Office of the Acting President
Republic of Australia
The Brick House
Cnr Dalley and Burringbar Streets
Mullumgrad NSW 2482
Australia

June 25, 2026

Mr Vladimir Putin
President of the Russian Federation
Presdidential Executive Office
23, Ilyinka Street
103132, Moscow
Russia

Dear Mr Putin

As a religious man you must know that the God of Abraham and the prophets is generally opposed to war. For the past few centuries, the people of the book and their descendants have been mostly tolerant of other religious beliefs, refraining from going to war with infidels other than in defence of life, liberty and property. Do you ever wonder, therefore, what God thinks about you inflicting death and destruction on the people of Ukraine—not to mention the Russian armed forces and their families? Either you believe with Patriarch Kirill that you’re on a mission to save the Ukrainians from the decadent West, or you haven’t given sufficient thought to what it actually means to believe in God. It seems to me that killing people to save them makes no sense, so I would question whether you really believe in God at all.

Indulge me for a moment while I explore this question of the existence of God. Nobody in human history to my knowledge has been able to prove that God exists. Even Thomas Aquinas in his Summa Theologica could only make five arguments from the forces of nature that the existence of God is rational and reasonable. He could not prove as a fact that God exists. Fast forward to today, and something in the modern world may have changed when it comes to proof that God exists. I refer to the Marian apparitions at Medjugorje which, as of today, have clocked up 45 years in the making.

Assuming these claimed celestial appearances at Medjugorje are real, Mary promised peace in the world, and she promised physical proof at the end of the apparitions that God exists. Later on, she said that what she started in Fatima she would complete in Medjugorje. This can only be a reference to the conversion of Russia and world peace since nothing else from the Fatima prophecies remains outstanding so far as I can see. As you can imagine, there’s been plenty of speculation as to what the physical proof of the existence of God might look like. An Orthodox Christian website providing information about Medjugorje describes the proof as a permanent, visible and indestructible sign on Podbrdo—the hill where the apparitions supposedly occur. The sign will self-evidently not be of this world according to the six seers.

What do you think about this idea of Mary the Mother of Jesus as the prophet of our times? Do you give any credibility to the Medjugorje phenomenon, or is it just bunkum in the Kremlin? The late Pope Francis appointed a commission headed by Camillo Cardinal Ruini to study the veracity of the phenomenon and Ruini’s report recommended in 2017 that the Church approve the first seven days of the apparitions. It was a strange recommendation given that the claimed witnesses to the apparitions have said nothing in 45 years of private revelation that is inconsistent with their experiences of the first seven days. The message of peace has remained the same along with the promise of irrefutable proof that God exists.

Francis officially recognized pilgrimages to Medjugorje in 2019, but to date the new boss in Rome, Pope Leo XIV, has said precious little about the Ruini report. He made a glancing reference to it in a press conference, saying he prefers Mary sending messages about Medjugorje than the head of the Vatican telegraphic office doing so. One of Leo’s predecessors, Pope Benedict XVI, established the commission of inquiry into the Medjugorje phenomenon consistent with his belief that neither humanity nor the world can be saved unless God reappears in a convincing fashion.

Benedict was concerned in his book Truth and Tolerance that reason and religion have decided to part company in modern times. I would not want to put words in the mouth of the former pope, but I suspect he worried that the more we learn about the size of the universe—at both the subatomic and cosmological levels—the less we seem to know about the God of all Creation. One philosopher, Sam Harris, argued in The End of Faith that religion is terminal, an argument that is literally earth shattering in my modest opinion if we really are alone in the universe. Harris had this to say:

Our technical advances in the art of war have finally rendered our religious differences—and hence our religious beliefs—antithetical to our survival. We can no longer ignore the fact that billions of our neighbors believe in the metaphysics of martyrdom, or in the literal truth of the book of Revelation, or any of the other fantastic notions that have lurked in the minds of the faithful for millennia—because our neighbors are now armed with chemical, biological and nuclear weapons. There is no doubt that these developments mark the terminal phase of our [religious] credulity.

The flip side of Harris’ pessimism is Benedict’s expectation that God will somehow reappear and save us. Australian writer and theologian Stan Grant says God won’t save us, but an airbag will. Perhaps you and Patriarch Kirill are on the right track with your mission to save the world from the decadence and decay of the wicked West. As both a believer and the most dangerous warmonger in human history you certainly have a unique opportunity to bring about our salvation no less than our destruction. Nobody doubts that the war in Ukraine is your doing, and while it is also likely to be your undoing, you are still free to walk another path—the path of peace.

Do you ever lie in bed at night, wondering about how your religious convictions sit with the existential threat you represent to humanity? Can I respectfully suggest that while counting sheep, you also contemplate a sentence in a recent message at Medjugorje: Division is strong and evil is at work in man as never before. It’s hard to know where to begin with ‘division’ in the world. Was Mary talking about the geopolitics of the Ukraine war, or the insanity of America’s war against Iran?

You may not be aware that US presidential candidates in 2016 were offered substantial campaign funds in return for an undertaking to appoint judges likely to do the bidding of the executive government. Of all the candidates for president, only your mate Donald Trump accepted the offer, so now we have judges in the world’s largest democracy who act like the judges you appoint, imposing unjustly harsh sentences (think Sergei Magnitsky and Alexei Navalny) and threatening judicial independence and the rule of law as we know it in the West.

If ‘division’ is strong and ‘evil’ is at work as never before then we have a serious problem Houston. Think of the evil put about by Hitler and Stalin and then take a deep breath. The bombs are bigger today and there’s more of us to suffer and die. An estimated 70 million people were casualties of World War II, and since then, the world’s population has quadrupled to about eight billion. We all have a lot to lose, and yet, you keep raising the stakes. According to the Medjugorje seers, Mary says that in the end, Russia will be converted, and a period of peace will be granted to the world. But where is that prophetic ‘end’ and what will it cost us all to get there?

George Orwell pointed out that pacifism is founded largely on the belief that in the end good always triumphs over evil. Don’t resist evil, and it will somehow destroy itself. But why should it? What evidence is there that it does? And what instance is there of a modern industrialised state collapsing unless conquered from the outside by military force? What was more frightening to Orwell than bombs was the loss of objective truth in the modern world. He would have despaired at the idea of an American president whose modus operandi was to lie and deceive in preference to speaking to the truth—an artform inspired by a lifetime of jousting with an inscrutable justice system that allows serial litigants to say they won even when they lost.

For Orwell, the truth goes on existing no matter how much we deny it, as does liberal democracy, and these two obstacles to fascism are to be defended to the death. If you get time out from your busy life for some light reading, I can highly recommend Orwell’s Animal Farm as a good point of reference for a wonky political compass.

May I conclude by saying that the most enlightened pacifist I ever met was your predecessor, Mikhail Gorbachev, who would have been at home in upstate New York at Woodstock in the 1960s. Most of us in the West loved Gorbachev, but we did nothing to help him turn around Russia’s economy. Imagine, if you will, that all the money the West is spending today in Ukraine to help blow up Russian soldiers was used to implement Gorbachev’s plans for economic development and peace? The problem was, of course, that these plans never saw the light of day. Suffice to say that Boris Yeltsin did more for economic reform and peace in six months than Gorbachev had done in six years. Have you ever thought about walking back some of the Gorbachev peace and development plans with the benefit of your economic skills? Perhaps I will have an opportunity to canvass this idea in another letter.

Sincerely

MATE BUGAROVSKI

Office of the Acting President
Republic of Australia

Office of the Acting President
Republic of Australia
The Brick House
Cnr Dalley and Burringbar Streets
Mullumgrad NSW 2482
Australia

April 30, 2026

Mr Donald Trump
President of the United States of America
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW
Washington DC 20500
United States of America

Dear Mr Trump

Since peace talks began in Islamabad earlier this month, your friends Downunder have been hoping for an early resolution to the war in Iran. When the price of oil doubled, my prime minister stopped saying we had ‘shitloads’ of the stuff. His conservative predecessor closed down most of our refineries, so now we rely on oil tankers getting through the Strait of Hormuz and making the long journey to Asian refineries. Things are now so bad the PM is asking atheists to pray for divine intervention and for religious people to help themselves. Hope springs eternal!

The main sticking points in the peace talks, initially, were whether Israel was prepared to stop bombing Lebanon, and whether Iran was willing to give up control of the Strait of Hormuz. My money said that the chances of the Energizer Bunny halting his bombing campaign in Lebanon were Buckleys and none, while your position on the Strait of Hormuz was all over the shop. At first you said that the strait was of no interest whatsoever to the USA as you had barrels of oil to burn. You told your allies to look after the strait themselves if they wanted oil. A few days later and you were insisting that the strait was front and centre in peace talks—there could be no deal unless the strait was kept open.

You shocked your Western allies with an expletive-laden rant on Easter Sunday, arguably the holiest day of the Christian calendar. As we contemplated the open tomb of Jesus, you were screaming profanities: Open the Fuckin’ Strait, you crazy bastards… Praise be to Allah. Then on Easter Monday you posted an AI-generated image of yourself as a Jesus-like figure ministering to a sick man who looked remarkably like a prominent Iranian negotiator. Following the public outrage, you pulled down the image and replaced it with one of the ‘real’ Jesus, arm around your shoulder, as if to comfort you, or forgive you, or perhaps even to counsel you while whispering in your ear ‘poor silly bugger’.

Unsurprisingly, Pope Leo XIV became involved the next day when you calmly announced that a whole civilization will die tonight, referring to your intention to destroy Iranian infrastructure if Iran did not meet your deadline to end the conflict and open the Strait of Hormuz. The pope denounced the ‘delusion of omnipotence’ fueling the war in Iran. Your trusty deputy, J D Vance, told the pope to butt out of politics and theology, and stick with moral issues, a poor attempt, I thought, at imitating your confected outrage and mixed messaging.

