By Jon Reiner

26 January 2018

Dear staff:

Huge news! My occasional opening of the daily press briefing by reading letters written to President Trump from American children has become so beloved that the President wants more – bigly more! Millions more real children have written letters to President Trump than to all the previous presidents combined and Santa Claus. Please review the following letters from the slush pile and recommend by EOD which ones are #MAGA. The President loves how much the children love him!

– SHS

Dear President Trump,

I’m so scared. My mommy says that you are stopping our Obamacare insurance and she can’t pay anymore for Dr. Steve to make her cancer all better. I told her I want to help by working in the nursing home where my nana lives, but my mommy says that my nana will get “kicked to the curb” when you stop her Medicare. I have nightmares that if my mommy can’t get her medicine and my nana has to live on the street, they both will die and no one will be alive to take care of me. Why do you want to kill my mommy and nana?

Your friend,

Timmy Raskin – age 8

Georgetown, KY

Dear President Mr.,

Why does your hair look that way? Are you a monster?

Donna Burr – 6 years

Sacramento, CA

Dear Mr. President Donald J. Trump,

In my class we read a tweet where you said that you have a big button on your desk that you can push to make all the U.S. nuclear bombs blow up and make all the North Korean people get killed. Is that the honest truth? If so, how big is the button? What would happen if you pushed the button on accident because it’s so big, like when you get angry at your older brother for hiding your mouth guard and you are wrestling with him trying to get it back and you touch the big button on accident even though you didn’t mean to? Could you take it back if you really didn’t mean for the bombs to go off and kill all the people in North Korea especially since they weren’t the person who took your mouth guard? Also, does the big button make a noise when you press it? Maybe if the big button made a noise like BANG or KAZOOM or BOOM when you started to touch it you could hear it and you could stop pressing the big button all the way down before the bombs went to explode and the North Koreans all started to die. Also, every time I see Mr. Vice-President Mike Pence standing behind you he is always smiling. Is he a funny man, or did you just tell him a joke? What happens if you are telling Mr. Vice-President a joke near your desk and he starts laughing so hard that on accident he falls down and touches the big button? Does the big button know when someone who’s not you is touching it, like I just said about Mike Pence or if that man you called The Mooch came back to say Hi one day and he was laughing so hard at the funny joke you said that he also fell on the big button with his hands? That would be an awesome big button if it knew who was touching it. Sorry for so many questions. I have a lot on my mind lately.

Sincerely,

Niles T. Van Schardenberg – I am 9-and-a-half years of age

Kenosha, WI

Dear President Trump:

I like turtles. Please don’t kill us.

Sincerely,

Rhonda Arnaud – 5 years old

Teaneck, NJ

Dear President,

I heard on TV that you like to eat a lot of cheeseburgers. Me too. How many cheeseburgers do you like to eat? Have you ever eaten 1,000 cheeseburgers in one whole day? My record is 9. My mom gets angry when I eat so many cheeseburgers because diabetes runs in our family. Do you have diabetes from eating so many cheeseburgers?

Sincerely,

Eddie Diggleston, 5^th grade

Tuscaloosa, AL

Dear President Trump Sir,

I’m frightened. My daddy says that you are going to start a war really soon. If you are going to start a war, would you please do it after April 12? That’s when my birthday is, and my daddy says that if I get good grades on my report card I can get a new bicycle that has a bell that goes like a fire engine. I really want a new bicycle so I have been trying extra hard in science and math in school, but my teacher Ms. Newsome is so mean we call her Ms. Gruesome. When I asked my daddy why you want to start a war, he said you would do it so everybody would stop asking you questions about Russia. I think that’s like when I do something I’m not supposed to like when I try on my mommy’s shoes and when she wants to know why her shoes aren’t in her closet I start crying really big so she’ll think something’s wrong and stop asking me about the missing shoes. If that’s what you’re trying to do by starting a war maybe I know why, but please make it start after my birthday on April 12 because getting that bicycle is all I want in the whole world now that I can’t wear my mommy’s shoes.

Best wishes,

Charlene Watson (age 7 until April 12)

Las Cruces, NM

P.S. What season is “nuclear winter?”

Jon Reiner is the James Beard Award-winning author of the memoir The Man Who Couldn’t Eat and the director of the award-winning documentary film Tree Man. His work has appeared in Esquire, The Atlantic, The New York Times, The Daily Beast, The Huffington Post, been nominated for a National Magazine Award and recorded for NPR.