A Secret Letter To President Donald Trump
Satire: republished twice since 2016, and the following is a slightly updated version of it.11
Eight years ago, on November 8, 2008, I published Isaias’ congratulatory letter to the then president elect, Obama. On Nov. 9, 2016, I published Isaias’ congratulatory letter to president-elect Donald Trump. You will notice the two letters seem to have been written on the same template. On 2020, when Biden was elected, I dreaded having to publish the usual Isaias’ congratulations letter, but luckily, just like me, he was not enthusiastic about Biden’s election. Today, I am republishing the 2016 letter to President Trump since Isaias is too busy to pen a separate letter—after all, nothing changed since 2017.
Editor’s Note: Congratulations to all Trump supporters. In the last three days before the election, I was afraid Trump would lose the election and all hell would break loose. The USA system, unlike the systems of the unelected repressive regimes, is self-correcting, the best quality it embodies. I was impressed by the level of emotional involvement of Eritrean Americans in the election, but this time there were too many world activists competing for attention, and they were lost in the crowd. However, I hope the election inspires them to seek freedom and justice in their ancestral home. Donald Trump is now the president. But remember, his victory wouldn’t have been possible if not for the behind-the-scenes efforts and benevolence of the single Eritrean ruling party, thanks to the PFDJ regime, to whom the credit for defeating Hillary Clinton belongs. [copy editor’s correction; this time it was Kamala Harris not Hillary Clinton].
Trump can now have the honor, again, of being called the Isaias of the USA, provided he doesn’t repeat the grave mistakes his predecessors Obama and Biden committed.
The following is a letter to president-elect Trump that the PFDJ boss penned; he has appointed the special envoy to the White House to deliver his letters, and I took the liberty of sharing it with the readers of awate.com. After reading the wisdom contained in this letter, I am sure you will feel proud of Eritrea’s statesmanship!
Adi-Halo Village, November 11, 2024
From: President Isaias Afwerki
The Presidential Office,
Adi-Halo, Eritrea
To: President-for-life-in-waiting, Donald Trump
Trump Towers, New Jersey
My dear would-be friend, The Donald!
As you might be aware, those who challenge us perish; take note, that is what happened to your predecessor, Obama, and not to Biden, who were undeserving to be kings in the first place. We have exposed them in the entire region; of course, all of Africa and the Middle East sided with us against them. We instructed Russia to stand up and defy them after we assured Putin of our unwavering support. As a result, both Obama and Biden were so weakened to the extent that they couldn’t protect their throne. Coward! After he stayed as president for only eight years, Obama left you; Biden was worse; he gave up in four years. Obama wanted Hillary to fight over his position, and Biden chose Kamala to do the same. Yet they were busy campaigning to hand over what they couldn’t keep to Hillary and now to Kamala. Only eight years, and now only four! That is not enough time even to graduate nine rounds of conscripts from Sawa! We are not going to tell you how long it took us to build a dam at Adi Halo, though we must admit it is bigger than the Blue Nile dam the Ethiopians are boasting about.
In Eritrea, we would never abandon our throne like that. But now that we have enabled you twice to take the throne (first by weakening Obama and then Biden), and you are holding it. You shouldn’t leave it for any useless election drama. Heed our advice and be steadfast in times of weakness. In four or eight years, for instance, you might have the urge to contemplate abdicating it like the Kenyan guy who was not born in America did and Biden, who left it to his deputy! Stay determined and don’t sway from the idea of keeping your God-given throne forever, or until you are 105 years old.
As you know, we do not believe in the American drama that happens every four years. Unfortunately, you bought into it and decided to busy yourself and waste time on what you call elections. Had you sought our advice, we would have shown you an easy way to get the throne. We could have kept you in the White House without Biden’s interruption, but our generals were angered and busy dealing with the Weyane incursion into our territories. If not, we would have invaded America and installed you again in 2020. Two of our generals were already in the USA, and our decorated general, who commands the rapid deployment brigade stationed in Germany, was airborne the moment he heard of our decision to invade America to help you keep the presidency. We ordered him to calm down and to return to his secret base, in Germany. He didn’t! You must know that we have fine commanders who taught Obama (sorry, we mentioned his name) a lesson, though we must admit they were a little too excited in their zeal to imitate us. We had ordered them to occupy a few American buildings in a symbolic invasion; unfortunately, they got carried away and ended up conquering the whole country. We had to calm them down and give up our conquests in a hush. The invasion was so swift nobody noticed.