Down here we’re having an ongoing debate about the US alliance. A few doomsayers are still suggesting you’re the Antichrist. Of all things, they want to have a judicial inquiry into the question. I attempted to overrule the proposal and was told in no uncertain terms to stick with ribbon cutting and letter writing. My argument was that the Donald as Antichrist was too silly for words. You are far too unsubtle for the work of the devil—too unsophisticated and probably not devious enough. According to the scriptural authorities, the Antichrist will be mistaken for a saint, and will be seen to do good works and to perform ‘signs and wonders’ far greater than the entertainment at a Trump rally.

I’ll be speaking with the prime minister about the idea of an Antichrist judicial inquiry, reminding him that the pope blessed his mother’s rosary beads, and that the pope would have said something if he thought you were the Antichrist. One thing I will say is that you’ve taken on a grave responsibility launching an unjust war at the behest of the Energizer Bunny, and should you win as in Iranian regime change, re-opening the Strait of Hormuz or recovering the damage you’ve caused to the world’s economy, then any of those things may well be regarded as the necessary miracle to justify an official inquiry.

One thing a judicial inquiry will not resolve is the question of your sanity. I don’t think you’re a bad person like President Putin for example. You wouldn’t physically harm anybody and I don’t see malice or hatred in your demeanor. Even when you threatened the existence of a whole civilization, you had in your eyes that condominium-and-canals look that real estate developers get when they see a vacant block of land near water. It’s just hard to take you seriously—even as we wish you a speedy recovery from whatever it is that’s making you behave like those radical lunatics that bother you so much in Iran.

Some people say you’re as mad as a cut snake, or as loopy as a skipping rope, but I’m not so sure. I remember back in 2024 when around 200 mental health professionals—psychiatrists, psychologists and therapists—signed an alarming open letter published as a full-page advertisement in the New York Times. The letter asserted that you suffer from malignant narcissism characterized as severe and untreatable personality disorder using DSM-5 criteria. As evidence, the letter cited traits such as chronic lying, lack of remorse, impulsivity and childlike behaviour including serious disregard for social norms and obligations involving personal responsibility. In conclusion, the shrinks said you were ‘grossly unfit for leadership’.

It should be said however that public diagnoses of public figures is problematic and the American Psychiatric Association enforces what’s called the Goldwater Rule: psychiatrists must not diagnose a public figure ‘without their consent and personal examination’. Opinions expressed in the advertisement were based on observed behaviour, not formal diagnoses, and are regarded in the medical world as ethically improper or non-clinical. In Australia, the public diagnoses of your so-called personality disorder would probably be regarded as defamatory unless it cleared the high bar of the Australian Constitution’s implied right to political communication.

Planet America this week broadcast an interview with your niece, Mary Trump, a clinical psychologist and harsh critic of your behaviour as president. ‘The thing we should be most worried about with Donald is his utter nihilism…If he thinks he’s going down he will take everyone with him because he cannot imagine a place where he is not the centre of the universe’. Niece Mary also observed that you’re one of the few people she knows who can actually gaslight themselves. ‘The truism is that if a person tells a lie often enough it becomes true to them’.

May I take this opportunity to caution you once again about lying. It’s quite unnecessary when you have so many advisers to call on for advice. Why carry responsibility yourself for the truth when you can blame advisers for misinformation? If you’re not worried about the future of your presidency you ought to be. You can still save yourself from the midterms Armageddon by deferring to others with more experience in government than you—expert professionals who will give you an objective assessment of your problems and how to solve them.

One serious problem you need to address before it gets out of hand is the potential for narcissistic reflection metaphors in renovations to the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool. Cartoonists in Australia are already sharpening their drawing pencils in anticipation of the fallout from the US government spending $14 million on an ‘American flag blue’ paint job that you failed to put out to tender. Worst of all, the serious water and plumbing problems with the ageing reflecting pool have not been addressed, raising a question at the heart of your presidency about appearances being more important than underlying repair and reform. Little wonder that your allies are now looking outside the USA for stable and constructive relationships.

Talk to your allies, especially those of us with long memories of the Marshall Plan achievements in Western Europe. Be kind to those who persecute you and soon they become your friends. Think of America’s generosity to Japan and Germany after the Big War and how their gratitude and prosperity has repaid you in spades, making America great the first time around as the leader of the free world. It’s your alliances with democratic countries like Australia that keeps freedom and free trade alive and thriving in the USA. If you really want to be great again, settle your dispute with Iran, and pivot back to Ukraine which ticks all the boxes for limiting war to defence and protection of your friends.

A week after you and the Energizer Bunny attacked Iran and Lebanon, Archbishop Robert Cardinal McElroy of Washington DC went public with his assessment that the attack on Iran (and Lebanon by inference) failed to comply with just war theory in three ways: there was no imminent and objectively verifiable attack by Iran—war cannot be justified by speculation about events in the future; you cannot have right intention without a clear purpose for going to war; and the benefits of war must be outweighed by the harm done—any response must be proportionate to an attack.

I have my own personal reasons for wanting you out of the war in Iran and pivoting back to the defence and protection of Ukraine. One of the defenders of Kyiv is my wife, Nardia, who won’t be returning to Australia until the war with the Russian aggressor is finally resolved. The moral chasm between the just war defence of Ukraine and the unjust attack on Iran and Lebanon is shameful. If you want to do something truly honorable, Mr President, head back to Europe with your seriously impressive war machine and rescue the people of Ukraine along with your flagging reputation. Imagine the boost to your prospects at the midterms!

News just in is that you dodged a bullet for the third time during celebrations with journalists in the Washington Hilton ballroom. The front page of The Australian newspaper quotes you saying you’re a target for would-be assassins because you’ve changed America. I’ve studied assassinations. The people that do the most, the people that make the biggest impact, they’re the ones that they go after. And I hate to say I’m honored by that way. But I’ve done a lot.

Oh dear! May the force be with you.

Sincerely,

Mate Bugarovski

Acting President, Republic of Australia

Those American footballers got the better of Australia this morning at the FIFA World Cup with a 2-0 victory over the Socceroos. Even so, Australia can progrees to the Round of 32 with a win or even a draw when they play Paraguay next Friday.

Meanwhile, Mate Bugarovski has just released the next chapter of his letters book.

All the best

Peter Breen

Chapter 6 – Dear Mr Putin: Vlad the Bad?

Office of the Acting President
Republic of Australia
The Brick House
Cnr Dalley and Burringbar Streets
Mullumgrad NSW 2482
Australia

March 31, 2026

Mr Vladimir Putin
President of the Russian Federation
Presidential Executive Office
23, Ilyinka Street
103132, Moscow
Russia

Dear Mr Putin

Forgive me for saying so, but after four years of fighting, you’ve done nothing to restore your credibility in Mullumgrad. We’re still in shock after watching you upbraid and publicly humiliate your security council colleagues on national television as you went through the pantomime of seeking their support for the war—just three days before attacking the people of Ukraine. The way you treated your Foreign Intelligence Service head, Sergey Naryshkin, appeared to be particularly revealing of the domineering and despotic way you rule Russia. I have never seen such a real-life public display of bullying and intimidation—except, perhaps, the way Donald Trump and JD Vance publicly humiliated Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelensky in the Oval Office in February last year when he asked for more help to defend his country.

Just three weeks after the war began, you were foaming and frothing again on national television—because the campaign to take Kyiv was not going well. I don’t know what you were expecting, but the people of Ukraine were never going to give up their capital city without a fight to the death. Either your troops were too unevenly dispersed to overrun the Ukrainian defences, or perhaps you thought twice about razing the city that historically represents Russia’s cultural and religious origins. Whatever the explanation, thank God you decided to withdraw. You were certainly agitated as you delivered your televised remarks to the Russian people. Some observers in the West likened you to Stalin, who was fond of misinformation, dehumanizing language and repression against the Russian people when his expectations were frustrated. Here is a sample of what you had to say in case you might have forgotten.

In many Western countries today, Russian people are subjected to real bullying. They are denied medical care, their children are expelled from school and their parents are denied jobs. Russian music and literature is banned as the West tries to cancel Russian culture. The West tore off its mask of decency, and began to act boorishly, demonstrating its true nature. It just suggests direct analogies with the antisemitic pogroms that the Nazis were responsible for in Germany in the 1930s. We understand what a resource this empire of lies has, but it is still powerless against truth and justice…And its goal is the destruction of Russia. But any people—and even more so the Russian people—will always be able to distinguish true patriots from scum and traitors, and will simply spit them out like a gnat that accidentally flew into their mouths. I am convinced that such a natural and necessary self-purification of society will strengthen our country, our solidarity, cohesion and readiness to respond to any challenges.

The Economist magazine rightly described your abusive language as ‘disconcertingly familiar fascist rhetoric’. Here in Mullumgrad, we are blessed to have both Russian and Ukrainian refugees from your war, and they and their families are treated as our brothers and sisters—with great compassion for the suffering and privation you’ve inflicted upon them. As for your comment that the West was banning Russian music and literature, don’t be ridiculous! The consolation of the great Russian musical and literary artists is more important than ever as the whole of humanity cries out in the pain and sorrow of another war in Europe.

And while it’s true that the rollicking harmonies of Dustyesky have fallen silent, it seems to me that Russian ballads and songs expressing joy and laughter are seriously inappropriate when hundreds of thousands of Russian and Ukrainian families are still burying their dead for no good reason other than the truly bad idea that the clock should be turned back to a time when Russia had better access to the Black Sea and the Russian Orthodox Church had authority over the Ukraine church.

