‘Open-letter to United States President’ from anonymous pro-Trump author
A mysterious full-page “open letter to the President of the United States Donald J. Trump,” written by an anonymous Trump supporter, appeared on page A20 of the Washington Post print edition Wednesday.
Unlike most political ads, whose sponsors are identified, neither the author nor the paper are saying who funded it.
The letter is long and filled with the kind of pro-Trump language that Trumphimself loves to use. Its author, who claims to be nearly 90 years old and “a reluctant ‘anonymous’” trying to protect personal safety in the face of “the violence the Radical Left unleash against those who speak out against them,” begins by praising Trump’s internationally mocked United Nations address last month as “reminiscent of Winston Churchill” and Ronald Reagan.
The letter attacks the “Radical Left” for trying to “fool as many people as they can into thinking ‘God is Dead’” and embracing “junk science like ‘Man-Made Global Warming [sic]” and “failed political philosophies such as Socialism.”
The anonymous pro-Trump letter concludes, “Hopefully, Sir, one day we will meet, and I will proudly tell you my name while shaking your hand.”
The letter appears under the words “Advertisement … Advertisement,” but includes no indication of who paid the tens of thousands of dollars for the ad. The Post did not immediately respond to a ThinkProgress inquiry about the ad’s sponsorship and why it opted to run an anonymous political message of this type without disclosing who paid for it.
The ad includes URLs to a web domain that was registered (anonymously, of course) earlier this month and a Twitter handle that was created around the same time. As of mid-morning on Wednesday, the account had tweeted two links to an online version of the letter, retweeted several right-wing posts, and posted an obscure pro-theocracy quote nearly identical to one published in a book by a fringe conservative group, the National Center for Constitutional Studies.
That organization, founded by a deceased Brigham Young University professor who supported the John Birch Society, did not respond to a ThinkProgress inquiry about the ad.
The earth is governed by God’s law, not the whims of mankind.
— On Open Letter to President Trump (@ToOurPOTUS) October 17, 2018
Paul Seamus Ryan, vice president for policy and litigation at Common Cause, told ThinkProgress that as long as the ad was not paid for by a political committee, there was no legal requirement that the ad include a disclaimer identifying its sponsor.
But just six years ago, the Washington Post’s editorial board called for “ending secret money in politics.” In it, they wrote, “As the Supreme Court explained in its Citizens United ruling, ‘disclosure permits citizens and shareholders to react to the speech of corporate entities in a proper way. This transparency enables the electorate to make informed decisions and give proper weight to different speakers and messages.’”
They then asked rhetorically, “What, exactly, is the problem with transparency?”
Thanks to the Post’s decision not to identify who paid for the ad, the electorate cannot give proper weight to whether the message is from a devoted supporter, a rich donor hoping to curry favorable treatment from the White House, or Trump himself.
