3.0
Arizona	47.5	44.0	Biden +3.5

Biden is up by five points in TEXAS!! The former Vice President is not up by a few points but at or nearly at double digits. In most polls, if he loses by 5 points, he still has a commanding lead overall, and some lead IN EVERY BATTLE GROUND STATE. It is now insurmountable. Like President Johnson: you should understand this and bow out.

Mr. President: you spent your life building a brand that is about to be crushed as you lose. We all know you hate the MAGAs because they are not rich: they cannot support your brand, and won’t, once they perceive you as a loser. As I said, who really cares: they are not your clientele.

Mr. President: SAVE YOUR BRAND. Make Trump TV NOW while you still have the interest of the sixty plus MILLION who voted for you. Be Their Voice. Take the best staff from Fox and Oan and make your own channel.

Mr. President: even if you lose 20,000,000 MAGAs - that is still about 40,000,000 DEDICATED VIEWERS.   At $5 monthly, that is $200,000,000 A MONTH!!! Serious money, serious following, without all the legal and other boring entrapment of actual governance.

You are at the top of your game right now. Staying on will be your destruction. If you lose, it will go poorly for your family and you, personally, and if you win there is no upside: you will be forced to work with COVID, while being berated first everything you believe in and do. Where is the fun in that? Certainly no more pussy grabbing - and Melania will make a mess of your personal life. People out of work tend to get into trouble, marches, defacing property, calling for new rights, more handouts, etc .... All that juxtaposed against $200,000,000 A MONTH, adoring fans, and unmuzzled opinions, without concern for any protocol.

Think about it, Mr. President. I’m about your age, from our hometown in Queens and know you, big picture.  Like you, I am a person of means who can read the writing on the wall. People are abandoning you. Did you see today’s NYT?

Meet the Supporters Trump Has Lost

A significant majority of people who voted for him in 2016 are planning to do so again. What is different about those who’ve had a change of heart?

By Claire Cain Miller, Kevin Quealy and Nate Cohn

• July 1, 2020

For some, the disenchantment started almost as soon as Donald J. Trump took office. For others, his handling of the coronavirus and social unrest turned them away. For all of them, it’s highly unlikely they will vote for him again.

These voters, who backed Mr. Trump in 2016 but say there’s “not really any chance” they will this year, represent just 2 percent of all registered voters in the six states most likely to decide the presidency, according to New York Times/Siena College polls. But they help explain why the president faces a significant deficit nationwide and in the battleground states.

“I think if he weren’t such an appalling human being, he would make a great president, because I think what this country needs is somebody who isn’t a politician,” said Judith Goines, 53, a finance executive at a home building company in Fayetteville, N.C. “But obviously with the coronavirus and the social unrest we’re dealing with, that’s where you need a politician, somebody with a little bit more couth.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/01/upshot/poll-trump-defectors-2020-election.html?referringSource=articleShare

Stop the hemmoraging. Save your brand. Work out a deal, now: no prosecution in return for resigning today. 

Mr. President: $200,000,000 A MONTH vs prison or, if you are lucky, getting to oversee COVID, a broke economy, and a racial divide like never before.

Isn’t the choice obvious? Resign, take the money, and run. 😉

Sergio: A Film Review

Sergio - Released April 2020  •  Biography, Drama, History

A compelling view of top UN diplomat Sergio Vieira de Mello, whose life hangs in the balance during the most treacherous mission of his career.  Director: Greg Barker  Writers: Craig Borten (screenplay by), Samantha Power (based on the book 'Chasing the Flame: One Man's Fight to Save the World') Leading Actors: Wagner Moura, Ana de Armas, Brían F. O'Byrne

Photo: Wagner Moura, Senhorinha Gama Da Costa Lobo, and Ana de Armas in Sergio (2020)

So, what is there to say about yet another indie docudrama, on an endless Netflix list?  Plenty. 

Sergio is, in many ways, the embodiment of all the passionate, compelling, and driven spirits one encounters at the United Nations and in the field, on the many missions they undertake. For nearly two hours, it was hard to look away, even for an instant.

The film not only entertains but in a more insidiously great way, it educates us along the side lines of recent history. Co-author and former US Ambassador to the United Nations Samantha Power helps illuminate a UN standing alongside warring nations and regional disputes ... in order to articulate a third way.  As the character of the late Sergio Vieira De Mello, passionately recreated by Wagner Moura, demonstrates: even for The World’s Mr. Fixit, sometimes peace building works ... at other times, it may end in unmitigated disaster.

Certainly the film will connect with globalists and those inclined toward international perspectives, especially regarding peace building and sustainable development.  All films are not meant for all audiences; yet this indie-docu-historical drama contains action, passion, current events, lust, intense landscapes and peoples, and more.  By more, I mean: one can appreciate the De Mello character as a challenging, charismatic and imperfect hero; not traditionally, as ‘the bad guy with a good heart anti-hero,’ but in this case the very good guy with an impossibly gracious and too-trusting heart.  

Ana de Armas, who plays De Mello’s Argentinian love interest, Carolina Larriera, is beautiful, inside and out - capturing the kind of woke, intelligent, spirited person one also regularly meets when the UN is open and all else is right with the world.  In fact, Maura’s and Armas’ characters possess additional, subtle messages about the nature and passion behind a commitment to UN staff work in the field.  De Mello’s conscience, Gil Loescher, played convincingly by Brían F. O'Byrne, was actually not one person but a composite of De Mello’s best staff comrades during several missions. In the end, O’Byrne’s character is seen figuratively and hideously losing his legs, a symbol that their very mission lost the ability to stand tall in the face of unmitigated corruption, sectarian violence, and inexperienced international intervention.

The spirit embodied in the three leading roles captures the essence of those one regularly meets working alongside United Nations' staff: these are passionate, diplomatic, honest, thoughtful, and gracious women and men ... often in an increasingly hostile world for those very attributes.

The film bounces through times, at home and abroad, from UNHQ to East Timor and beyond, and from great success to a last fateful campaign, where De Mello’s team is trying to guide a nation from dictatorship to self rule.  We become witnesses to a mission that ended historically poorly, even precursing the birth of a movement that would someday be called ISIS.  The final days of De Mello’s ultimate campaign, to help within what Loescher called a “sh*t show of a situation,” was led in real time by US envoy Paul Bremer and an American presence way over its head.  

Sergio has a strong and positive point of view about the work, goals, and mission of the UN as demonstrated ‘in the field;’ it presents a great heart, spirit, and a trust in global cooperation that becomes harder to defend as the pandemic, and growing nationalism, wear on. 

Still, Sergio is well worth your time.  As you scroll through your favorite viewing platforms while spending more time at home than usual these days, give Sergio a view.  It will say plenty - about all the best reasons why the United Nations is our enduring hope for peace and sustainable development. When the UN re-opens to the public someday, make a trip to see and touch the flag, still hole- and smoke-filled from a fateful Iraqi bombing, along with the tribute to His Excellency Sergio Vieira De Mello and his team, once gone in a flash but now forever immortalized in this worthy, entertaining, and compelling film.  It is not to be missed.

- Patrick Sciarratta