One of the presidential administration’s science envoys has left a coded message for President Donald Trump in his resignation letter.
Dr. Daniel Kammen, a professor of energy at University of California, Berkeley, resigned on Wednesday over Trump’s response to a white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, earlier this month.
“My decision to resign is in response to your attacks on core values of the United States,” Kammen writes in his resignation letter. “Your failure to condemn white supremacists and neo-Nazis has domestic and international ramifications.”
“Particularly troubling to me is how your response to Charlottesville is consistent with a broader pattern of behavior that enables sexism and racism, and disregards the welfare of all Americans, the global community, and the planet,” Kammen adds.
It is Kammen’s full letter, however, that contains the most pointed message: The first letter of each paragraph spells out “impeach.”
Mr. President, I am resigning as Science Envoy. Your response to Charlottesville enables racism, sexism, & harms our country and planet. pic.twitter.com/eWzDc5Yw6t
— Daniel M Kammen (@dan_kammen) August 23, 2017
The Science Envoy Program is operated through the U.S. State Department. Its science envoys serve to establish international partners on scientific endeavors, promote science research, and advise the U.S. government on science-related matters. Kammen was one of seven science envoys serving the State Department.
Kammen is not the first to lightly encode a secret message to Trump in a resignation letter over his Charlottesville response. Last week, Trump’s Arts and Humanities council crafted its resignation letter to spell out “resist” in the first letters of each paragraph.
Trump has faced widespread criticism for his repeated insistence on hedging his condemnation of white supremacists and other bigots and hate-peddlers by pointing out that “many sides” and “both sides” were to blame for violence in the Virginia college town.
As Trump pointed out in his speech in Phoenix on Tuesday night, he did explicitly condemn hate groups, but it came two days after violence erupted in Charlottesville. Trump omitted his comments blaming counterprotesters for violence and his assertion that both white supremacist demonstrators and those standing in opposition to them included “very fine people.”