The other thing I seriously objected to in your rant was the slur against the Jewish people when you compared treatment of the Russian diaspora in the West to the ‘antisemitic pogroms’ of World War II Nazis. As you know, Ukrainian Jews suffered appalling war crimes in the Babi Yar ravine in Kyiv and in the massacre at Odesa, crimes that still rank among the worst in human history. What you do not know, apparently, is that nobody in the West blames the Russian people for starting a war against the people of Ukraine—any more than we blame the people of imperialist Japan or fascist Germany for the atrocities of World War II. When a country gets a really bad leader everyone suffers.

Something else I wanted to say while I’m on a roll is that the answer to Stalin’s question ‘How many divisions does the pope have?’ is that the pope has a billion strong prayer army and a similar number of internet users on the case for disabusing the people of Russia about their dear leader. No doubt you have your supporters. My advisers and I have regular social media exchanges with people in Russia who insist that the war with Ukraine is not a war but simply a boundary adjustment.

As in war, things can get out of hand on social media, and so I apologize for my language. I don’t want to be gratuitously offensive. If you’re mad, you may well be no madder than the rest of us, so welcome to the human race. This is not a groveling apology, however, and I still reckon you’re bad. For that observation, I am grateful to Australian lawyer and writer Geoffrey Robertson for his book, Bad People & How to be Rid of Them, and for his work to advance global human rights laws. Plus, I subscribe to the duck principle—if something looks like a duck, walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it’s probably a duck.

For really bad-duck stuff, look no further than the case of Sergei Magnitsky, a Russian citizen and tax agent who had the temerity to report a fraud on the Russian people involving crooked senior policemen and tax inspectors at Russia’s Ministry of the Interior. These bureaucrats had managed to scam US$230 million of public money from illegal tax rebates. For his trouble, and refusing to withdraw his complaints, Magnitsky was falsely accused of the same crimes he had reported. After a year in prison awaiting trial, in cells without clean water and awash with sewerage, he was denied medical attention for pancreatitis.

He was then taken in handcuffs to another prison where, screaming with pain, he was beaten with rubber batons by eight prison officers and left in an isolation cell to which, for over an hour, waiting doctors were not allowed entrance. They found him on the floor, dead. ‘He died of heart failure, with no signs of violence’, said Irina Dudukina, the press officer of the Ministry of Interior.

As you know, this is no false narrative promulgated by neo-Nazis, fifth columnists or scum and traitors to be spat out like gnats. Details of the torture and murder of Sergei Magnitsky are to be found in a report from the Public Oversight Commission for Human Rights Observance in Moscow Detention Centers—an independent Russian NGO. The commission concluded that Magnitsky was subjected to physical and psychological torture, was systematically denied medical care and his right to life was violated by the state. Today, Magnitsky laws in nearly 40 countries target corrupt and criminally culpable individuals—as distinct from states and governments—with sanctions preventing those individuals from traveling to foreign countries and from accessing foreign banking systems to conceal their ill-gotten gains.

Australia used its Magnitsky law for the first time just a week after you attacked Ukraine, imposing sanctions on 39 Russian individuals for corrupt involvement in the death and abuse of Sergei Magnitsky. Your response to the Magnitsky law legislation was to ‘shoot’ the messenger, Geoffrey Robertson, by placing him on a Russian list of individuals to be sanctioned by the Kremlin for at least the duration of the Ukraine military intervention. All really bad-duck stuff in my correspondence.

The other Russian horror show you produced and directed after attacking Ukraine was the incarceration and murder of Opposition Leader Alexei Navalny, a subject that makes me crook as Rookwood just thinking about it. Navalny was a dyed-in-the-wool Christian saint willing to give up his life for justice and peace. Your response to his ambitions was to dispatch the Opposition Leader to a Russian gulag and kill him with frog poison, a crime that will follow you into the afterlife if such a place exists. Assuming there’s no God, I urge you to seek peace and forgiveness with Ukraine in this life if only to reduce the amount of suffering still in store for you when you’re overtaken and consumed by the inevitable consequences of tyrannical government.

Sincerely,

Mate Bugarovski

Acting President, Republic of Australia

It’s hard to know what’s the most exciting thing happening today, Australia beginning it’s FIFA World Cup campaign in the USA, or Donald Trump seriously threatening to sign a peace agreement with Iran to stop the war.

Did you know that Australia’s 26-man football squad includes representation from at least 15 cultural and ethnic backgrounds? Now that’s genuine diversity, confirming Australia as the number one culturally diverse country in the world.

The football kicks off around 2:00pm our time and will be broadcast live on SBS television. Signing the peace deal could happen around the same time. A good day for the next chapter of Mate Bugarovski’s ‘The TRUMPUTIN Letters’ written in March.

Chapter 5 – Dear Mr Trump: No Medieval Kings

Office of the Acting President
Republic of Australia
The Brick House
Cnr Dalley and Burringbar Streets
Mullumgrad NSW 2482
Australia

March 31, 2026

Mr Donald Trump
President of the United States of Australia
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW
Washington DC 20500
United States of America

Dear Mr Trump

After a crazy month in which your government spent an eyewatering one billion dollars a day dropping bombs on Iran and almost doubling the price of oil, the two largest protests in the USA last weekend had little to do with the war. On Saturday, ten million Americans turned out for the third ‘No Kings’ rally which had begun on your birthday in June last year. Protesters claimed that your unlawful executive orders to dismantle parts of the government and deploy federal law enforcement agencies in the states was old-fashioned kingship.

And then on Palm Sunday millions more American Christians celebrated the putative king of Israel riding into Jerusalem on a donkey before the mob set upon him and nailed him to a cross. Of course, raising Lazarus from the dead and promising to raise himself after he died were preposterous claims to make for a man who appeared to be a mere mortal, threatening the authority of secular and religious leaders. The sign on his cross read ‘Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews’.

Modern king and queenship is about pomp and pageantry, doing the ribbon cutting and letter writing things and respecting the natural political order—the people first, followed by their elected representatives, and only then the executive government. From the founding days of the Republic, the USA Constitution ensured that no branch of government would accumulate the unchecked power of king or queenship. Even the presidency—often the focus of national identity—is constrained by the rule of law along with legislative and judicial oversight. Those who wrote the Constitution were mindful of the dangers of concentrating power in the hands of an unruly executive. Alexander Hamilton went out of his way to contrast the American President with the British King, emphasizing that the president is a magistrate of the people, not a sovereign sitting under a crown.

A good example of a modern king is the British royal, Charles III, who will be addressing the American Congress next month to mark the 250^th anniversary of American Independence. Charlie happens to be ‘By the Grace of God, King of Australia’ according to his royal proclamation. He’s also a good bloke, behaving himself much better than his brother, Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, who made nearly as many appearances in the Epstein files as your good self.

For the record, I should say that Charles III is only the titular head of Australia and is yet to recognise the Oz Republic. We’re waiting for letters patent from the British Crown. I did write to him last year about the royal delay and had a very nice reply from Buckingham Palace. The Head of Royal Correspondence conveyed ‘His Majesty’s warmest good wishes’ and assured me my inquiries ‘were very carefully noted’.

Be warned that Charlie won’t be pulling punches when he speaks to the American Congress. You will hear about the dangers to the natural environment caused by the insanity of war and the uneven distribution of the world’s resources. The meek will inherit the earth and war mongers will occupy overcrowded radical lunatic asylums. Attributing war to the will of God could cost the mad mullahs and imam’s their tongues and Pete Hegseth his right arm.

Getting back to the war in Iran, you did an excellent job when you warned my prime minister to allow Iranian women footballers to stay in Australia after they competed in the Asian World Cup. Then the numbers got a bit messy—two out of seven would-be asylum seekers decided to stay on while the rest went home to Iran. A wonderful picture was published in the local press of four of the Iranian women standing next to our home affairs minister who looked just like John Cleese of Fawlty Towers fame when it was discovered that about 7,000 Iranian nationals holding subclass visas are still blocked from entering Australia.

You won’t have any trouble with visitors overstaying their USA visas when we turn up in our thousands for the FIFA World Cup later this year. Those brave souls who do stay on in the USA will have the double trouble of possible ICE detention and getting caught up in the post midterms Armageddon.

I’m guessing the Republican midterms war cry will be that the electoral system is rigged in favor of Democrats. Republicans will say postal voting breached their Constitutional rights by making excessive demands on their capacity to fill out the ballot paper, put it in an envelope and post it to the electoral commission. No surprise to me that only 50 per cent of Americans bother to vote when the other half want to bear arms and take aim at their fellow citizens about nonsense.

I mentioned in my last letter that there may be a thought crime issue when you make a policy announcement and then, confusingly, jump to the opposite position with a new policy contrary to the previous one. You’ve been known to do this in the space of a few words. Well, I just wanted to let you know that Australia’s High Court decided earlier this year that a former executive government minister, Ian Macdonald, was guilty of the criminal offence of ‘conspiracy to commit misconduct in public office’ even though it was not known at the time what ‘particular acts [he] would undertake to bring about the objects’ of the conspiracy. Sounds like thought crime to me.

And while conspiracy to commit misconduct in public office may not be a designated crime in the USA, federal prosecutors do have comparable powers using bribery, extortion and conflict of interest statutes to keep members of the executive government within the democracy guardrails. So be careful about your family taking dubious positions in oil futures and shorting the market knowing that you can cause a decline in the oil price with a thought bubble about peace, or a new plan for the Strait of Hormuz.

A few days ago, just fifteen minutes before you announced a five-day pause in the Iran war, more than half a billion dollars were traded in oil futures. Bets were laid that the price of oil would fall. As soon as you made the war pause announcement, the oil price tumbled as predicted, and speculation was rife that you or a family member had pocketed millions in oil futures trading profits. A senator asked publicly whether people in the White House were the lucky traders. Speculation about insider trading is spurious in the absence of proof, but the stakes are high given your alleged second term enrichment—and I’m not talking here about uranium enrichment.

