An open letter to Tony Robbins on his relationship with trump regime

can you help me understand something

if you’ve been feeling let down by people you considered teachers and leaders, you are not alone.

Maybe its not Tony specifically. Maybe its Deepak Chopra, or Peter Attia. Or anyone else who’s been exposed recently.

There’s something acutely disorienting about someone you admired and learned from acting in a way that is incongruent with their teachings.

Writing this letter helped me process some of it, so I thought I’d share it with you.
And if you feel connected to what I shared and compelled to share it publicly, I would. greatly appreciate that! Who knows, maybe we reach him?


Dear Tony,

As someone who has admired you and learned from you for years. Can you help me understand something....?

I feel disoriented and let down by so many people in power. And I’m trying to make sense of the world right now.

So can you help me understand some things?
I thought you “cared about strangers”
I thought you “hated to see people suffer”

In your interviews I watch your eyes fill with tears when you tell that Thanksgiving story...

The one where a stranger showed up with food for your family.
You said, in that moment the meaning you created was:
“Strangers care about me.”

And then you decided: “I’m going to care about strangers”

You’ve built a public identity around that idea. You’ve fed millions of families in need. You’ve traveled the world helping people have breakthroughs that forever change their lives.

When you share these stories it seems so genuine. I believe it IS genuine. And that’s why I’m struggling to reconcile it all.

So can you help me understand…?

How do you devote your life to uplifting people, and then eat popcorn with their oppressor?

Is that too dramatic? Let me try again.

How can you say you “hate to see people suffer”, while aligning yourself (socially, publicly, visibly) with someone whose leadership dehumanizes and causes suffering for millions?

How do you speak so tenderly about your 4 yo daughter, and say how much you “love women”

Then sit comfortably at an event that supports a man who has violated people’s daughters, repeatedly demeaned women, and modeled contempt for them on a global stage?

Am I missing something here?

How do you reconcile “caring about strangers” by day then posing for pictures with *people who are openly racist by night.

*by people I mean an acting president who shares hateful, racist images of a former president. So not just any ol joe schmoe off the street, but someone in a position of immense power who should be held to a much higher standard of basic decency

What’s your strategy for resolving the cognitive dissonance?

Because you must feel it. You must be getting an uneasy pit in your stomach from these inconsistent behaviors.

Right?

Maybe I’m naive, but I believe in your humanity enough to hope that (at least) parts of this aren’t sitting right with you.

So, what story do you tell yourself to quiet that discomfort?
I’m genuinely curious what justification works best for you.

Is it that “spending time with someone socially doesn’t mean you endorse their values or politics?”

Or that “you don’t agree with everything he does or says, but you like his “fiscal policies” 🤢

How do you make it make sense?

Because you do care about strangers, right?

But maybe not the ones who crossed a border “illegally” to gain access to economic opportunities.

Maybe those ones don’t count.

And maybe not the ones with Black or brown skin who experience more racial violence when leaders legitimize racism.

And maybe not the journalists who are shamed, berated and arrested for asking questions. (aka doing their job...?)

And you know what, now that we’ve got the exemptions rolling...

Maybe not the strangers who were murdered in the street by their own *government for exercising their right to protest.

*masked men given a license to become an impromptu firing squad on suburban streets in broad daylight, because we live in a dystopian reality

Maybe not the young girls who were trafficked into a billionaire pedophile ring and repeatedly abused by the most powerful men around the world.

So if it’s none of THOSE strangers, can you help me understand...
Which “strangers” do you are about?
Which type of suffering do you hate to see?

Maybe you have a list or set of criteria you could share with us?

Like a list of who specifically “makes the cut” of deserving your “care”. Maybe that would help me understand.

And if “proximity is power”, as you’ve taught

Then why would you choose a racist, misogynistic, hateful, convicted felon as part of your peer group? Unless that’s the standard you want to normalize for yourself?

Which, to put it lightly, doesn’t seem “on brand” for you.

For some reason, you are the one that hurts the most.

Of all the people in the “maga-sphere”.
Of all the prominent figures who’ve recently been exposed in their amoral operating system.

You are the one that feels like the biggest betrayal.
Because you weren’t just a public figure to me.
You were my teacher.
You were someone I admired.

And I hate to admit this part, but it probably wouldn’t have been a dealbreaker for me, if you had just stayed silent.

I didn’t need you to actively speak out or condemn anyone.

(For the record… this is NOT ok. Because of the nature of his work and large influence, his silence should also have been a dealbreaker. I guess I would have done my own cognitive disonance dance here)

But, you didn’t stay just “stay silent” and allow your complicity to go unnoticed in the background.

Correct me if those are AI images of your, but it appears that on Jan 24, you attended the Melania private screening

You put on a black tie
to attend an event
supporting a regime
that murdered a U.S. citizen in the street

that. very. morning.

It doesn’t get any more black and white than that.
The juxtaposition is so loud.

I truly don’t understand it.

And I know initially I asked you to “help me understand it” but as I’m writing this all out I’m realizing...

It’s less that I don’t understand it.

It’s that I can’t understand it.
It’s that I won’t understand it.
It’s that I refuse to understand it.

Because while trump has made me a believer in the “evil” of humanity...
you were supposed to be better than that

Right?

Regretfully,

your former fan

---

So my love, if you are still with me, I know I didn’t capture everything

What would you add to the letter?

You can comment below or message me privately with your addendum.

And if you feel compelled, please click below to share. Who knows... maybe it actually reaches him?