Here Is the Latest Campaign Faux Controversy

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I can’t tell if this faux controversy is actually getting much attention, but I know my readers all want to stay up to date:

Donald Trump’s campaign sought an apology Saturday from his Democratic rival after Hillary Clinton took aim at the Republican’s supporters, suggesting that half of them are what she called “deplorables.”

….“To just be grossly generalistic, you could put half of Trump’s supporters into what I call the basket of deplorables. Right?,” Mrs. Clinton told donors in New York City. “The racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamaphobic — you name it.” The former secretary of state added that “some of those folks, they are irredeemable, but thankfully they are not America.” The Trump campaign quickly punched back, saying that Mrs. Clinton had revealed “her true contempt for everyday Americans.”

I’m sure this will be followed up on social media with lots of folks “fact checking” Clinton and showing that she’s right. Let’s take a look. Yep, here’s one:

Typical Hillary shill. The Reuters poll he links to clearly shows that less than half of Trump’s supporters are deplorable. At most it’s 49 percent, and the average is only 43 percent. As usual, Hillary Clinton is spinning and exaggerating for her own benefit. No wonder Americans don’t trust her. A tisket, a tasket, Hillary’s in a basket.

OK, fine, that was lame. But hopefully everyone just skips this whole affair. It’s one of those things that belongs in the category of stuff literally everyone knows but can’t say out loud. Trump’s outreach to the racist, sexist, xenophobic, Islamaphobic community is pretty obvious and hardly needs any further evidence. Every campaign reporter in the country knows this. The question is, can they say it? Or will they just “report the controversy” and declare that it “casts a new shadow” over a “struggling campaign”? I guess we’ll see.

UPDATE: Well, it’s now on the front page of the LA Times, the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the Wall Street Journal. So I guess it’s getting some traction. Is this just because it’s a slow weekend news day? Or will it last? Come back Monday for your answer!

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WE'LL BE BLUNT.

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.

You're here for reporting like that, not fundraising, but one cannot exist without the other, and it's vitally important that we hit our intimidating $390,000 number in online donations by June 30.

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