July 20, 2016

Finally, the Melania Trump Plagiarism Story Comes to an End

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And here we are. The final chapter in the Melania Trump plagiarism story. Meredith McIver, who has written some of Donald’s books and helped Melania write her speech, has taken the fall.

They could have fessed up to this early Tuesday morning and avoided all the angst. Why didn’t they? Who knows. More to the point: it seems as if all of Trumpland spent the entire day yesterday insisting that the disputed parts of Melania’s speech were just common phrases and nobody plagiarized anything. Steven Dennis summarizes:

So are all these folks going to apologize for obviously trying to deceive everyone they talked to? I think we know the answer to that.

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We need to start raising significantly more in donations from our online community of readers, especially from those who read Mother Jones regularly but have never decided to pitch in because you figured others always will. We also need long-time and new donors, everyone, to keep showing up for us.

In "It's Not a Crisis. This Is the New Normal," we explain, as matter-of-factly as we can, what exactly our finances look like, how brutal it is to sustain quality journalism right now, what makes Mother Jones different than most of the news out there, and why support from readers is the only thing that keeps us going. Despite the challenges, we're optimistic we can increase the share of online readers who decide to donate—starting with hitting an ambitious $300,000 goal in just three weeks to make sure we can finish our fiscal year break-even in the coming months.

Please learn more about how Mother Jones works and our 47-year history of doing nonprofit journalism that you don't elsewhere—and help us do it with a donation if you can. We've already cut expenses and hitting our online goal is critical right now.

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