Listen here, I don’t like Trump any more than the majority of Americans. Fact: He was only elected by 25 percent of American voters.  Anyone trying to convince you otherwise is telling a lie.  But there are a few things that need to be addressed and since I’m bossy enough to do it, listen up:

• Trump and his team are going to lie to us. Expect it. Call it out when you run across it, every single time. But pay less attention to what Trump says and more attention to what Trump does. Sometimes he’s saying stuff so we don’t pay attention to what he does. Don’t be fooled.
• Trump’s son Barron is a kid. He didn’t ask for this life. Leave him alone. Don’t post or share memes with his picture in it. Even if that meme is to defend the boy, or say how sweet he is. Just don’t make the kid a public spectacle in any way – bad or good. It’s just wrong. We should not make a sport out of making judgement calls – good or bad – about a kid.
• The same rule doesn’t apply to the older kids because they have inserted themselves into their father’s business affairs and the running of the country. Post all the memes you want about them. They don’t get a pass especially because they circled the wagons around their dad.
• Melania is a conundrum. There clearly is a disconnect between Trump and his wife. Their’s seems to be a marriage of appearances. That said, Melania told Anderson Cooper in their sit-down that she didn’t want people feeling sorry for her, so stop it. She said she is a smart woman who knows what she’s doing. Let’s take her at her word on this. Quit insinuating that she’s abused or controlled or manipulated. Those assumptions diminish her voice. Those speculations marginalize her. Ironically, the public sympathy for Melania does the very thing the public accuses Trump of doing to her – treating Melania as if she doesn’t have  a brain. Melania insists that she can handle herself, that she’s a strong woman. Let’s take her word for that and stop with all the “ohhh, poor trapped thang.”  Nobody thinks of Eleanor Roosevelt as a weak woman and she hardly had a stellar relationship with FDR. Marriage is hard. I can imagine being married to Trump would require a woman to be made of steel. I know I’m not strong enough to do it and no amount of money would entice me to it. Let’s trust Melania to deal with her man.
• People on both sides of the divide are resorting to posting information from unreliable news sources again. Stop it. Do not post stuff until you have verified it from credible news sources. InfoWars and Addicting Information are not reliable news sources.
• Everybody posting hate memes over the Women’s March, why are you doing that? How does that add to the conversation in any positive way? When your Senator uses poor judgement and says that Trump got more fat women moving in one day then Michelle Obama did in eight years, you shouldn’t laugh. And you most definitely shouldn’t be posting that to your news feed. I’m one of those fat women who was marching on Saturday. I marched with my three daughters and my three grandson, albeit not in the same town. And when I am on my dying bed, that memory of that day will be one that makes my heart soar. Your being ugly about that diminishes me as a person. Don’t do that. Beside you probably need to get up off the couch yourself, fatty. Millions of people around the world marched. They did so peacefully and without any incidents of  being unkind or indecent. The Right to Assemble and to peacefully protest is a liberty that our forefathers (and in my case, my own father) fought bitterly for. Perhaps you don’t understand why millions marched. Maybe our marching makes you feel threatened somehow. Feel free to ask me why I marched. Or any of my three daughters. Or your neighbor. I’m sure you had a neighbor who marched. We’d all be happy to sit down and tell you why we did it. Then, you might actually go to your news feed and praise us for taking a stand, even if it’s one you don’t agree with.
• News people, you have got to do a better job. Your credibility is at stake. And as a journalist, that’s all you have. The American Public is counting on you. If Sean Spicer and Kellyanne Conway aren’t going to stop using “Alternative Facts”, then stop interviewing them. The minute you stop giving them white space, they will come clamoring to feed you stories. You know how this works. They don’t want to be ignored. So ignore them for awhile. We know that Trump is using hired people to cheer him in public arenas. He’s done this throughout his campaign. It’s part of his propaganda technique. Sean Spicer and Kellyanne Conway are going to continue to lie about this. Just ignore them. And ignore Trump’s tweets. You know if you didn’t report on them, if you don’t blow them up, they wouldn’t hold any power over the stock market or over the general public. Take a cue from those who’ve covered Putin for years, don’t play their game. Do what CNN did – don’t cover them  when you know they are baiting you.  If you don’t know when they are baiting you, get someone smarter to cover them. You cannot afford to do sloppy, half-assed journalism with this administration. Bring your A-game.
• Be factual. Be diligent. Call your legislators, every day if you must. (I practically do). Work together where you can. Be respectful where you can’t. (I’m preaching to myself here, so save the hate mail). Before you click that share button, look to see if it’s a credible source. Did you research it yourself? Did you check the date? Did you know Obama signed something similar when he was in office, so all that outrage you have for Trump, where was it when Obama was doing the same thing?
• The Scriptures tell us that there is a man who stirs up the waters in his own house. Trump is that man. He operates on the “chaos principal”. Most people, at least 75 percent of Americans, operate on the “create principal”.  We don’t like drama. We may not like the way everything is done, but we don’t believe in blowing it all up. We usually take  a more collaborative approach. Trump is never going to do that. There are folks holding out hopes that Trump is going to change. He isn’t. He’s like an out-of-control teenager. There’s just no reasoning with him. To keep trying to find rhyme or reason to what he does will only make the rest of us miserable. I’m not saying you should trust him – you really shouldn’t. He’s proven time and time again he’s not trustworthy. So demand his taxes. Demand his conflicts-of-interests be investigated. Demand that they reject his swamp cabinet. Do all that. But also remember to acknowledge when he makes a good choice. (Mattis was a good choice). Don’t normalize his wrong behavior, but if he ever does anything good, well, you should speak up on that too. Remember, go high.
• It’s okay to talk about something besides Trump. We used to do that, remember? Just because you talk about a good movie you enjoyed or a great book you’re reading doesn’t mean you’ve forgotten that Trump has the nuke codes. Personally, the nukes don’t worry me near as much as the thought of the Dakota Pipeline does. Carve out space in your life for a good glass of wine and laughter with a friend. Otherwise, as Churchill said, what are we fighting for?
• Did I tell you I have a book coming out this year? If you haven’t yet read MOTHER OF RAIN and BURDY, you need to get up to snuff. CHRISTIAN BEND, the final book the series, will be out in the Fall. I’m a bit sad to leave behind these folks but am busily working on another project I can’t tell you about yet.
• By the way, I like the way you are wearing your hair today. You should wear it like that more often. And that shirt? It brings out the color of your eyes.  You should ditch those black shirts. They don’t make you look any slimmer. They simply make you look like a seal lion in mourning clothes.

Y’all know Ms. Bossy love you. Be kind. And if you can’t be kind, don’t give them your real name.

Karen Spears Zacharias stays up way past her bedtime to share these bits of wisdom, which seem to escape her during the light of day. Perhaps she really is part vampire, after all.