My personal observation for what it’s worth is that your second term is not such a terrific enriching experience, neither in the amount of money you have accumulated nor the satisfaction you have received from attempting to make the USA self-sufficient in trade and the center of the oil universe. Instead, you look overwhelmed and confused, lacking a clear head and weighed down by the responsibility of high office. I thought you lost the plot with your on again off again remarks about closure of the Strait of Hormuz. Don’t forget you sent home six minesweepers for their scrap metal value in January—just when the Iranians were laying new mines.

Australia’s prime minister has just addressed the nation, telling us that the ship of state is about to experience stormy economic conditions with the fuel price going gangbusters and the supply chain for life rafts likely to be interrupted. But don’t worry, the PM said, because we have shiploads of oil. Mother Mary was watching the live broadcast in the Brick House without the benefit of her hearing aid and she misheard the PM—who has a slight speech impediment. At Mary’s request, I have just written and reprimanded our political leader for saying on national television that Australia has ‘shitloads’ of oil. As you know, Mr President, sometimes politicians have to do as their families demand.

My advisers tell me that you sacked your attorney general, Pam Bondi, around the time of the Australian prime ministerial address to the nation, emboldened no doubt by the sacking of Kristi Noem of the Department of Homeland Security a few days earlier. Are you reverting to less stressful times when you fronted The Apprentice and always got to call the shots? Sacking people on television seemed to cheer you up. Noem had to pay for the ICE troubles in Minnesota while Bondi failed to sufficiently cover up the Epstein files and failed to successfully prosecute good people like the former head of the FBI, James Comey.

Revenge was never a good cause of action, even though it’s been a guiding principle of your business and family life. Did you know that revenge is contrary to both Christian and Jewish theology? Trying to get revenge in the Middle East after Iran beat you up in the Strait of Hormuz could easily put you in the radical lunatics asylum. Revenge is the worst of human emotions and dumb as a pile of bricks.

Sincerely,

MATE BUGAROVSKI
Acting President, Republic of Australia

Today I’m warming up at the Bellingen Readers and Writers Festival where the local cafe ‘Church’ is toasty: a pot-belly stove in the neutral corner, God botherers in the red and atheists in the blue. It seemed like a good place to publish Chapter 4.

Chapter 4 – Dear Mr Putin: Love Thy Neighbour

Office of the Acting President
Republic of Australia
The Brick House
Cnr Dalley and Burringbar Streets
Mullumgrad NSW 2482
Australia

February 28, 2026

Mr Vladimir Putin
President of the Russian Federation
Presidential Executive Office
23, Ilyinka Street
103132, Moscow
Russia

Dear Mr Putin

I mentioned in my last letter that Mary of the Mother of Jesus fame is supposed to have appeared daily in apparition at Medjugorje in Bosnia Herzegovina for these past 45 years with regular messages for the world. The story told is that Mary frequently warns against the evil work of Satan, the leader of the fallen angels in a war against God and all that is good in the world. A recent survey found 56 per cent of Americans believe Satan is real and not merely a symbol of evil. People interviewed in the survey said Satan influences human lives.

Questions of good and evil spirits are beyond my pay grade, I must say, even if they do explain your abhorrent behavior in re-attacking Ukraine four years ago, or Donald Trump’s appalling decision today to re-attack Iran. Like the Irish writer CS Lewis, I’m inclined to sidestep questions of good and evil which diminish personal responsibility. Lewis said he believed angels and demons were real, but only in the sense that their existence was one of his opinions. His religion would not be in ruins if celestial spirits were figments of human imagination.

For the record, the Eastern and Roman churches were once, together, the one holy and apostolic church dating back to the first century of Christianity, tracing its origins to the apostles Andrew and Peter. Even today, Andrew is the patron saint of Russia and Ukraine, while Peter is the patron saint of Rome. In the Great Schism of 1054, the Eastern and Western Churches excommunicated each other over theological and cultural differences. It was not until 1964 when Patriarch Athenagoras and Pope Paul VI met in Jerusalem that the mutual excommunications were lifted. The point I wanted to make is that many Orthodox Christians will be familiar with Mother Mary’s Fatima prophecy of Russia’s conversion and world peace.

Pope Francis believed you started World War III in Ukraine, saying humanity was in big trouble, although he refused to go to the trenches and lay the blame for the war entirely at your feet. He met with Patriarch Kirill online in March 2022 for 40 minutes, and Kirill read to the pope a declaration of support for the war. Francis was a taken aback by a spiel justifying war, and told Kirill what he thought in no uncertain terms: ‘Brother, we are not clerics of the state, we are pastors of the people’.

A week earlier, Kirill surprised nobody when he endorsed the attack on Ukraine, blaming the West for undermining the family and allowing gay-pride parades. Putin’s war, Kirill said, was a struggle having a metaphysical significance. How anybody—including religious people of all and any denomination—can justify the indiscriminate bombing of women and children and call it a just war is the metaphysical struggle for most of us.

Nobody knows what happened to ‘love thy neighbour’ in Russian Christianity. Patriarch Kirill called you ‘a miracle of God’ which reminded me of a former Australian prime minister who attributed his election in 2019 to one of God’s miracles. I think we should be cautious about blaming God for the politicians we elect.

I recall you getting the top Russian political job following former president Boris Yeltsin’s recommendation, and then one of your first civic duties as president was to shut down a corruption investigation into Yeltsin’s affairs. The miracle here is that you’ve survived for so long. Patriarch Kirill still seems to be enamored of your religiosity, praying with you, watching you cross yourself in public, admiring you kissing icons and lighting candles. Perhaps you’re the Russian embodiment of Al Capone—a mobster who gave the appearance of religious belief.

Even if you and Patriarch Kirill do believe you have a brief from God to save the world from decadence and decay, and you share a genuine fear of annihilation at the hands of NATO, Russia’s church and state alliance is on the wrong side of human history in my opinion. Most people today believe in peace, freedom and fundamental human rights, even if those values are not always reflected in our governments. And in the West we can usually claim popular support for our beliefs—whether we arrived at those beliefs through religion or the secular world, or both.

Many of us are willing to fight to the death for our beliefs, shoulder to shoulder with the people of Ukraine. It would be a mistake to think that just because people in the West tolerate those who want to be different, who want to express themselves as individuals—and even to act in eccentric and idiosyncratic ways—that the West has no moral backbone, no capacity to stand up and be counted when there are threats against our common humanity. People in my neck of the woods respect minorities, including those who express minority opinions, if only for the fact that we are all minorities in one way or another.

In my case, I’m frequently pilloried for my faith in the good life and two-bob-each-way political convictions (leaning to the virtuous centre), even though I would give up in a heartbeat everything I believe in the face of convincing evidence that I have the wrong information or I’m on the wrong track. But my openness to the possibility I may be in error does not make me vulnerable to the false narrative peddled by Kirill that Russia is a bulwark of traditional Christianity ‘mounting a decisive effort to combat decadent liberal Western values’.

You might consider asking Patriarch Kirill to invite Pope Leo XIV to Moscow to discuss the situation with the Ukraine war—or military intervention if you prefer. The Holy Father is a simple and pious man with no illusions about the transitory attractions of this world. He will have little interest in how many empty palaces and hollow houses one person can occupy at any one time, or Kirill’s unseemly collection of worldly goods and chattels. Of greater concern to the pope will be the spiritual and social needs of the people of Russia and Ukraine as their lives slowly disintegrate in the cold shadow of your hero, Stalin.

Speaking of cold shadows, I had a call from my wife, Nardia, early today in Kyiv where she advises the Ukrainian military on the human rights of soldiers—surely the coldest job in Europe at this time of the year. Nardia passed on the news that the Americans and Israelis had just attacked Iran. You will recall that Nardia went home at the beginning of your special military operation, vowing not to return to Australia until every person in Ukraine was safe from your bombs. Occasionally I get to visit her in Kyiv, but never in the cold of Europe’s winter months.

It was not difficult to imagine what your reaction to the bombing of Iran might be, and yet when I heard the statement of your foreign affairs minister on the radio news, I’m embarrassed to say I laughed out loud: ‘This is a deliberate, premeditated and unprovoked act of armed aggression…in direct violation of the fundamental principles of international law’. A serious case of the pot calling the kettle black if you ask me. What’s happening in Iran may give you pause for thought, and perhaps even a modicum of sympathy for the people of Ukraine—especially the soldiers.

Australia reckons you will be diverting drones and missiles to your friends in Iran, offering some relief to brave Ukrainian soldiers. It probably won’t be long before your mate President Trump relishes the opportunity to lift Russian oil sanctions—the moment he realizes the extent to which the Iranians control oil and gas supplies in the world. I reckon that Trump is doing the bidding of Benjamin Netanyahu and the Israelis who want to put the Iranian mullahs and imams back in their box in the hope of securing regime change—to less hateful leaders who do not have a mission from God to eliminate the State of Israel.

Israel is a sovereign nation and member of the United Nations. Believing it will be somehow pushed into the sea is wooly thinking of the highest order. America will fight to the death to defend Israel in the same way that Europe will do whatever is required to stop you incorporating Ukraine into Russia. If you can get a deal that formally gives you Crimea in return for the land you’ve occupied in Eastern Ukraine then you should be grateful and take it thankfully. Already there are 1.2 million Russian casualties of your illegal war if you count the dead, the wounded and the missing in action.

