Paul Sassone

Dear Mr. President:

You don’t know me, but you are familiar with my kind.

I am an elephant.

As you know, we elephants are the symbol of your political party, the Republican party.

We have a special relationship. Elephants are strong, intelligent, majestic — qualities for which Republicans allied themselves with us and from which you Republicans benefit.

So, we elephants were dumbfounded to learn that your administration, Mr. President, was going to cancel a 2014 ban on bringing elephant and other big-game “trophies” into the United States from Zimbabwe and Zambia.

We were somewhat relieved to learn you were keeping the ban in place — at least for now — pending further study, though the well-publicized photo we saw of one of your sons holding the severed tail of one of us he had just killed gave us pause. We know how parents like to humor their children with their hobbies.

Despite the pleasure killing us gives your children, we fervently beg you not to make it easier and more profitable to kill us.

We elephants already are in danger of extinction. We do not want to die, as individuals or as a species.

I may be biased. But, what kind of a world would it be without elephants?

Beyond our survival, please consider, Mr. President, what the killing off of elephants would mean to you and to the Republican party.

The elephant is the symbol of your party. And by repealing the ban on importing elephant “trophies” the Republican party would have a hand in destroying its own symbol, its self, its soul.

So, please Mr. President, reconsider.

Don’t kill us.

Don’t kill the very symbol of yourself.

Respectfully & fraternally,

An Elephant

—Mr. President, don’t destroy the symbol of your party–