I’ve written before, John, and I appreciated so much your personal reply some time ago.

You’ll remember my plea, that you speak up and tell the truth about this President’s flagrant and damaging violation of norms, rules and laws.

It’s painful to see you standing there – tall, starched, masked – behind your boss, Mitch McConnell, as he spins away the truth in a desperate effort to maintain the power and position granted to him by the President’s “base,” – which includes powerful interest groups (like, for example, sadly, the Federalist Society). Watching from home on the big screen, you seem agitated and annoyed at the unwelcome, obligatory appearance before those searing lights and cameras. I can understand – it’s the last place you wish to be. You are clearly committed to maintaining a “low profile.” It’s tricky to pull off when you are Senate Majority Whip.

But the most painful of all those appearances must have been that terrible night in your home state at the foot of Mount Rushmore. You were compelled to sit there on the front row as though you were honored to entertain the President of the United States and forced to listen as he read from the teleprompter one more of those abominable speeches written by the infamous Stephen Miller. Then you were a front-row witness as he posed just right before those four honored Presidents chiseled in that massive granite stone so that his head made for a fifth sculptured image in the frame. You must have been sick to your stomach that night.

And now this wrecking-ball president continues to smash convention to smithereens in these lame-duck demo-days; contemplating pardons, spinning lies and worst of all, discrediting the democracy he swore to defend. Tragically, half of the country buys into his distorted version of this election. He truly believes that we are all liars and cheats. Just like him.

John – we are now living in his America. This is the America of his making.

So I’ll ask again – please, Senator Thune, take courage. Muster the integrity that you’ve aspired to for your entire career – since those days when you sat in Dr. Peter’s classroom back there in La Mirada.

Tell this President to concede. To find somehow, someway, the grace to acknowledge the truth.

For the good of our nation.

Ken Kemp