To whom It may concern,

I recently procured one of Mr. Farnsworth’s splendid tele-vision receiver sets, and when I chanced to activate the device, I witnessed a fracas that was agitating between our present Commander-in-chief and the preceding Vice President. Upon viewing the ballyhoo, I became much excited and could be overheard to say, “Why, I’m as fit as a Bull-Moose and ready to tussle with that ne’er-do-well myself!” How the American public can abide such a no-account snollyguster confounds the faculties.

I’ve heard this fellow Trump on Marconi’s wireless afore, and his discourses are a gallimaufry of codswallop and balderdash. Why, I can scarce recall hearing a popinjay who blathered so much mullock in all of my existence. That such an ultracrepidarian lout has risen to the ranks of Washington, Lincoln, and myself, is pure scandal. And if the muckrakers are to be believed, the blackguard spends his leisure guttling down ground-beef sandwiches like a Hunnic savage on payday. Worse still, the scandal rags have it on good authority that The President of these United States has had adulterous dalliances with scores of ill-reputed harlots! Heaven Fore-fend! It is entirely unbecoming for our chief executive to have cavorted with scarlet women like a border-ruffian in a bawdy-house.

I find the accounts of his lack of nerve similarly distressing. Better than half the plucky and gallant souls who perished charging the Spanish devils home on San Juan hill were afflicted with bone spurs, or the gout, or rickets, but did they tarry or flinch when the eyes of God and country were upon them? No, sir! To a man, they all did their duty for our glorious Republic. Had Mr. Trump felt a comparable stirring of patriotic fervor, perhaps he would’ve succumbed to malaria in the jungles of French Indochina, and we would not find ourselves imperiled at present by his unceasingly boorish tomfoolery.

So, forthwith, I am publicizing my intention to challenge this up-jumped jester to a pugilistic contest, if the poltroon has the mettle to enter a melee with TR, that is. I may be a spectral apparition, lacking in form or substance for nigh on a century, but I’ll wager I can pummel that pygmy-handed scalawag but good and give him what-for. I’m at his disposal for a bout upon his earliest convenience; Marquess of Queensberry rules, naturally. I’ll plant a sockdolager on his countenance that’ll make him dance like a ducked cat. The battle shall be well and truly joined! Bully!

For publication with all due haste,

The ghost of Theodore Roosevelt