To begin, I am compelled to congratulate you, sincerely, on your public and political declaration of independence, finally separating yourself from the absurdities of the Trump narrative. As I have followed your Senatorial journey, your public statement confirms what I believed all along – that you have been out of synch with this President, probably from the beginning of his term.

Now you know: to break away from Donald Trump is to become his Twitter target. Your well-publicized announcement was not a personal attack on him, just a simple assertion of fact: the election is over. The winner is Joe Biden. That’s all you had to say – and now you are in the headlines as a traitor to the cause thanks to a late-night Tweet delivered in an instant to some 80 million followers and the global media.

The threat of Trumpian retaliation, it appears, is what has kept you silent these past four years, especially this year. Now it’s out there. No turning back. You are a “RINO.”

But what then is left of the “Republican Party”? I understand that three out of four Republicans believe that Donald Trump won the election. This is a travesty. In all probability, that many also will attest erroneously that the Corona Virus is a hoax. Today, we have way more to fear from the Proud Boys than Antifa.

All of this begs the question: Why didn’t you vote to impeach when you had the chance?

I also wonder – how much control does Mitch McConnell have over your conscience? If legacy matters to you as a powerful Senator, what is now left? What possibly could you have lost?

Post-impeachment, this President took a wrecking ball to our beloved America this past year. Post-election, the damage is exponential. The harm – immeasurable. The economy. The debt. The decimation of our institutions. The crude, divisive attacks. The disintegration of foreign relations. The self-preservation. The self-aggrandizement. The careers destroyed. The pardons. The anti-intellectualism. An out-of-control pandemic. Fiscal madness. Social boorishness. The absence of empathy. A “stable genius”? Hardly. This is leadership?

His wealthy supporters are wealthier still as the wealth-gap, the health-gap and the opportunity-gap all widen precipitously.

Admittedly, it is after the fact. But today, there must be regrets. I know you well enough to firmly believe that for you, Senator John, the impeachment was not a mere political attack. Robert Mueller is not a political hack. There was clear substance there – and the final articles of impeachment were all merited and just a subset of a whole collection of charges that could have, should have been made. Without the protection of William Barr, his Federalist colleagues, and bulging neck-veined (white) Republican defenders, the Trump term would have ended shortly after it began. Our prisons are populated by throngs of white-collar criminals whose offenses do not come close to the stench of the Trumpian assortment of misdeeds.

And yet, when the impeachment case was presented by the House to the Senate, you not only voted to hear no witnesses, but you also voted to acquit this man – all to his felonious, gleeful delight. And that gave us the 2020 that we all want to forget.

Make no mistake, we are now living in Trump’s America. Ronald Reagan famously asked, “Are you better off?”

Am I? Are we?

With Trump impeached, Mike Pence would have been President in 2020. You would have secured your third conservative Supreme Court justice. The Republican Party would have remained intact. Pence likely would not have won, but we already know that. How might history be different? Trump would have been dispatched to the dark underworld of Breitbart News and Alex Jones. Or maybe a prison cell. Our only hope now is that those pending cases in New York will bring the justice for which we all pray. Even the thought of Trump 2024 must disturb your night’s rest as much as it does mine.

The demise of your beloved party, succumbed to Trumpism, is but one of the many tragedies with which we now live. In a previous letter, I told you that I left the party – or better – the party left me, a long time ago. I soured on the conservative propaganda machine about the same time as the Tea Party took center stage, about the time I became a grandfather. Like you, schooled in “biblical world-view,” for me, the disconnect was just too much to bear.

I am not a South Dakotan, but as you will recall, I’m a former pastoral colleague of your brother Bob going all the way back to the ’70s, and husband to that Biola employee you spoke with on the occasion of Dr. David Peters’ retirement.

After my first letter, I received a handwritten reply, with a note that anticipated a day we might, over a cup of coffee or perhaps a beer, swap war stories.

I look forward to that day.

Now is the time to move forward – somehow to get past the 2020 of Donald Trump. May your perspective on a post-Trumpian America get a broad and wide hearing.

Most sincerely,

Ken Kemp