That illegal alien Agame girl, Gual Rice, who pretends to be an American and you used to sit at the UN headquarters, and who was taunting us needlessly, didn’t help either. She was appointed as your ambassador by … what’s her name? The wife of the previous king Clinton, who was your rival? Yes, Hillary Clinton, who couldn’t even keep her emails secret. In our language, we call such woman gesreT, worse than shabby. But that is behind us now.
There are rumors spreading around that you are contemplating on closing down Wall Street. That would be excellent, but you have to acknowledge it is our idea. Be careful though; the Weyane could stand against you in that endeavor because they get a lot of money from it. Don’t yield to the pressure and stay firm. We implore you to heed our advice and destroy the Wall Street. Demolishing a single wall won’t be that difficult anyway. But make sure that Gual Rice, the Agame girl, Susan, is sentenced to hard labor clearing the debris after you demolish the wall—don’t forget to sentence our disloyal subjects who were given refuge in your country along with her. But if you change your mind and want to keep the Wall so that you can run it more effectively, send a team of your finance people for training, and we will give them a tour of our banks, where we keep all the nation’s confiscated currency bills—you can’t even imagine the lessons they would learn.
Are our banks automated with technology and sophisticated communication gadgets like your useless Wall Street? Don’t even get me started. Save yourself unnecessary headaches; just send anyone who opens his mouth to us. The TV and media people who badmouth kings, especially those guys who make fun of kings on your useless media outlets, should be hosted at a place we call Ella-Ero, and you will see how straightened up your subjects would be and how your national security would be nationally secured.
We don’t think anyone told you that we have two different groups of subjects in the USA— The largest group of our subjects that your country foolishly hosts, the regionalists and Hasusat (Damn it Obama, he should have sent them to us to be housed in Ella-Ero) didn’t vote for you because they do not like our influence on your thinking and your imitation of our character. But our loyal subjects, who are like the harmless puppies, did vote for you. They were the swing groups who made your success possible.
Imagine—would you tolerate it if your states considered themselves autonomous and governed themselves? If so, you would run the risk of the disintegration of your country, and you will have California on its own and Virginia on its own. Just like Texas, which contemplates on the idea of secession every now and then. Your national unity will be endangered, and you will be worried and busy safeguarding your sovereignty like us. Our advice to you is: criminalize the ancient names of the states and baptize them with new names, preferably numbers or geographical identifications, instead. For example, instead of using a regionalist name like Texas, you can rename it Mexico-border-one zone, and Arizona could be Mexico-border-two zone. California could be renamed South Pacific Zone, and DC could simply be renamed Capital City Zone, or simply name it Center, though it is not in the center—wrong geographical location and city planning. All the states along the Mississippi river can be combined and named Mississippi Zone, etc. That way, American regionalists would not be able to mention repulsive state names and be excited about it, like John Denver shamelessly longing for West Virginia! If they do, you need our services at Ella-Ero, and we will offer our limitless help to silence your regionalists.
At any rate, one group of our subjects who didn’t vote for you are larger in number but disloyal to us. By voting for the wannabe-queen Hillary and Biden, they were hoping to drive a wedge between us and your country. They failed. Importantly, the group of voters who gave you the marginal gain in states like Virginia are all members of Gnbot-seven, our Ethiopian opposition allies. Obviously, that credit also goes to us. But ironically, even some supporters of our mortal enemy, Weyane, voted for you. We don’t know how, but we will figure it out soon. At any rate, the credit belongs to us.
Dear Donald,
Don’t forget our favors to you. Obama (and Biden) were thankless, and they never appreciated our services to them, even if we kept it secret. We hope you will recognize our God-given authority to do anything we please with our subjects, and don’t ever think of interfering in our sovereign rights. Don’t ever mention justice, freedom or human rights to us—freedom is an integral component of our rule. We give our subjects the freedom to die in wars or to die carrying boulders to build our nation. We give them the freedom to spend their life in trenches or end it in graves. We give them freedom of expression to tell their shadows anything they want, and if someone thinks they are insane, we give them the freedom to insanity as well. Take this: we give them the opportunity to die heroically if they wish; we shoot them when they attempt to cross the border. Justice? We are number one in the world.
Many times we heard Obama blubbering about healthcare; he even named it after himself. In Eritrea, we call such projects QebeTbeT, the language of a spoiled brat. Let there be one clinic with two medical assistants in each American city. Give them ample supplies of white tablets and Pomata, any ointment. Your people are infatuated with colored tablets; you may offer them that as well. And there, you have your inexpensive healthcare. Excessive expenditure on healthcare and extravagance has made American subjects living in different fiefdoms, or your states, very soft and sissy. If they cannot be cured by taking a few tablets, let them die. But if you are not able to run the clinic system that we are suggesting, call our health minister; she can straighten up your touchy-feely subjects and shape up your health system in no time.
