Dear Mr. Trump,

The only national crisis evident after you speech last night was the crisis we’ve known about for a long time: the crisis of the Trump presidency.

You are the crisis.

You are the cause of “intense difficulty, trouble, or danger” (Google Dictionary) and not the border. As yesterday’s New York Times aptly states, “the crisis is in the Oval Office.”

The crisis today is that a perpetual liar and con-man was elected as our chief executive. Your speech simply reaffirmed what very Americans already know: that you cannot open your mouth without lying. As today’s Washington Post makes clear, you have “a well-established record of thousands of exaggerations, falsehoods, and outright lies.”

One example: You claimed that a wall would stem the flow of illegal drugs into the country and avert heroin-related deaths. But everyone knows that the vast majority of such drugs (80%) enter our country through lawful border crossings; even if the wall stopped some drugs, the smugglers would just bring through the lawful crossings. Why don’t you work on that problem with Congress if you’re so concerned about drugs?

You say this is a crisis of “the soul.” What soul? You’ve not demonstrated that you have a caring soul yourself. You are the sole soul keeping 800,000 federal workers from being paid. Tell your lackey Mitch McConnell to let the Senate consider the House funding bills, passed with bilateral support.

You say you can “relate” to those harmed federal workers who live paycheck to paycheck. That’s the biggest lie of all. You never had to worry about having shelter or food placed in front of you or clothes to wear or how you’d pay for daycare or how you could afford car payments. You “relate” to nothing, except our continuing disgust.

Very truly yours,

Bruce J. Berger