You have a few options in Ukraine. One is to do what Donald Trump will inevitably do in Iran and just go home and do something useful with his remaining years beyond killing and maiming the neighbours. A second option is to help defend your Iranian allies, although that might mean chucking your bricolage cross. Did you know that Trump’s secretary of war crimes, Peter Hegseth, has a crusader’s cross tattooed on his chest along with a tattoo ‘God wills it’—the battle cry of the First Crusade—on his upper right arm? As if that’s not sacrilegious enough for church on Sunday, the war crimes boss sports other tattoos in Arabic, Greek and Hebrew in case there was any doubt about his crusader credentials.

Another option for you is to change sides as Russia did in 1941 and teach America and Israel how to wage war with God’s blessing.

Sincerely,

Mate Bugarovski

Acting President, Republic of Australia

The trouble with politics in Australia is you only get to see the tip of the ice cube
Gore Vidal (1925-2012)

Contents

Letter 1 - Dear Mr Trump: Bored of Peace 7
Letter 2 - Dear Mr Putin: Special Military Operation 12
Letter 3 - Dear Mr Trump: Operation Epstein Fury 16
Letter 4 - Dear Mr Putin: Love Thy Neighbour 20
Letter 5 - Dear Mr Trump: No Medieval Kings 25
Letter 6 - Dear Mr Putin: Vlad the Bad? 29
Letter 7 - Dear Mr Trump: Don the Mad? 34
Letter 8 - Dear Mr Putin: More Radical Lunatics 39
Letter 9 - Dear Mr Trump:
Letter 10 - Dear Mr Putin:
Letter 11 - Dear Mr Trump:
Letter 12 - Dear Mr Putin:
Acknowledgements
Endnotes

Letter 3 – Dear Mr Trump: Operation Epstein Fury

Office of the Acting President
Republic of Australia
The Brick House
Cnr Dalley and Burringbar Streets
Mullumgrad NSW 2482
Australia

February 28, 2026

Mr Donald Trump
President of the United States of America
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW
Washington DC 20500
United States of America

Dear Mr Trump

How are you going with the T-BOP? I see you just held the inaugural general meeting of the peaceful at the White House after changing the name from the ‘Trump Bored of Peace’ to the ‘Donald J Trump Institute of Peace’ with your good self as ‘Chairman for Life’. You’re no shrinking violet, Mr President, and still in line for the Nobel peace deal provided you manage to raise more money than you can poke a stick at while rebuilding Palestine and paying down the American debt.

The debt still worries me especially since my treasury officials advised that America is home to less than a thousand billionaires, never mind the 40,000 now needed to raise $40 trillion. I’d hoped bitcoin or your meme coin might get you out of trouble, but prices have fallen off a cliff since the beginning of your second term. If you go broke for a seventh time and take the country with you, might I respectfully suggest you follow the American States’ example and balance the books. Then the ‘Donald J Trump Nobel Peace Medal’ will be just a formality—up there with the ‘Donald J Trump and John F Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts’.

News out of Minneapolis and Saint Paul is that most of the ICE men have moved on after leaving a trail of destruction: Renee Good and Alex Pretti needlessly dead; more than 4,000 people detained; and hundreds deported to their countries of origin with others to follow. Yesterday I happened to be watching ABC National Television’s Planet America here in Australia when John Barron covered your interview at the White House with NBC News—a bit of a shocker.

You said that too much attention had been given to the deaths of Renee Good and Alex Pretti. What about all those Minnesotans who have not been shot? Two people out of tens of thousands. And you get bad publicity. Shock horror! Polls show that six in ten Americans now disapprove of the job ICE is doing. That’s so unfair—you’re not being given credit for all those people the ICE men refrained from shooting. Meanwhile your secretary of homeland security, Kristi Noem, and others insist that Good and Pretti were ‘domestic terrorists’.

Another shocker since my last letter was your Truth Social post of Barrack and Michelle Obama dressed as apes. What were you thinking? I hope you didn’t get the idea from the Orange Light Party politician in Australia who turned up in the Senate late last year wearing a burqa. A philistine wearing a burqa is one thing, but racially vilifying the former president and his wife by digitally altering their images to look like apes is something else quite despicable in the opinion of your allies.

Shortly after the doctored images of the Obamas appeared on Truth Social, you told reporters on Air Force One that you posted the Obama meme yourself, and you would not be apologising. When later you were forced to resile from the post and blame someone else there was nowhere to hide. My concern is that you ran the racist trope in the context of more debunked claims about the 2020 election being rigged, a grievance that bothers you so much it borders on the pathological.

Now that Lent has started, my advice is to give up talking about the rigged 2020 election for the next 40 days, and almost certainly you will stop lying. The truth is, the POTUS has nothing to prove except the rigged election, ergo the need to lie about everything else falls away. For 40 days you can rest on your laurels, or squeeze in a few more rounds of golf. Given all the things you’re expected to remember, you’d be forgiven for forgetting a few details even if you once told a campaign audience in Iowa that you had the world’s greatest memory.

The art of the deal with lying is to lie close to the truth—give yourself wriggle room. Absolute bald-faced lies may be alright for a real estate man mentored by Roy Cohn whose motto was to say you’d won even if you lost. But now that you’re the POTUS, you need more decorum and nuance even if it means giving up on the idea that you won in 2020. Try saying for 40 days you lost and see how that goes.

This morning I woke to the news that you decided to start a war of aggression against the Islamic Republic of Iran, a war that Australia believes would require the approval of Congress and perhaps the United Nations. I must say that my advisers were surprised by the attack, believing that the build-up of American military assets in the Middle East was all about putting pressure on Iran to come to the negotiating table on uranium enrichment. The consensus was you’d chicken out (TACO) in return for an Obama style agreement signed by the Iranians to the effect that they won’t be building nuclear bombs.

So now you have a real live illegal war on your hands, albeit one that the Australian government supports to the extent that we stick by our allies, which is odd in a way given the war’s unlawfulness and the fact that the USA has been walking back its commitment to the allies. How is it that your allies stick by you when you need them, but you’re less magnanimous when your reciprocal loyalty is required? And didn’t Roy Cohn teach you that loyalty is more important than truth or the facts? By the way, that’s how crooks and mobsters get their wicked way—by demanding loyalty over personal integrity.

Just a few weeks ago you were in trouble for asserting that your NATO allies stayed a little back, a little off the frontlines during their troop movements in Afghanistan. Your secretary of war, Pete Hegseth, made similar complaints about traditional allies of the USA ‘hemming and hawing about the use of force’ in Iran. Well, your allies are deeply concerned that you’re telling more porkies, this time about your motives in the Middle East. Less than nine months ago you told us on Truth Social that both Israel and Iran wanted to end the 12-day war. But you insisted on taking all the credit. It was my great honor to Destroy All Nuclear facilities & capability, and then, STOP THE WAR.

My strong advice is to put that message on repeat and get out of Iran as soon as you can before Israel does to Iran what it did to the Gaza strip and would like to do in southern Lebanon—raze everything to ground zero. Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu is like that Energizer Bunny battery that won’t give up until everyone else is exhausted. Australia is sympathetic to the Israeli cause of a safe and secure homeland, but it cannot be a reasonable and just cause for King Bibi to use overwhelming force to invade his neighbours by flattening their houses, hospitals, schools and other infrastructure, at the same time admitting that Iran no longer has the technology to make a nuclear bomb that might threaten Israel’s existence.

It’s not alright to choose war over peace on the basis that mad mullahs and imams believe they have a mission from God to eliminate Israel at some point in the future—when Iran gets the nuclear bomb. And it’s not alright for Pete Hegseth to suggest you’re anointed by God to press the button for Armageddon unless he’s talking about the mid-terms in November. Don’t be confused by political rhetoric echoing the perception in many regions of the Middle East that westerners want to interfere in the sovereignty of Muslim countries. By attacking Iran, the USA is feeding into the apocalyptic narrative in both Christian and Jewish scripture. Similar language appears in the Islamic holy books.

When I see you in the Oval Office praying with your Christian friends, I have to wonder whether you’re any better than the religious leaders in Iran you seek to demonise with your talk of radical lunatics. You told NBC News that you launched a war against Iran because they weren’t willing to say they will not have a nuclear weapon while less than nine months earlier you were saying you had obliterated the Iranian nuclear industry. I’m a bit confused by thought crime.

After your ‘Operation Epstein Fury’ war began, Mother Mary of Mullumgrad started storming around the Brick House and stomping on the wooden floor to emphasise her fury. In fact, the old girl’s had a bee in her bonnet ever since the leader of the Orange Light Party asserted that there are no good Muslims. To the contrary, Mary contends, every Muslim she knows is a better person than every member of the OLP. Goodness knows how my dear mother knows all this without cross-examining everyone concerned, but nobody is arguing with the old girl.

Mother Mary also says that like it or not, you’re starting a holy war in the Middle East, and as the most powerful person in human history (more powerful than a locomotive; able to leap tall buildings with a single bound) you may well be the Antichrist. Now that would be very bad news, although it’s hard to believe in the absence of Jewish scriptural authority. The Good News is that after the defeat of the Antichrist in both Muslim and Christian biblical interpretation, Jesus returns and the world is at peace—perhaps for a thousand years.

Good luck with the peace and let me know how the war is going.

Sincerely,

Mate Bugarovski
Acting President, Republic of Australia

a division of MyLetters Corporation P/L
ACN 165 213 212
PO Box 466, Mullumgrad NSW 2482, Australia

pbreen@myletters.com

19 May 2026

Dear Colleague

You might have heard the news last week that Vladimir Putin reckons the war with Ukraine is ‘coming to an end’.

Lots of reasons come to mind: about 1.2 million Russians killed, wounded or missing; Russia is tired of being a pariah state; or Donald Trump has demonstrated the futility of war. Trump and Putin are both infuriating, so much so that I decided to publish Mate Bugarovski’s ‘The TRUMPUTIN Letters’ online on Substack. I am taking the liberty of asking for your support for this endeavour as a free subscriber.

