November 12, 2016

The Daily Trump Shitshow Is About to Begin


In the near term, the Donald Trump shitshow is going to unfold on a daily basis as we learn who will be running things in the new administration. The bad news starts at the top: Mike Pence is replacing Chris Christie as head of Trump’s transition team. Christie may be an intolerable prick, but he’s not a conservative ideologue and might have played a slightly calming role. Pence is nothing of the sort. He’s a stone right winger who will be perfectly happy to put the Heritage Foundation in control of the country.

As for the lower-level folks, it turns out that Trump doesn’t hate lobbyists all that much after all. That whole “Drain the Swamp” thing was just red meat for the rubes. The Associated Press reports that far from hating lobbyists, Trump absolutely adores them. Here’s the Trump transition team:

The behind-the-scenes transition operation is being run by Ron Nichol, a senior partner at The Boston Group, a management consulting firm where 2012 Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney launched his business career.

Ken Blackwell…senior fellow at the Family Research Council…Veteran agribusiness lobbyist Michael Torrey…Energy industry lobbyist Mike McKenna…David Bernhardt…represents mining companies seeking to use resources on federal lands…Lobbyist Steven Hart, who focuses on tax and employee benefits, is leading the transition team for the Labor Department.

Cindy Hayden…top lobbyist for Altria, the parent company of cigarette-maker Philip Morris…Homeland Security Department. Jeff Eisenach, a consultant and former lobbyist…Federal Communications Commission….Michael Korbey…former lobbyist who led President George W. Bush’s effort to privatize America’s retirement system….Shirley Ybarra…champion of “public-private partnerships” to build toll roads and bridges….Myron Ebell…man-made global warming is a hoax…David Malpass…Bear Stearns’ chief economist…Dan DiMicco…former chief executive of steel company NUCOR and a board member at Duke Energy…Former Rep. Mike Rogers…serves on boards for consulting firms IronNet Cybersecurity and Next Century Corp.

Kevin O’Connor…partner at the law firm of close Trump adviser Rudy Giuliani…Jim Carafano…Heritage Foundation’s vice president for Foreign and Defense Policy Studies…retired Lt. Gen. Keith Kellogg…chief operating officer for Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq…Mira Ricardel…vice president of business development for Boeing Strategic Missile & Defense Systems.

Buckle up. This is going to be a rough ride.

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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.

And we hope you might consider pitching in before moving on to whatever it is you're about to do next. It's going to be a nail-biter, and we really need to see donations from this specific ask coming in strong if we're going to get there.

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