Hey, Denmark? Yeah, United States here, how ya doing? Got a minute? If you’re like in the middle of supper we can do this later, or whenever’s good for you!  OK, I know you’re busy, I’ll keep it short.

We just want to say we’re really really sorry about what happened last week.  And embarrassed. And ashamed. And actually a little angry! We have talked about this! He is not supposed to do that! No, we appreciate that, Denmark, but it’s not OK! He’s a big boy now!

You know how it is, you try to keep an eye on the kid but sometimes you get distracted by another mass shooting or Dancing with the Stars and when you turn around he’s playing with the grownups’ iPhone or talking to Alexa. And before you know it nuclear winter is raining down on the next-door NATO ally or you’re wondering why the UPS guy is dropping off Greenland at your front door! Hey, we don’t remember ordering that, ha ha! But seriously, he can be pretty hard to control! Mexico called the police on him a couple of times already! God, we’re tired.

Anyhoo, the plan is, he’ll be moving out in another 18 months or so, so it won’t be a problem any more. Fingers crossed, ha ha! Love the fjords, by the way, awesome! Or wait, is that only Norway?

Let us know if he causes you any more trouble, but I think you’ll be fine for the mo, he’s across the street in China’s yard now.  Oh Lord, what’s he doing to their cat? Sorry, gotta go!

Dear Mr. President Trump,

I wish to apologize to you, for myself and for all of us here in this once-great America. We have failed you. We keep saying mean things about you and drawing cartoons that make fun of your hair. We make up stories about how Russia meddled in your election even after Mr. Putin told you it wasn’t true!

When you saved little Mexican children from their illegal mothers and wrapped them in tinfoil to keep them warm, all we could do is criticize! We never want to talk about the great things you’ve done for us, the American people, like making Mexico pay for the wall and getting out of that stupid Climate Accord we agreed to when there wasn’t even a Climate Problem to begin with! And punishing China for laughing at us! And getting us out of that sucker Iran nuclear deal. And after we broke that agreement, what did those sneaky Iranians do? They went right back to what they were doing before! You were so right not to trust them!

And etcetera!

I can only imagine how frustrating it must be for you, a Great Genius who knows more than the generals, to get so much resistance when all you are trying to do is make us Great Again! What is wrong with us?

What is wrong with us, Mr. President Sir, is that we are not good enough for you. You probably don’t want to hear this, because you are such a Nice Guy, but you should fire us, the American People.

Except for the white parts of Michigan and Mississippi, where they love you.

I know the Democratics and other Losers will raise a stink and talk about Constitution This and Constitution That if you try to do the Right Thing and revoke our passports and our phony Birth Certificates and deport us all to whatever Shithole Country we deserve to live in—though with Your Supreme Court it might be worth a try! What I suggest…one moment, Mr. President Sir, if there are some splotches on this letter they are only the tears of a penitent Subject…is that you fire us all by resigning. You don’t need the aggravation.

Why not get a head start on the rest of your life as a Sour Old Rich Man living on his own golf course, passing the days by punching in angry tweets, calling into talk shows listened to mainly by other angry insecure White Men, and fending off lawsuits and criminal charges filed by stiffed contractors, groped women and federal prosecutors? After all, we do not deserve you. And I mean that!

Well, I don’t think he’s evil. But I think he dislikes the American people, and this depresses us. The President […] is in the position to be an extraordinarily effective teacher. […]He can influence our behavior for good and ill tremendously.[…] If he tells us about our neighbors in trouble, if he tells us to treat them better tomorrow, why, we’ll all try. But[…]he’s taught us to resent the poor for not solving their own problems. He’s taught us to like prosperous people better than unprosperous people. He could make us so humane and optimistic with a single television appearance.–Kurt Vonnegut on Richard Nixon, interviewed in Playboy Magazine, July 1973

The Constitution of the United States of America dictates that a president must be at least 35 years of age and a “natural born citizen”. Whether any other qualities are required and what those might be are left up to us, the voters.

So what should the required trait(s) of our president be? A minimum IQ level? A record of accomplishment in some field? A knack for leadership, whatever that is? A roster of policies lifted from column A rather than column B?

How about this: The one quality a president must have is a love for every single American.

He or she must love the rich and the poor, the middle class and the homeless, the white, black and brown, the bluebloods and the immigrants, the liberals and the conservatives, the moderates and the fanatics, the free and the imprisoned, the straight and the gay, male and female, young and old, healthy and sick, Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, Bahai, atheist, areligious, and Wiccan. The ones on billionaires’ row and the ones on death row. The yahoos in MAGA caps and the housewives in hijabs. The ones who voted for him and the ones who voted—and ran—against him. The president must be motivated first, last, and only by an unconditional love for every specimen of Homo Sapiens alive and breathing on American soil, and consider none of them as the enemy. Why does this even need to be said? And yet evidently it does.

I am not an expert in recent American history, and of course the human heart is not subject to an absolute analysis. But I would not be surprised if this quality has endowed every president since, say, Herbert Hoover onwards, with the probable exception of the alcoholic, resentful Richard Nixon. Even those presidents whose policies appalled me or whose intelligence I questioned didn’t cause me to think they actually disliked us.

Except, that is, for Nixon. And Donald Trump.

Our current president has contempt for large swaths of his fellow countrymen, including but not limited to American Muslims, women, Latinos, African-Americans, American P.O.W.s and immigrants. It makes one wonder who’s left. I’m not even sure that this man, who, according to the recently resigned U.K. ambassador to the U.S., “radiates insecurity”, loves himself.

It’s fine to be angry. There is no end of things to be angry about—global warming, murdered journalists, obscenely inequal incomes, to name just three. But our leader must be angry for us. This president is angry at us.

But don’t take it from me. Use your own eyes and ears.  Or take it from recent essays by the conservative intelligentsia, including Michael Gerson’s, titled “Republican leaders are shilling for a bigot”, or  Kathleen Parker’s “Those who don’t condemn Trump’s racism are complicit in his bigotry”. To quote Parker: “President Trump is a racist. And a sexist. And a xenophobic nationalist. Among other things.”

And it is very dangerous for a people to be led by someone who fundamentally hates them. Why would anyone with a choice allow that?

That is why we here in the Garden have moved from a “let the next election handle this” point of view to something more like “we must get rid of this guy by any constitutionally permitted means available”. We made a mistake in 2016, my fellow Americans, when we assumed that whatever this fellow was really like, at least he liked us.

After all, why else would the man want to be president? Just so he could be mean?