October 11, 2016

Donald Trump’s Kremlin Connection Comes Through Again

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Newsweek reporter Kurt Eichenwald reports on the latest from Donald Trump:

At a rally in Wilkes Barre, Pennsylvania, Trump spoke while holding a document in his hand. He told the assembled crowd that it was an email from Blumenthal….”This just came out a little while ago,” Trump said….”He’s now admitting they could have done something about Benghazi,” Trump said, dropping the document to the floor. “This just came out a little while ago”

Ah, Sidney Blumenthal, the unkillable Rasputin of the Clinton family. Conservatives sure do have a way of somehow putting him at the center of every scandal. This time, though, Blumenthal has an ironclad alibi: he never said this. He did email a Newsweek article to John Podesta—which was hacked and released by WikiLeaks a few days ago—but that’s all. It was Kurt Eichenwald himself who said this stuff, not Blumenthal.

So how did Trump make this mistake? According to Eichenwald, the only news organization that reported this was Sputnik, a Russian controlled news agency:

This is not funny. It is terrifying. The Russians engage in a sloppy disinformation effort and, before the day is out, the Republican nominee for president is standing on a stage reciting the manufactured story as truth. How did this happen? Who in the Trump campaign was feeding him falsehoods straight from the Kremlin?

Who indeed?

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I'm hopeful because of readers like you. Will you pitch in today?

We see the headlines on a weekly basis: the claw backs in public media, the gutting of The Washington Post, the bending over backwards to appeal to Trump and his allies.

But not here.

When Mother Jones started publishing 50 years ago, our founders made a critical decision: to be a reader-supported nonprofit. They knew that no corporate owner would be interested in a muckraking newsroom; they also knew that no muckraking newsroom would be interested in following the agenda of a corporate owner.

And so, we’ve been reader-funded for half a century. We rely on contributions from our readers—readers like you—whether it’s $50, or $15 a month, or whatever fits your budget. People give what they can, and every donation makes a difference for our newsroom, which has grown tremendously—in size and reach and renown—since its inception in 1976.

You may be wondering: What does it take to publish an investigation? And what does my donation actually fund? The answers are one and the same: It takes people, resources, and time. And that’s what your donation funds directly.

Every donation Mother Jones receives from readers fortifies our newsroom, whether we’re covering underreported scandals out of Washington, DC, or the most important news of the day. And right now, each donation will be doubled thanks to a $50,000 match. So when you make a donation, it’ll go twice as far.

Your support keeps us going. If you’re able, donate today.

Thanks for reading.

—Monika Bauerlein, CEO

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