Dear Donald,

I know it’s been a while since I last wrote, and I hope that wasn’t remiss of me. But I thought as President you’d have quite a lot on your plate, and when that’s the case, more is always less. Besides, I’ve been busy at the tables, and in this game you leave the table, you lose your seat.

First though I wanted to begin by congratulating you on your recent victory. While the headlines and your many detractors scream ‘One And Done’, and wallow shamelessly in their fraudulent revenge, word on the gaming circuit is well done job done and ‘Three Times Trump’.

How so?

Well, firstly, you’re the first President in living memory who honoured his voters by doing exactly what you told them you’d do, or at least trying to, from your first day in office to your last. That creates loyalty.

Secondly, in their panic at the scale of your runaway success, the leftists were forced to overplay their hand. We got to see all their favourite cards full face up, especially their go to Ace in the hole, election fraud. Furious denial backed by threats and refusal to audit the most suspicious results, followed by attempts to criminalise genuine investigations, is guilty as charged. The hard evidence will surface soon enough, this wasn’t little lefty Acorns for votes like in Barry’s day, this was gnarly old establishment Oaks on Mitch McConnell’s watch, and you can’t bury those so easily.

Every now and again a migratory Afghan pops in to game for a better passage to Europe, and they talk about how they turn up to the polling station with Afghan ID and stick their finger in an indelible ink that won’t come off for days so there’s no cheating. To be honest, I thought universal postal voting had gone out with the dinosaurs, but needs must I guess if the destiny of the World is in your hands. They really believe that?

The other card we’d normally associate with third world long drops where gangsters use threats, bribes and blackmail to get their way is the ever-constant underlying menace of mob violence. This year, your enemies made it quite clear the destruction of private property and small businesses by bands of merry rioters would continue as long as you were in the White House. Even the undisputed universal champion of those tactics, the late race baiting, white hating, communist sponsored Robert Mugabe, would have been proud of their efforts. If he were alive, I’m sure America would be a place he’d settle into quite comfortably now, and call his own. Like his ideological kith and kin Barry, come to think of it!

I could go on, but I know my colleague Jon Anon is doing a more thorough investigation. He called me for any poker den low down that might help clarify matters, I told him it was the low down and dirtiest hand I’d ever seen face up on any table, let alone an American one, and I told him he could quote me on that!

Now everyone knows, or at least I thought they did, that the virus that enabled and encouraged this barefaced cheating came from an accident in a laboratory in Wuhan, China. Shanghai Sam, a regular and one of our most popular players, said matter of factly it was no secret that the Chinese Communist Party, or CCP, in a do or die effort to overtake America and dominate the international arena, had cut corners, mostly costs and protocols and due diligence, in an effort to get ahead of and control the epidemiology game. Sam didn’t see any big deal in this, and nor did we, since he also pinned up hard data from China that showed smokers had much less chance of catching the Wuhan Flu than non-smokers, so our smoke filled gambling dens gamed on with Sam and any of his Chinese friends most welcome.

The scandal was rather how Chinese authorities had quickly halted all internal travel to control the spread of the virus, but left international travel corridors to and from Wuhan open. Had they done this deliberately? Or was it some kind of unconscious instinct, a cultural knee jerk reaction from a deep dark place they couldn’t control? Sam inclined to the former, but did confess he was a cynic where CCP motives were concerned.

Then the other day we had a Geordie join us for a day nighter, you know Donald, a genuine Brit from the North East, a rough diamond and nobody’s fool, so the polar opposite of that Whitehall stooge Christopher Steele, the fence who worked with and for Russian spies, May’s British Government, her man in Washington Kim ‘no chin’ Darroch, McCain’s Republican’s and Clinton’s Democrats, on the fake dossier they used to impeach you first time round.

We got well stuck in, and with Shanghai Sam at the table, it wasn’t long before we were chortling about Fang Fang’s Californian honey trap, Darroch’s mistress, and our own apocryphal adventures with irresistible spies, and as the thick smoke thickened further and the cards and canards flowed, we eventually came to coronavirus.

Sam, who once forgot himself and tried to order Pangolin Scale Doritos to snack on while drinking his favourite 21 year old Bushmills Black Bush Irish Whisky, asked our new guest to confirm that a fellow Brit, nicknamed Bogus Johnson in CCP circles, had blamed Wuhan wet markets and the Pangolin, rather than the Wuhan Lab, for the virus.