For years, Mate has sent missives to Trump and Putin about the horror of promoting war, especially for people who claim to be Christians. Both leaders now seem to be getting the message – war sucks. And now I’m delighted to inform you that Mate’s ‘The TRUMPUTIN Letters’ book will be available at the end of the year. In the meantime, I’ll be sending you copies of the monthly letters on Substack.

You might have seen Four Corners last night on ABC Television, a program about the ICE men in the USA and the appalling way they killed Renee Good and Alex Pretti in Minnesota earlier this year. Mate’s book is dedicated to Good and Pretti and his first letter to Donald Trump this year is an attempt to comprehend these two crimes.

Let me know if you don’t want to know about Mate’s monthly letters to the dear leaders and I’ll take you off the mailing list. Otherwise, thanks for staying.

All the best

PETER BREEN

MyLetters Corporation Pty Limited

++++++++++++++++++++

The TRUMPUTIN Letters
Missives from the Republic Downunder

Letter 1: Dear Mr Trump - Bored of Peace

Office of the Acting President
Republic of Australia
The Brick House
Cnr Dalley and Burringbar Streets
Mullumgrad NSW 2482
Australia

January 31, 2026

Mr Donald Trump
President of the United States of America
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW
Washington DC 20500
United States of America

Dear Mr Trump

Thank you for your kind invitation to join the Trump Bored of Peace (T-BOP), a bargain at the cool sign-up price of one billion dollars. Please deduct my billion from the $18 billion already set aside by Australia to help out with your $38 trillion national debt in the hope that one day we might get nuclear-powered submarines. I had treasury officials do the maths and the numbers surprised me. It appears you can wipe out the national debt if 38,000 billionaires sign up to the T-BOP while the chances of Australia getting the submarines remain at zero.

Some advisers in foreign affairs want to renegotiate the USA submarine deal and revert to the deal we had with the French. Others say that anything that floats can be sunk with one good missile strike so let’s jump ship altogether and cancel the USA contract. The savings could be upwards of $350 billion. Not that any of us want to jeopardise the relationship with old allies, but neither do we want to be exploited.

As you know, our countries have been military allies since before you and I were born—since General Douglas MacArthur established his headquarters in Australia during the 1942 war in the Pacific. Australia signed the ANZUS Treaty in 1951 (along with our neighbour New Zealand) and the AUKUS security partnership in 2021. The United Kingdom may turn out to be an unreliable military partner in AUKUS after signing up with the Europeans to oppose your absolute necessity takeover of Greenland. Churchill would turn in his grave at the UK teaming up with Germany and France instead of the USA.

On the subject of Greenland, you might like to know that the ice sheet is more than two miles thick in places, and when it melts sea levels will rise about seven meters, turning Greenland into an archi-pelago nearly two-thirds smaller than the land and ice mass you see today. Even though you’re not a fan of climate change—you told the UN General Assembly in 2025 that climate change is the greatest con job ever perpetrated on the world—you must have learned at one of the universities you attended that heat melts ice, so be careful what you pay for, or heaven forbid, what you fight for over Greenland.

You and I were born a few months apart in 1946—unexpected consequences of post-war celebrations—and we have our mothers to thank for convincing us we’re special. My late father fled the Warsaw ghetto and managed to cross six countries and two large bodies of water to fight the Nazis from a Polish air force squadron north of London. After the war, he married my Irish mother, Mary Milligan, and they emigrated to Australia—the furthest place from Europe they could find on a map. My father struggled against discrimination in the workplace, racial stereotyping and Downunder articulation of the King’s English.

Against my mother’s advice, the old man registered my name as ‘Mate Bugarovski’ since that was how Australians pronounced his Polish name, Maciej Buttowski. You did well to escape an ethnically eponymous name attributable to your real estate developer father, Fred Christ Trump. Or your German grandfather Friedrich (pronounced here as ‘Fried Rich’). The mind boggles really! I ran a few possibilities past Mother Mary, now in her late nineties, and all combinations of ‘Christ’ and ‘Rich’ deeply offended her Irish moral and religious sensibilities.

Mother Mary still has her standards and she worries when you say things like you’re unconstrained by international law. Yes, you said that a couple of weeks ago in the Oval Office during an interview with New York Times journalists who wanted to know if there were limits on your global power. My own morality; my own mind. It’s the only thing that can stop me. Mother Mary can’t understand that the leader of the free world would make life and death decisions based on thought bubbles about personal feelings rather than objective ethical standards.

If my memory serves me correctly, you spoke to those New York Times journalists in the Oval Office about other things besides your limitless global power. One topic was the killing of Renee Good in Minneapolis by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent Jonathan Ross. Immediately after he shot the Good woman, Ross’ body-camera audio recorded him saying ‘fucking bitch’. You showed the journalists video of the killing to support your claim that Good had run over the ICE man. At least four videos, including the one you showed the journalists, establish that what you want to see is not always the same as what you actually see.

ICE man Ross was never in danger and he would go down for a long stretch down here for his disproportionate response to someone having a friendly chat. The last thing the victim said to Ross was ‘That’s fine, dude. I’m not mad at you’. He then pulled his gun and shot her three times. Mother Mary worries about your moral judgement and the nukes button when you seem to be unable to look at a few videos of a crime scene from a fair and objective perspective.

Just 17 days later the Minneapolis ICE men were at it again when they attacked and then shot dead Alex Pretti, a kindly 37-year-old ICU nurse who worked at the local Veterans Affairs hospital. What appears from the videos to be an appalling crime that crossed the Rubicon for many of us has prompted republicans down here to claim that we may be in an alliance with an authoritarian state that uses muscled-up goons using delegated authority from a limitless-power executive to enforce the law. Back in the day they called this fascism.

Until these recent events in Minneapolis—which happened just down the road from where George Floyd was killed by local police for wanting to breathe—Australians and Americans had much in common, especially our immigrant populations and basic Judeo Christian values. Plus we had a fine record of treating our indigenous people as if they—and not us—were the cruel insatiable visitors from another planet.

About 3,000 North American defence and military personnel are stationed in Australia or arrive here on annual rotational deployment; and about ten percent of our visitors each year are North Americans. Australians and Americans operate the enigmatic joint defence facility at Pine Gap near Alice Springs and the Holt Naval Base in Western Australia. For better or worse, we seem to be peas in a pod.

It pains me therefore to tell you that many Australians are now wanting to review the deal with the USA. Your Art of the Deal motto ‘escalate to negotiate’ seems to have flipped to ‘fake it and lie’, placing our old-mates relationship in serious peril. People say we did not sign up for tyranny dressed up as democracy, or batshit boring narcissistic reflections that bear no resemblance to the real world. Things are so bad that our ambassador to Washington has just decided to resign, and many of our allies in Canada and Europe are pivoting away from the USA to the People’s Republic of China, rather than jump from one foot to the other in a futile attempt to remain in step with you.

Some of my republican colleagues want to take the you out of the USA, saying there’s too much executive power in the American Constitution. Australians understand representative democracy to mean that the leader is first and foremost a member of parliament or congress who understands how government works. Elected politicians appoint people like me—the great and the good—to act as head of state with no real power beyond cutting ribbons and writing letters. My primary role is to make the executive government look harmless.

Like American politics, Australia has something for everyone, including outsiders such as the Orange Light Party and the United Yellow Party who say they represent the new right, and while nobody really knows what these people are talking about, at least they speak from the floor of the parliament. When they talk dirty or go silly we vote them out of office. Plus our preferential and compulsory voting system means every vote counts in a fair and just electoral process.

Already I can hear your objections: the President of the United States (POTUS) is an elected official and no less accountable to the people at the ballot box than parliamentarians or members of congress. Indeed, the American people vote for the POTUS on the same ballot paper that elects their congressional representatives. So far so good.

But the elephant in the room in the USA is your proclivity for calling into question the voting system. You lost to Joe Biden fair and square in 2020. Either you’re still dealing with the trauma of failing against Biden, or you’re deliberately returning to the scene of the Big Lie—the 2020 election was rigged. My fear is you want to exert greater control over elections by discrediting the voting system so you can ‘fix’ it, allowing Republicans to stay in office for the next 50 years.

New York Times journalists describe this bizarre Republican idea that any win by a Democrat is presumptively illegitimate as consistent with fascism. How else can the journalists explain that the only ballots that are rigged are the ones that elect Democrat candidates? And even if the question did have a rational answer, the fact remains that Joe Biden won both the popular vote and the Electoral College votes by clear margins in 2020. You refused to accept the election results leading to your second impeachment after goading your supporters to attack the US Capitol on January 6, 2021. It would be hard to make up this stuff.

The sad truth (even if we won’t be reading it on Truth Social) is that most of your allies are fed up with the way you’ve trashed both the rules based order and the justice system. Speaking ten days ago at the World Economic Forum at Davos in Switzerland, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney said the old, comfortable assumption of security and prosperity through existing alliances is no longer valid with the shift toward great power rivalry and economic coercion.

Personally, I don’t like to see the old band giving you the bird, so I spoke to Mother Mary who has a few ideas to save the US alliance including better scrutiny of the 25^th Amendment which provides for transferring power to the vice president if the president loses the plot. Mary in her wisdom suggests expanding the definition of presidential disability to include the president losing say 50 per cent of US allies; or the president making mad threats to take allied land; or the president bullying allies to contribute to paying the American national debt under the guise of T-BOP arrangements. The possibilities are endless.

