An open letter to Trump on his retirement
The following letter to President Donald Trump was written by Daniel Leger, a Pittsburgh resident and survivor of the shootings at the Tree of Life synagogue.
As you leave the high and distinguished office of president of the United States of America, I wish you well on your departure from public life. I am hopeful and encouraged that your successor will restore the quality of public service to the esteemed position which you have held for the past four years. I sincerely hope that your retirement will provide you with the opportunity to learn to be still, and to reflect on your experience as president. In your time of isolation may you come to reflect on and learn from the consequences of your tenure in having held the most powerful position on the planet.
Mr. President, you and I nearly met one day. You came to the intensive care unit where a courageous police officer and I were patients in the autumn of 2018. He and I were being treated for life-threatening military-style gunshot wounds. Eleven of my friends had been murdered by the man who shot us and several others. It all happened on a Saturday morning as my friends and I gathered to pray and study as we do every Saturday morning. The man who shot me and killed my friends was on a mission to stop immigrants from coming into our country and he hated the Jews for helping those who sought life in the United States of America. People not unlike your wife, the first lady, and her parents, and your grandparents before them. He found support for his hatred in much of the rhetoric which had recently become publicly acceptable.
The day you came to the hospital was the day on which I had finally been able to breath on my own and the tube that connected me to the ventilator breathing for me had just been removed after one of my sons sat with me for hours encouraging me to take breath after breath over the machine. I had come as close to death as one can come, had been through several long surgeries, and had several more to survive. I was floating in and out of consciousness much of the day you arrived, and my voice was weak as my lungs and larynx adjusted to doing the work of breathing unassisted again. My hospital room sounded like an amusement arcade with its beeps and flashing lights and screens, and I had just become aware of the line of staples running the length of my torso and the collection of bags and tubes attached to various parts of my chest and abdomen.
During one of those moments when I was aware enough to understand, I was told that you were in the hospital and that you would like to meet with me. Although my memory of those days is still cloudy, I do remember clearly what I said in response to your request. “No, I don’t want to meet with him. But I do have a message for him. Please tell him that he shares a degree of responsibility for what happened to me and my friends, and that I hope his eyes will be opened to the power of his own hateful words.”
Mr. President, I don’t know if you remember my message, or indeed if it ever actually reached you. So here it is again. My confidence in the truth of that message has only been reinforced through all the remaining days of your presidency.
I do not wish you ill, sir. On the contrary, just as I wish no ill toward the man who perpetrated the Pittsburgh synagogue massacre of Oct. 27, 2018. I do wish for both of you, however, that you find in your hearts the ability to understand the devastating consequences of your words and actions, and that you both will be forever prevented from having the possibility of making these awful things happen again.
Mr. President, in June last year you stood outside a church in Washington with a Bible in your hand, pumping it up and down like one of those giant foam No. 1 mitts held up by fans at sporting events. Perhaps in your retirement you will find the time to open that book. It is not an easy book to read and understand, but it surely contains much that is good. May I suggest the 85th chapter of the Book of Psalms. In its 11th and 12th verses you will find the following lovely and deeply meaningful words: “Loving-kindness and truth will meet, justice and peace embrace. Truth will spring up from the earth, and righteousness from heaven.” I hope that you will come to see, as these powerful words demonstrate, that life is not one-dimensional and actions and words must be balanced.
You have spoken of my city as well as having visited it during those dark days of 2018. Pittsburgh was the home of Fred Rogers. His television programs and writings are short, simple and profoundly wise. You may find his work a good starting place to begin to live with the expanse of time ahead, and rather than try to fill it with restless activity and temptation, learn to listen and be still and find a way forward without the need to blame, punish and dominate those in your life.
I write this letter to you on the birthday of Martin Luther King Jr., whose legacy and life we celebrate with a national holiday. He was a man of great hope and vision. He knew that he would never reach his destination, and yet he persisted in leadership through kindness as well as a never-ending search for justice. What a great opportunity you were given to work in the shadow of his monument and those of others who worked in service of humanity. May you now have the opportunity to reflect and learn from the experience of those great women and men and realize that your influence upon others must be informed by your coming to understand yourself first.
Goodbye, Mr. President, and may the Eternal Holy One grant you the blessings that you will surely need as you face the final chapter of your life.