Somewhat embarrassed, the man from Gateshead confirmed that to be the case, but excused Bogus on the grounds that he wasn’t thick as plum pudding or bought and paid for like the WHO, but under some honey trap pressure himself. It was common knowledge up North that he’d managed to avoid Fang Fang, but during an acute midlife crisis that included divorce and Brexit, had fallen under the spell of an environmental campaigner and political activist known in high social circles as Princess Nut Nut. She’s been involved with the Clinton Cartel on some windmill project that saved the Oceans, so it was dodge the Fang Fang frying pan only to dive into the Nut Nut fire for Bogus, who knew which side his bed was buttered. A shout out for the Pangolin was worth a fist bump with every member of the CCP, and a wild romp with Nut Nut, and who can deny a starving man his rations when they are pushed under his cell door?

Well we all concurred, poor Bogus looked tired and dishevelled most of the time on local TV, even before the virus had nearly killed him. But why would that earn a fist bump with China, someone asked?

It turned out Bogus played Eton Poker, learnt of course at the poshest Public School of them all, and one of his favourite moves was the Straw Man. First, to confuse his opponents, he’d ruffle the chaotic blonde straw stack on his head, and then offer up a weak and silly argument with a nod and a wink that can be easily blown away with mock outrage by whoever he would like to appear to be attacking, but was actually cosying up to.

This, we were told, was why Bogus had pointed his finger where the CCP were least exposed and bothered, at the Pangolin and wet markets, and where the CCP were sending the WHO officials to see if they could find, in addition to Pangolins, wild Geese to chase around, and red Herrings to buy.

When you’ve been at the tables as long as I have, a true story has a definite ring to it. But who could confirm or deny what we’d just heard? It would have to be someone who had seen all the evidence, who owed China, and Bogus and the WHO a big fat nothing. Eureka!

The man who could add flesh to this gambling den bone was you, Donald, or one of your men charged with keeping an eye on the Chinese. I’m glad to see that Big Mike has remained loyal and keen to offer up a few extra pounds. As someone said, at any moment in time, 30 – 50% of Republicans in the Houses of Congress are ready to betray their values for an invite to the next Democrat drinks party, and we gamblers get that. Pomps is an honourable exception, playing to the whistle.

But isn’t it time you weighed in to clear things up?

Having said that, now the spoilt Silicon children have cut a deal with Biden and pulled the plug on you, I bet your silence takes on menacing proportions. They discover it’s their future you worry about. And you’re not of the generation that falls to pieces when they lose their mobile or their social media password. You said you wouldn’t care if they cut you off, and to their horror they see you don’t. It cost them $50bn to find out. Ouch!

You’re welcome to express yourself here, however you like. We tend to speak in satire. We use a bespoke dialect our boss created for Undercurrent Affairs called Abstract Definition, so contributors can plead plausible deniability, while offering our customers a combination of truth and offence, a most valuable service when you consider that there are many who seek offence with an equal or greater fervour than those who seek truth. Our boss created this truthful offence to double Undercurrent market revenues, since we can offer the truth to your 75m voters and offence to Honest Joe’s 70m voters, without fail.

We sure won’t be getting any truth out of China Joe’s propaganda outlets. He’ll be helping Bogus push the CCP’s Pangolin straw man narrative, which will end up an issue on some fawning Climate Change committee’s agenda. We’ve got the gas lamps ready, just in case electricity can be turned off as easily as an internet server, and there’s no place for us in the Great Reset. Besides, cards and players look better under natural light in a smoky room.

Take care Donald, glad to see you’ve moved back to Mar a Lago and left the White House to Captain Biden to pass his dotage in. I shouldn’t call him Captain, I know, but I couldn’t resist. His Great Great Great Grandpop Christopher was a Captain in the East India Company, the Amazon of British Empire but not half as sinister, who earned an honest colonial crust and spent it all in India where he lived out his life and did his best to improve the lot of the natives, like most colonialists. So yes, quite unrecogniseable from the current crop of Bidens, who venture abroad under government remit to work pay for play schemes that impoverish everybody but the corrupt elites they collude with. It would have been better if the original Captain had been just another rapacious colonial exploiter of popular myth, to gravely denounce in a televised mea culpa that paves the way to government giveaways and even reparations, with generous kickbacks.

The White House Care Home should keep Captain Joe alive and signing Executive Orders until you get your 2024 rematch. I imagine there are lifts, and long corridors he can zimmer up and down with his mutts for exercise. Bogus will pop over to talk climate and bed pan change from time to time. As the de facto President of the persecuted majority in your second, outward bound term, now we know how they do it, there’s plenty to be getting on with!

To start with, do you think we could bounce the senile old fool into banning on-line poker?

Selaams from Istanbul,

Joey K-P

PS. By the way, what happened to Fatty Barr? Did someone eat his dinner?