Tammy Duckworth: Trump Is a “Coward-in-Chief”

Democratic National Convention V/CNP

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In remarks on the last night of the Democratic National Convention, Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D-Ill.) called it like she sees it: President Donald Trump is a “coward-in-chief.” 

The Iraq War veteran, speaking with the US Capitol in the background, condemned Trump’s failures to get to the bottom of the killings of American troops and the intelligence that suggests “Vladamir Putin placed a bounty on their life.” Duckworth has demanded  more details from the Defense Department about its investigation into an intelligence assessment that Russia offered bounties to Taliban-linked militants to kill American troops in Afghanistan. “As president, Joe Biden would never let tyrants manipulate him like a puppet,” Duckworth said.

Her fiery remarks also assailed Trump for his treatment of peaceful Black Lives Matter protesters at home. “Joe Biden would never threaten to use our military against peaceful Americans,” she said. “Because unlike Trump, Joe Biden has common sense and common decency. Donald Trump doesn’t deserve to call himself commander in chief for another four minutes—let alone another four years.”

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We have a considerable $390,000 gap in our online fundraising budget that we have to close by June 30. There is no wiggle room, we've already cut everything we can, and we urgently need more readers to pitch in—especially from this specific blurb you're reading right now.

We'll also be quite transparent and level-headed with you about this.

In "News Never Pays," our fearless CEO, Monika Bauerlein, connects the dots on several concerning media trends that, taken together, expose the fallacy behind the tragic state of journalism right now: That the marketplace will take care of providing the free and independent press citizens in a democracy need, and the Next New Thing to invest millions in will fix the problem. Bottom line: Journalism that serves the people needs the support of the people. That's the Next New Thing.

And it's what MoJo and our community of readers have been doing for 47 years now.

But staying afloat is harder than ever.

In "This Is Not a Crisis. It's The New Normal," we explain, as matter-of-factly as we can, what exactly our finances look like, why this moment is particularly urgent, and how we can best communicate that without screaming OMG PLEASE HELP over and over. We also touch on our history and how our nonprofit model makes Mother Jones different than most of the news out there: Letting us go deep, focus on underreported beats, and bring unique perspectives to the day's news.

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