My only reservation with transferring power to the current vice president is that he’s a Christian with first name initials instead of a Christian name, and even more rabid than your good self in trying to provoke the next civil war. Shortly after landing the vice job he was in trouble with his fellow Christians for speaking about a ‘hierarchy of love’ to justify discrimination against certain migrants. And then he blamed local officials for co-operating with ‘far-left agitators’ to start the trouble in Minneapolis. I liked this guy better when he used to talk about you as a ‘total fraud’ and ‘America’s Hitler’.

I’ll be in touch again when there’s further news from Downunder. In the meantime, I see that the Department of Homeland Security is putting pressure on tech companies such as Google, Reddit, Discord and Meta to identify Americans critical of the ICE men to create a list of proscribed undesirables. If the list happens to be extended to include international indignantaries, please add my name to it.

Sincerely,

Mate Bugarovski

Acting President, Republic of Australia

Letter 2: Dear Mr Putin - Special Military Operation

Office of the Acting President
Republic of Australia
The Brick House
Cnr Dalley and Burringbar Streets
Mullumgrad NSW 2482
Australia

January 31, 2026

Mr Vladimir Putin
President of the Russian Federation
Presidential Executive Office
23, Ilyinka Street
103132, Moscow
Russia

Dear Mr Putin

I was delighted to read over the weekend that the latest peace talks with Ukraine, Russia and the USA are proceeding on the basis that enough has been said and further talks will take place later. Hope springs eternal as they say. The Donbas region is not going anywhere, although its people have mostly fled the military conflagration. The city of Donetsk where my wife Nardia once lived is a mere shell of its former self with no water, no sewerage treatment works and no electricity. How Nardia survived this latest subzero winter in Kyiv defies my comprehension.

As you know, I’ve been writing to you since your uncoordinated ‘special military operation’ in Ukraine four years ago. The letters were written in English, translated to Russian and posted at my local post office in Mullumgrad. When Australia Post and international couriers stopped making deliveries to Russia, the letters were sent via the Russian Embassy in Canberra. There was something cathartic about writing the letters, plus I had the opportunity to explore my ancient roots in Poland and Russia, and ultimately to meet Nardia.

My emerging interest in all things Russian led inevitably to that famous acapella choir, Dustyesky (from ‘Dostoyevsky’), a talented group of male vodka drinkers who came together at the local pub here in Mullumgrad. After auditioning for the choir, I discovered I couldn’t hold a note—or vodka for that matter. The group performed to wide acclaim from the Russian diaspora at the Sydney Opera House—everyone sang along to the Patrioticheskaya Pesnya and other great Russian ballads.

The original purpose of my correspondence was to find out, if possible, how the Russian President could profess to be a practising Christian while killing and maiming the neighbours he is supposed to love—who happen themselves to be predominantly Christians. I was also fascinated by Russia and Ukraine’s shared Christian history going back to the conversion of Vladimir the Great (or Volodymyr the Great in Kyiv) in about 988 CE, a history marked by claims and counter-claims ranging from saints and statues to competing cathedrals honoring the intercession of Mary the ‘Theotokos’ or ‘God-Bearer’—not to be confused with my Mother Mary who lives with me here in Mullumgrad.

Theotokos Mary is revered no less in the Eastern Church than the West. Rasputin was said to have had visions of Mary. Visionaries in Fatima and Medjugorje report Marian prophecies of peace in Russia. Of the three most important cathedrals in the Kremlin, two are dedicated to Mary. One is the Annunciation Cathedral and the other is the Assumption Cathedral. Moscow’s most iconic cathedral is St Basil’s—officially known as the Cathedral of the Intercession of the Mother of God (the same name as Ukraine’s main cathedral in Kyiv).

Russian icons of Mary are famous throughout the world. One of my favorites is the Softener of Evil Hearts icon in Moscow’s Cathedral of the Resurrection (the Church of the Russian Armed Forces). You will recall that Mariupol, the City of Mary, was founded by Greeks deported from Crimea and loyal to an icon of Mary’s protection. Russia is devoted to Mary, and until you levelled Mariupol, it never occurred to me that there was much difference between Christians east and west.

Mary is said to have appeared to three young children in apparition at Fatima in Portugal in 1917—between Russia’s two revolutionary wars of that year and in the middle of World War I. As reported by the children, Mary foretold the conversion of Russia and a period of peace. This popular prophecy was initially thought to have been fulfilled when Josef Stalin made the practical decision in 1941 to restore the Russian church to its former religious glory. Stalin wanted to encourage Russian patriotism through popular belief—and to appease his new World War II allies who shared Russia’s Christian heritage.

Russia was compelled to change sides in World War II after first making the disastrous decision in 1939 to join Hitler’s attack on Poland. Being a student of history, Mr President, you might have thought that the unprovoked attack on another neighbour, Ukraine, was another bad idea—for the reason that history has a habit of repeating itself. According to some historians, the reason Stalin brought the Russian church back in from the cold in 1941 was to rally the Christian prayer army as the German Wehrmacht pushed to within striking distance of Moscow. The idea is flawed in my opinion. Stalin killed a million Russians without remorse and had little interest in people who prayed beyond their value as cannon fodder for the armed forces.

Almost 50 years later, on Christmas Day in 1991 when the hammer and sickle flag was lowered over the Kremlin for the last time, Russia’s abandonment of communism to multi-party representative democracy seemed to fulfill the Marian prophecy of 1917—Russia’s transition to peace. At least two popes believed that the peaceful conversion from the Soviet’s former communist monolith to multiple separate nations was the conversion of Russia foretold at Fatima. But I’m not so sure.

Mother Mary of Mullumgrad seems to think that her namesake, Theotokos Mary, re-appeared on Planet Earth on 25 June 1981 to five children at Medjugorje in Bosnia Herzegovina, and has turned up every day since for the past 45 years. The children are now adults in their 50s with children of their own according to the story. Mary apparently told the five visionaries that what she started at Fatima she will complete in Medjugorje. Mary of Mullumgrad assures me that this prophecy means Mary the Mother of Jesus remains committed to Russia and peace.

Meanwhile in the secular world, if you do in Ukraine what you did in Chechnya and Syria, you will manage to achieve what no other dictator has achieved since the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979—unite the world to protect the rule of law and freedom. Russia’s ten-year Afghanistan campaign ultimately contributed to the demise of the Soviet Union in 1991. Today you’re on the same track as the Soviets in Afghanistan, not to mention that the body count of dead Russians in Ukraine now challenges the best efforts of Stalin.

Like the Russian invasion of Poland in 1939, your 2022 offensive against Ukraine—on the risible pretext of removing NATO and Nazis from Russia’s border—makes no sense. I just don’t get it that you would prefer a futile war of death and destruction to living in peace and harmony with your neighbours. Do unto others as you would have them do unto you comes to mind, as does doing unto the natural environment what is necessary to protect life on earth for our descendants. For all your wealth and power you seem to be terribly disconnected from the important things in life, especially the love one another thing.

While it might have been alright for Stalin and Hitler to show total disregard for human life, you’re supposed to be a functioning Christian who proudly wears a baptismal cross on a silver chain around your neck. Apparently you had the cross blessed at Jesus’ tomb in Jerusalem at a time when Russians enjoyed rights and freedoms including the freedom to travel. So, the bottom line seems to be that you can forget about winning that ‘special military operation’ without incurring the wrath of God, the opprobrium of the global community and finishing ahead of both Stalin and Hitler in the most diabolical leader stakes.

Unlike Stalin and Hitler—both baptized Christians who had become avowed atheists by the time of their murderous rampages of the 20^th century—you continue to express overt Christian belief: in your blessed cross; in your public spiritual practices; in regular church attendance on special feast days; in your friendship with Patriarch Kirill; and in the respect you seem to show towards other Christian churches. And while terror, torture and murder have been hallmarks of Russian military activity since you came to power more than a quarter of a century ago, it bothers me no end that a man who proudly wears a baptismal cross around his neck also heads the Russian war machine.

May I leave you with the thought that what we condemn most in another human being is the conscious intention to do harm, and when that harm is dressed up as religious observance, rational people in the civilized world are enraged. Holy war is deeply offensive, whether it manifests as suicidal murder for God’s sake, or committing genocide for the purity of the faith. When next you stand bare-chested parading your bricolage cross, you might recall that down here the local people regard your ‘special military operation’ in Ukraine as a sacrilege.

Do let me know if there’s any prospect of peace in our time.

Sincerely,

Mate Bugarovski

Acting President, Republic of Australia

The

TRUMPUTIN

Letters

Missives from the Republic Downunder

Mate Bugarovski

Myletters Publishing

First published in the USA, Great Britain and Australia in 2026 by
MyLetters Publishing, a division of
MyLetters Corporation Pty Limited (ACN 165 213 212)
© Mate Bugarovski 2026

This book is copyright. Except for private study, research, criticism, or reviews as permitted under the Copyright Act, no part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means without prior written permission. Enquiries welcome through the author at mate@myletters.com or the publisher at PO Box 466, Mullumbimby NSW 2482, Australia.

Cataloguing in Publication Data

Bugarovski, Mate

The Trumputin Letters: Missives from the Republic Downunder

ISBN: 978-0-646-73815-4

A catalogue record for this work will be available from the National Library of Australia, the New South Wales Parliamentary Library, the British Library and in the Library of Congress in the USA

To the memory of Renee Nicole Good
and Alex Jeffrey Pretti (1989-2026)
for whom the ICE men cometh
++++++
The trouble with politics in Australia
is you only get to see the tip of the
ice cube: Gore Vidal (1925-2012)

Contents

Letter 1 – Dear Mr Trump: Bored of Peace

Letter 2 – Dear Mr Putin: Special Military Operation

Letter 3 – Dear Mr Trump: Operation Epstein Fury

Letter 4 – Dear Mr Putin: Love Thy Neighbour

Letter 5 – Dear Mr Trump: No Medieval Kings

Letter 6 – Dear Mr Putin: Vlad the Bad?

