August 9, 2017

Donald Trump’s North Korea Comments, Explained

OK, fine, let’s write about the North Korea thing. When Donald Trump says something truly preposterous, the usual response is for someone in the White House to suggest anonymously that he didn’t really mean it. This can take many forms, and today it took this one:

Goodness. How could these morons interpret “fire and fury like the world has never seen” as a nuclear attack? He was just talking about, um, a new and improved kind of napalm. Or, you know, a really spectacular Aurora Borealis. Or a really nasty tweet. We also have this:

Ah, so this wasn’t a prepared statement after all. I thought that sounded iffy from the start. Trump was just looking at an opioid fact sheet. This explains a lot of things, as my exclusive blow-up of the document shows:

Meanwhile, Rex Tillerson is telling us that the US is totally willing to talk things over with the North Koreans: “I think the president just wanted to be clear to the North Korean regime that the U.S. has the unquestionable ability to defend itself, will defend itself and its allies, and I think it was important that he deliver that message to avoid any miscalculation on their part.”

Yeah. Trump was just trying to avoid any miscalculations. That’s the ticket.

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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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