March 22, 2018

Trump’s War Cabinet Is Taking Shape

Justin Lane/DPA via ZUMA

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A few days ago the White House said that H.R. McMaster still had the president’s full confidence. That’s a death sentence, of course, and today the axe fell. He’s out and John Bolton is in:

General McMaster will retire from the military, the officials said. He has been discussing his departure with President Trump for several weeks, they said, but decided to speed up his departure, in part because questions about his status were casting a shadow over his conversations with foreign officials.

….Mr. Bolton, who will take office April 9, has met regularly with Mr. Trump to discuss foreign policy, and was on a list of candidates for national security adviser. He was in the West Wing with Mr. Trump to discuss the job on Thursday.

Hell, even George Bush wasn’t crazy enough to let Bolton serve as his National Security Advisor. But Trump is. He wants someone who agrees that we should threaten every bad guy on earth with war, and Bolton’s that guy.

Back in 2016, rumor had it that Trump didn’t pick Bolton for a top job because he thought Bolton’s mustache looked stupid. For once, I applauded Trump’s idiocy. I’m dismayed that he managed to get over his contempt for dumb facial hair.

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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.

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