January 11, 2017

Here Are the 3 Actual Pieces of News From Trump’s Press Conference

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So what was the actual news from Trump’s press conference? Here it is:

  • He will introduce legislation (or a plan or something) to both repeal and replace Obamacare within a few weeks.
  • He now believes Russia was probably behind the election hacking.
  • He has chosen a nominee for Secretary of Veterans Affairs, David Shulkin.

The rest was mostly general whining about the press and various and sundry other Trump bugaboos.

The nomination of David Shulkin as Secretary of Veterans Affairs was certainly unexpected. After months of (mostly false) blather about how the VA was a failing organization and the current management was incompetent, Trump nominates…a member of the current management. In fact, he’s the member of management who runs the Veterans Health Administration, the very organization that Trump has been so scathing about. This is very strange indeed.

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THE FACTS SPEAK FOR THEMSELVES.

At least we hope they will, because that’s our approach to raising the $350,000 in online donations we need right now—during our high-stakes December fundraising push.

It’s the most important month of the year for our fundraising, with upward of 15 percent of our annual online total coming in during the final week—and there’s a lot to say about why Mother Jones’ journalism, and thus hitting that big number, matters tremendously right now.

But you told us fundraising is annoying—with the gimmicks, overwrought tone, manipulative language, and sheer volume of urgent URGENT URGENT!!! content we’re all bombarded with. It sure can be.

So we’re going to try making this as un-annoying as possible. In “Let the Facts Speak for Themselves” we give it our best shot, answering three questions that most any fundraising should try to speak to: Why us, why now, why does it matter?

The upshot? Mother Jones does journalism you don’t find elsewhere: in-depth, time-intensive, ahead-of-the-curve reporting on underreported beats. We operate on razor-thin margins in an unfathomably hard news business, and can’t afford to come up short on these online goals. And given everything, reporting like ours is vital right now.

If you can afford to part with a few bucks, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones with a much-needed year-end donation. And please do it now, while you’re thinking about it—with fewer people paying attention to the news like you are, we need everyone with us to get there.

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