Stacy Brick wrote an open letter to President Trump about his constant attacks on journalists like her husband, Mike Brick, a lifelong newspaper man who died of cancer two years ago at 41:
It is gut-wrenching and physically painful to hear you call journalists “the enemy of the people” and question their patriotism. You’re talking about not only my husband and my children’s father, but about Mike’s many close friends and co-workers. When Mike was diagnosed with cancer his editor offered us his spare room for the twice monthly trips to Houston for chemotherapy. Upon going into hospice, Mike’s best friends and fellow reporters pulled together a collection of his articles and published them as a book. They took turns reading the galleys to Mike in the hospital bed we set up in the living room. They filled his life with love and laughter and made sure he knew in his dying days that they would help take care of me and the children. They traveled on short notice to be at his funeral and sing songs he had written at the wake afterword. I received many emails and letters from his colleagues whom I had never met expressing their love and admiration for him. These are the best people in the world, the ones who search for the truth and seek to help others.
She closes with this:
What am I to say to my children, who are still struggling with their grief, when they hear you demean journalists like their dad? You are sullying their father’s name and the names of his best friends and many colleagues. You are belittling a profession that has been respected and protected since the time of our country’s founding. Your words aren’t those of a person who knows how to lead and who has nothing to hide; they are the words of authoritarian leaders and tyrants — the words of a small man hiding behind a big desk who has no idea how to do his job. That is what I must say to my children.