You need to be bold and not worry too much about death; people are created to die. Learn from us, we make our subjects die in the thousands; if we find something we consider important to us, they must die for it. And if you compare the number of your subjects to ours and compare the ratio of dead-in-action to the living between your kingdom and ours, you would be astounded. We are proud of our high dead-to-spared ratio. There too, we are the number one nation. Admire that, and only then would you understand that death in the pursuit of secure borders and to preserve the macho character of the people is a noble death. It’s good for any nation.
Your tax policy sounds like a joke—why go through all the trouble? Make everyone pay 2% of their income (past, present and future income) and confiscate all the farmlands, ranches, housing projects, and every home and plot on which the sun shines. You can then rent the land and properties of your subjects. You will wonder how much money you can collect. Expropriate all business, create something like the Red Sea Corporation that we have, and collect the revenues. Create a company and call it the Pacific Corporation and give it all the holdings and monopoly rights of your economy (our exchequer, Hagos Kisha, is on his way to assist you in that). You will witness your financial problems remedied and your economy can begin to heal a little. If that is not enough to revive your economy, then we can lend you some of the idle cash Nakfa that belongs to our people. It is just laying in its tones in our vaults; at least it can blow some life to the replacement of your despicable Walls and Street economy. If you don’t act fast, we foresee your currency dropping swiftly. But don’t worry; in solidarity with you, we gave our orders and fixed the exchange rate of your weak currency against our mighty Nakfa. We are not sure for how long we can keep protecting you as we protected your predecessors.
On Syria, you know that Obama made a mistake. After we helped his predecessor and him invade and occupy Iraq and pacify Afghanistan, he didn’t even appreciate our role publicly. Instead, he began to act as if his troops can do the job in Syria on their own. Biden has repeated the same mistake on Ukraine and Israel. If they had heeded our advice and relinquished command of his troops in Syria to us, we would have pacified the country a long time ago. Even Russia would have packed and left Syria in fear. ISIS? Our conscripts would have taken care of that. Just remember: the moment Saddam’s troops heard we were part of the Coalition of The Willing, they lost direction and the military crumpled in disarray. When we withdrew our support, the Iraqis were emboldened by the vacuum and rushed to create ISIS. That is the result of Obama’s ungratefulness to us. We also did the same in South Sudan and in Darfur. Now Sudan’s AlBashir is just like our lap dog. But we will see the repercussions of Biden’s shabby job for many years to come.
My friend King Trump, You better learn from Obama’s and Biden’s lessons before you sit on that throne.
We are so unpredictable that some people say we are helping the Houthis of Yemen, while others say we are helping the Saudis. Let them guess; we are not saying, but we are the movers and shakers in the most stable region. Thanks to Yemen, we now have secured the goodwill of both the Sunni, Shia sects, and the old commies. Both are praying to help us reserve our place in heaven. But we are not going there inside a coffin and wrapped in a shroud. If we must, God must send us a limousine—we reckon you would spare Air Force One for the trip if need be! They tell us of a creepy place they go to after death, hell; that is why we need both the Sunni and Shiaa for an insurance prayer, just in case.
Before we end our letter, here are the things we want you to do: 1) Arrest what’s her name… yes, Susan Gual Rice, and send her to us after she apologizes to us and AlShabab—the other group that is also praying for us—together with Kamala Harris. 2) Take the names of our close servants off your terrorism list. 3) Order your warships to bomb out the Weyane and Abiy Ahmed and finish them off—in due time we will tell you who else to bomb. 4) Send us enough weapons, and we will take care of Russia just in case, Syria, leftovers of ISIS, Weyane, and Nathaniyahu (don’t worry about Yemen; our intelligence agents are taking care of it).
Finally, be informed that you are allowed to call us as many times as you want, whenever you need advice, but avoid calling around mid-night when we are always busy. You know, party times are noisy. And not early morning before we get our Fakket-Raas, or when we are meeting with some servants in Massawa.
What?
Our assistant just told us that you have to wait for over two-months to be sworn in! Why? Just like Obama did! This is laughable. Why can’t you just storm the White House and swear Biden out? Trust us, he will not rebel against you. But if you must wait, then it is not a good sign and we will be suspicious of your resolve. However, if you heed our advice and decide to take your throne right away, just call one militia battalion and storm the building on Pennsylvania Avenue. We can provide commanders if you wish. Again, if you need more help, let us know, and we will instruct our military commanders to send an airborne Rapid Deployment Brigade from Germany to help you evict Biden from the White House.
Elect of God,
Isaias Afwerki.
Awate Forum