Letter 7 – Dear Mr Trump: Don the Mad?

Letter 8 – Dear Mr Putin: More Radical Lunatics

Acknowledgements

Endnotes

Selected Bibliography

CHAPTER 1

Letter 1 – Dear Mr Trump: Bored of Peace

Office of the Acting President
Republic of Australia
The Brick House
Cnr Dalley and Burringbar Streets
Mullumgrad NSW 2482
Australia

January 31, 2026

Mr Donald Trump
President of the United States of Australia
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW
Washington DC 20500
United States of America

Dear Mr Trump

Thank you for your kind invitation to join the Trump Bored of Peace (T-BOP), a bargain at the cool sign-up price of one billion dollars. Please deduct my billion from the $18 billion already set aside by Australia to help out with your $38 trillion national debt in the hope that one day we might get nuclear-powered submarines. I had treasury officials do the maths and the numbers surprised me. It appears you can wipe out the national debt if 38,000 billionaires sign up to the T-BOP while the chances of Australia getting the submarines remain at zero.

Some advisers in foreign affairs want to renegotiate the USA submarine deal and revert to the deal we had with the French. Others say that anything that floats can be sunk with one good missile strike so let’s jump ship altogether and cancel the USA contract. The savings could be upwards of $350 billion. Not that any of us want to jeopardise the relationship with old allies, but neither do we want to be exploited.

As you know, our countries have been military allies since before you and I were born—since General Douglas MacArthur established his headquarters in Australia during the 1942 war in the Pacific. Australia signed the ANZUS Treaty in 1951 (along with our neighbour New Zealand) and the AUKUS security partnership in 2021. The United Kingdom may turn out to be an unreliable military partner in AUKUS after signing up with the Europeans to oppose your absolute necessity takeover of Greenland. Churchill would turn in his grave at the UK teaming up with Germany and France instead of the USA.

On the subject of Greenland, you might like to know that the ice sheet is more than two miles thick in places, and when it melts sea levels will rise about seven meters, turning Greenland into an archi-pelago nearly two-thirds smaller than the land and ice mass you see today. Even though you’re not a fan of climate change—you told the UN General Assembly in 2025 that climate change is the greatest con job ever perpetrated on the world—you must have learned at one of the universities you attended that heat melts ice, so be careful what you pay for, or heaven forbid, what you fight for over Greenland.

You and I were born a few months apart in 1946—unexpected consequences of post-war celebrations—and we have our mothers to thank for convincing us we’re special. My late father fled the Warsaw ghetto and managed to cross six countries and two large bodies of water to fight the Nazis from a Polish air force squadron north of London. After the war, he married my Irish mother, Mary Milligan, and they emigrated to Australia—the furthest place from Europe they could find on a map. My father struggled against discrimination in the workplace, racial stereotyping and Downunder articulation of the King’s English.

Against my mother’s advice, the old man registered my name as ‘Mate Bugarovski’ since that was how Australians pronounced his Polish name, Maciej Buttowski. You did well to escape an ethnically eponymous name attributable to your real estate developer father, Fred Christ Trump. Or your German grandfather Friedrich (pronounced here as ‘Fried Rich’). The mind boggles really! I ran a few possibilities past Mother Mary, now in her late nineties, and all combinations of ‘Christ’ and ‘Rich’ deeply offended her Irish moral and religious sensibilities.

Mother Mary still has her standards and she worries when you say things like you’re unconstrained by international law. Yes, you said that a couple of weeks ago in the Oval Office during an interview with New York Times journalists who wanted to know if there were limits on your global power. My own morality; my own mind. It’s the only thing that can stop me. Mother Mary can’t understand that the leader of the free world would make life and death decisions based on thought bubbles about personal feelings rather than objective ethical standards.

If my memory serves me correctly, you spoke to those New York Times journalists in the Oval Office about other things besides your limitless global power. One topic was the killing of Renee Good in Minneapolis by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent Jonathan Ross. Immediately after he shot the Good woman, Ross’ body-camera audio recorded him saying ‘fucking bitch’. You showed the journalists video of the killing to support your claim that Good had run over the ICE man. At least four videos, including the one you showed the journalists, establish that what you want to see is not always the same as what you actually see.

ICE man Ross was never in danger and he would go down for a long stretch down here for his disproportionate response to someone having a friendly chat. The last thing the victim said to Ross was ‘That’s fine, dude. I’m not mad at you’. He then pulled his gun and shot her three times. Mother Mary worries about your moral judgement and the nukes button when you seem to be unable to look at a few videos of a crime scene from a fair and objective perspective.

Just 17 days later the Minneapolis ICE men were at it again when they attacked and then shot dead Alex Pretti, a kindly 37-year-old ICU nurse who worked at the local Veterans Affairs hospital. What appears from the videos to be an appalling crime that crossed the Rubicon for many of us has prompted republicans down here to claim that we may be in an alliance with an authoritarian state that uses muscled-up goons using delegated authority from a limitless-power executive to enforce the law. Back in the day they called this fascism.

Until these recent events in Minneapolis—which happened just down the road from where George Floyd was killed by local police for wanting to breathe—Australians and Americans had much in common, especially our immigrant populations and basic Judeo Christian values. Plus we both have a fine record of treating our indigenous people as if they—and not us—were the cruel insatiable visitors from another planet.

About 3,000 North American defence and military personnel are stationed in Australia or arrive here on annual rotational deployment; and about ten percent of our visitors each year are North Americans. Australians and Americans operate the enigmatic joint defence facility at Pine Gap near Alice Springs and the Holt Naval Base in Western Australia. For better or worse, we seem to be peas in a pod.

It pains me therefore to tell you that many Australians are now wanting to review the deal with the USA. Your Art of the Deal motto ‘escalate to negotiate’ seems to have flipped to ‘fake it and lie’, placing our old-mates relationship in serious peril. People say we did not sign up for tyranny dressed up as democracy, or batshit boring narcissistic reflections that bear no resemblance to the real world. Things are so bad that our ambassador to Washington has just decided to resign, and many of our allies in Canada and Europe are pivoting away from the USA to the People’s Republic of China, rather than jump from one foot to the other in a futile attempt to remain in step with you.

Some of my republican colleagues want to take the you out of the USA, saying there’s too much executive power in the American Constitution. Australians understand representative democracy to mean that the leader is first and foremost a member of parliament or congress who understands how government works. Elected politicians appoint people like me—the great and the good—to act as head of state with no real power beyond cutting ribbons and writing letters. My primary role is to make the executive government look harmless.

Like American politics, Australia has something for everyone, including outsiders such as the Orange Light Party and the United Yellow Party who say they represent the new right, and while nobody really knows what these people are talking about, at least they speak from the floor of the parliament. When they talk dirty or go silly we vote them out of office. Plus our preferential and compulsory voting system means every vote counts in a fair and just electoral process.

Already I can hear your objections: the President of the United States (POTUS) is an elected official and no less accountable to the people at the ballot box than parliamentarians or members of congress. Indeed, the American people vote for the POTUS on the same ballot paper that elects their congressional representatives. So far so good.

But the elephant in the room in the USA is your proclivity for calling into question the voting system. You lost to Joe Biden fair and square in 2020. Either you’re still dealing with the trauma of failing against Biden, or you’re deliberately returning to the scene of the Big Lie—the 2020 election was rigged. My fear is you want to exert greater control over elections by discrediting the voting system so you can ‘fix’ it, allowing Republicans to stay in office for the next 50 years.

New York Times journalists describe this bizarre Republican idea that any win by a Democrat is presumptively illegitimate as consistent with fascism. How else can the journalists explain that the only ballots that are rigged are the ones that elect Democrat candidates? And even if the question did have a rational answer, the fact remains that Joe Biden won both the popular vote and the Electoral College votes by clear margins in 2020. You refused to accept the election results leading to your second impeachment after goading your supporters to attack the US Capitol on January 6, 2021. It would be hard to make up this stuff.

The sad truth (even if we won’t be reading it on Truth Social) is that most of your allies are fed up with the way you’ve trashed both the rules based order and the justice system. Speaking ten days ago at the World Economic Forum at Davos in Switzerland, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney said the old, comfortable assumption of security and prosperity through existing alliances is no longer valid with the shift toward great power rivalry and economic coercion.

Personally, I don’t like to see the old band giving you the bird, so I spoke to Mother Mary who has a few ideas to save the US alliance including better scrutiny of the 25^th Amendment which provides for transferring power to the vice president if the president loses the plot. Mary in her wisdom suggests expanding the definition of presidential disability to include the president losing say 50 per cent of US allies; or the president making mad threats to take allied land; or the president bullying allies to contribute to paying the American national debt under the guise of T-BOP arrangements. The possibilities are endless.

My only reservation with transferring power to the current vice president is that he’s a Christian with first name initials instead of a Christian name, and even more rabid than your good self in trying to provoke the next civil war. Shortly after landing the vice job he was in trouble with his fellow Christians for speaking about a ‘hierarchy of love’ to justify discrimination against certain migrants. And then he blamed local officials for co-operating with ‘far-left agitators’ to start the trouble in Minneapolis. I liked this guy better when he used to talk about you as a ‘total fraud’ and ‘America’s Hitler’.

I’ll be in touch again when there’s further news from Downunder. In the meantime, I see that the Department of Homeland Security is putting pressure on tech companies such as Google, Reddit, Discord and Meta to identify Americans critical of the ICE men to create a list of proscribed undesirables. If the list happens to be extended to include international indignantaries, please add my name to it.

Sincerely,

Mate Bugarovski

Acting President, Republic of Australia