Screenwriter Aaron Sorkin has written a heart-breaking letter to his daughter about “truly horrible” Donald Trump’s victory.
Sorkin won an Oscar for writing The Social Network but is best known for writing presidential political drama The West Wing about a liberal Democrat’s presidency.
After Trump won, Sorkin wrote a letter to his daughter Roxy Sorkin, 15, for whom the next presidential election will be the first she is old enough to vote in.
“Well the world changed late last night in a way I couldn’t protect us from. That’s a terrible feeling for a father. I won’t sugarcoat it,” he wrote.
“It’s hardly the first time my candidate didn’t win (in fact it’s the sixth time) but it is the first time that a thoroughly incompetent pig with dangerous ideas, a serious psychiatric disorder, no knowledge of the world and no curiosity to learn has.”
The letter, published in Vanity Fair, said that Trump’s election was a triumph for “sexists, racists and buffoons” and “angry young white men who think rap music and Cinco de Mayo are a threat to their way of life”.
He called Trump a “a man-boy who’ll spend his hours exacting Twitter vengeance against all who criticise him”.
But he tells his daughter it is time to “fucking fight”, adding: “There’s a time for this kind of language and it’s now.”
In the final paragraph, he writes: “The battle isn’t over, it’s just begun. Grandpa fought in World War II and when he came home this country handed him an opportunity to make a great life for his family.
“I will not hand his granddaughter a country shaped by hateful and stupid men. Your tears last night woke me up, and I’ll never go to sleep on you again.”