Dammit, There Is No $16 Muffin

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On the Daily Show last night, Bill O’Reilly was griping about the great $16 muffin affair and Jon Stewart had no idea what he was talking about. So the whole thing passed without any pushback, and now millions more people think Uncle Sam is paying $16 for hotel muffins.

Once again, then: it’s a myth. There were no $16 muffins. It’s just an artifact of the way hotels aggregate costs for events and bill them all to a few line items instead of breaking down every charge separately. In fact, for the event in question, DOJ came in exactly on budget. All the details are here.

Now, can we please hear no more about this?

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We were built for times like these

Russian bots are impersonating us. Trump and his allies want to silence us. AI wants to (and does!) steal our content. The list goes on. But with 50 years of experience, we know we were built for this moment: We’re ready to keep diving deep and uncovering the truth, then getting that to you right here, completely accessible and never behind a paywall.

While our work is free to read, watch, and listen to online, it’s incredibly costly to make. Court documents, travel, research: It all adds up. Because we’re a nonprofit newsroom, we rely on reader support to fund our investigations. Will you stand with us in these extraordinary times, as headlines clamour for our attention and disinformation is rampant? We can’t get the truth out without you.

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