Today’s Perfect Storm of Trivial Lies From Donald Trump

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Glenn Kessler landed himself in the perfect storm this morning: a tale of (a) Trump largesse, (b) told by Sean Hannity, and (c) confirmed by the Trump campaign. Already, you know it’s a lie. There are not enough Pinocchios in the world for something like this.

Not that it matters, but this particular fairy tale is about Trump sending his private jet down to Camp Lejeune in 1991 to ferry home some Gulf War soldiers whose military flight had been FUBARed. We all know perfectly well that Trump would never do something like this unless there was some kind of massive publicity tied to it, because Trump never engages in any charitable act unless there’s something in it for him. So it’s already about 99 percent likely to be fiction.

Sure enough, it turns out that the real story is just a demonstration of Trump’s lousy business judgment—something far more common than Trump’s acts of charity. When he bought the Eastern Shuttle in 1989 and turned it into the Trump Shuttle, he negotiated a terrible deal. Not only did he overpay, but he also accepted five extra planes he didn’t need instead of a lower purchase price. So the Army leased the planes from him and used them for various tasks in order to free up military planes. In 1991, they were assigned to ferry troops home from Camp Lejeune.

Does this matter? I suppose not, compared with insulting a Hispanic judge, attacking a Muslim family that lost a son in Iraq, and expressing his hope that someone will murder Hillary Clinton. But it’s sort of Trump in a nutshell: Take credit for a charitable act even though it’s a flat-out lie that’s trivially easy to fact-check and debunk. He doesn’t care. He know that guys like Sean Hannity will hype it to his credulous Fox News audience, and none of them will ever read Glenn Kessler. And if they do find out it was a lie, they won’t care. Trump 2016!

I award this story 58 gazillion Pinocchios.

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WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

If you can, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones—that exists to make a difference, not a profit—with a donation of any amount today. We need more donations than normal to come in from this specific blurb to help close our funding gap before it gets any bigger.

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