Motley Crue drummer Tommy Lee posts profane open letter targeting Trump, but did he actually write it?
When Motley Crue drummer Tommy Lee shared a profane letter to President Donald Trump criticizing the federal government's response to the coronavirus pandemic on Facebook, he received a lot of support from fans and Americans concerned with COVID-19.
"Everything Tommy is saying is accurate and truthful. Maybe some people on this thread can’t handle it. Rock on Tommy. You’re fighting the good fight and as a lifelong fan, I am with you more than ever before!" commented one fan.
"Couldn't have said it better myself...lol! Thank you, Mr Lee, for sharing what most of us feel every day of this failed presidency!" (sic) commented another.
At the same time, many called criticized his post, threatened to unfollow him and his music, and even called him a has-been.
Despite the arguments in the comment section, the letter took no time in becoming viral on social media platforms. But the question is whether Tommy Lee wrote the letter.
As it turns out, the message conveyed in the letter was wrongly attributed to Lee. Another main point is that most of the information in the letter predates the coronavirus pandemic.
In his post, Lee credited the letter to a certain Craig Alan Wilkins. The drummer must have seen the post floating around on the Internet and decided to post it on his wall too.
This drama only gets more interesting. The majority of the text in this letter is not written by the certain Craig Alan Wilkins either. Most of the text of the letter was already published in an article on Daily Kos on December 29, 2017, under the pen name Aldous J Pennyfarthing. Yes, everything except the introduction.
The letter was in response to an interview Trump gave in 2017 where he said, "Yeah, China. … China’s been. … I like very much President Xi. He treated me better than anybody’s ever been treated in the history of China".
While there are some references to the ongoing pandemic in the post that Lee shared (even while most of the information is predated), it is not clear who wrote the letter and/ or where it came from. Aldous Pennyfarthing published the letter in a 2018 book, titled 'Dear F*cking Lunatic: 101 Obscenely Rude Letters to Donald Trump'.
So did Lee write this letter? Probably not. Even as he lost several fans who commented that they are unsubscribing from his music, all he did was share the letter written by someone else.