Letters from Mr. Fulbright, November 29, 2025

Wherein Screwtape's protégé reports on Trump's latest activities

This thought experiment would not be possible without C.S. Lewis’s “The Screwtape Letters,” from which this is unabashedly and unapologetically derived.

Greetings and Salutations, Screwtape:

Thank you for your warm congratulations on our recent accomplishments and for expressing your concern about the future.

Yes, indeed, the National Guard shooting was a huge success. Our backs were against the wall, as you know. The patient’s supporters were jumping ship, as it were, in the face of so-called concern over our successful takeover of the American government by our favorite type of evil. Not since those proud days of Caligula have we enjoyed such prominence. Not since those days has our debauchery enjoyed such a lasting, high-profile reign.

Photo by Dan Dennis on Unsplash

My team and I considered several approaches to our most recent problem. As you know, much of the alarm that has spread over the Epstein affair among the patient’s most ardent supporters is for show, much like a fencer’s feint. It is no more real than the patient’s proclamations, driven by yours truly, that he is a man of God.

The thin veil of moral outrage is therefore easily pierced. So the question became: How, exactly, do we do so? Distraction is always the answer in many political cases, so we considered several false flags, but sadly, the patient’s opposition has become adept at detecting them.

Another solution, developed by the honorable Mr. Santiago, who, as you know, is part of our South American response team, was to develop the blunt instrument of murder on the high seas. His observation was that there was potentially no real limit to how blatant these attacks could be (we anticipate even more mayhem, so stay tuned). The public would shrug its collective shoulders and complain about coffee prices.

This brilliant strategy was encouraged by Mr. Ruiz, one of our coordinators in the Philippines, who wondered if there might not be a way to encourage our patient to implement something similar to what we achieved there.

Murdering drug dealers on city streets would probably not fly in the patient’s home country the way it did in the Philippines, but blasting fishing boats out of the water would gain just enough support from the puerile American body politic to largely be ignored, and this is indeed what has occurred.

Alas, it wasn’t enough. When the American Congress approved the release of the Epstein Files, which act almost as a log of our activities, we realized we needed to take drastic action. We’re hoping that a suggestion by one of our younger servants will help. You may have heard about the “Kill them all!” kerfuffle. Delightful, but I’m not sure it’s enough.

Resistance to our more flagrant schemes has stiffened. We needed something dastardly, yet not so obvious as to call attention to our intent. I can’t continue this report without crediting our dedicated servant in Kabul, Mr. Abboud, who recently recruited the perfect subject to our cause.

War is such a delightful human endeavor, is it not Screwtape? It spawns hives of tragic missions far beyond its original scope, in this case, a delightful case of PTSD that overwhelmed a former U.S. Special Forces and CIA operative from Afghanistan. He fell into our hands at just the right moment, and now, almost like turning the channel on a 1950s TV set, the American public has become properly redirected once again toward scorn for immigrants.

It’s a beautiful thing that I wish I could deceitfully take credit for, but the credit must go to all those dedicated soldiers of our endless Legion who so artfully convince gullible Americans that immigrants perpetually take something away from them.

This concept has become so deeply embedded in the American psyche that it has become a running joke at our parties. Just the other day, I was attending a party held by Mr. Bailywick. There, when he asked me what the American public currently feared most about immigrants, as it changes daily, he challenged a group of us to invent something more ridiculous than immigrants eating their cats and dogs.

We have a team working on this challenge as I write this. It amuses me to no end to be able to write further to you that no announcement is needed. You’ll know it when you see it.

Of course, the most delicious irony is that one alleged intent of that accursed and foul nation was to be a welcoming home to humans from other lands.

Oh, speaking of which — thank you so much for your Thanksgiving gift. The gold-plated 900-mile-long statue of the Trail of Tears is now safely tucked away on the dark side of the moon. I hope to unveil it to our fellow warriors on our day of victory.

To your other question, yes, we have several concerns about our patient. He is clearly in the end stages of life with a barely functioning brain. This makes infiltration even easier than before, and as you know, I’ve had much success in that regard, but his haphazardness is an impediment to success. I’m afraid that the best we can do is ride it out to the end.

The problem, dear Screwtape, is that we have become almost too successful. His now addled brain is so full of discontent, anger, and malevolence that it is now a jumble of unrelated thoughts and patterns. We never know which of his deviant thoughts might strike him, which would be fine if they were in harmony, but these are random things. His brain is a lightning storm of irregular impulses.

Sometimes, these impulses lead to disaster. I’m still licking my wounds from the visit by New York’s mayor, who is a fearsome enemy, truth be told. My patient’s tendency to feign support for a foe so that he can attack with vigor later has so far not come to fruition. Worse, my patient looked like a subservient patsy while speaking to this mayor, and even allowed our opponent to tower over him while my patient smiled like he was a schoolboy who had discovered his first short skirt.

We are still evaluating the situation as we try to understand the cause. I’ll follow up as soon as we find some clarity.

Thank you, Screwtape, for sending our failed servant, Mr. Cornery, to the gallows and feeding him to the land piranhas. I realize he meant a lot to you and served you well until his failures in New York. But the election there was an inexcusable loss to our side that threatens much of our work. It’s a shame, because Mr. Cornery’s work with whom we affectionately call Ghouliani was epic.

Discussions of the future bring me to my next topic, and then I shall bid you a fond farewell until next time.

My youngest recruit, whom I affectionately call Little Epstein, has begged me to create a natural disaster of some sort, specifically blowing up the Yellowstone Caldera.

For some reason, he can’t accept that we have no control over natural disasters, even though, obviously, we welcome them. I told him just yesterday that science is a language of many profanities, but our forces are powerless over when they are uttered. He was disappointed to the point of rebellion. I’m sure he’ll come around. He has incredible potential.

I’ve assigned him the task of helping my patient write his social media posts. I hope you’ve noticed. He’s doing magnificent work there. It seems to distract Little Epstein from his less efficient tendencies, which I won’t get into much here except to say that he’s possibly too disgusting even for us. But for now, I am going to work to cultivate the potential I mentioned, and hope for the best.

In closing, please send my regards to Ms. Cronenberg for her work with that Greene character. Ms. Cronenberg may need to develop a manual on how to turn deception into an art form when she is finished with her patient. It’s smart of her not to divulge trade secrets (I asked!), but it’s killing me not knowing her secret.

Until next time, dear mentor…

— Yours with everlasting and demonic intent,

Mr. Fulbright

Notes

For those of you not familiar with The Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis, they’re a series of letters written by a demon, Screwtape, to his nephew, Wormwood, on how to cajole and tempt Wormwood’s assigned target, an everyday British man.

Will Mr. Fulbright be successful in convincing Screwtape he hasn’t screwed up? Or will Mr. Fulbright be fed to the land piranhas?

Mr. Fulbright’s target, of course, is Caligulus Trumpus.

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Here is Mr. Fulbright’s April report to Screwtape:

Thanks for reading!