Scott Pruitt Needs to Invent Better Lies

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On Tuesday, the Atlantic reported that Scott Pruitt went behind the president’s back to give two of his favorite aides huge pay increases. On Wednesday, Pruitt went on Fox News to say that he had just heard about this and had immediately rescinded the raises. Today, the Wasington Post confirmed that Pruitt was lying:

On Thursday evening, two EPA officials confirmed that Pruitt endorsed the idea last month of giving substantial raises to senior counsel Sarah Greenwalt and scheduling and advance director Millan Hupp — although he did not carry out the pay raise himself….[Pruitt] instructed staff to award substantial pay boosts to both women, who had worked in different roles for him in Oklahoma.

The Wall Street Journal ran a laughable editorial today insisting that all of Pruitt’s offenses were the merest peccadilloes, total nothingburgers cast into the spotlight by a conspiracy among the press, the “administrative state,” and environmentalists who hate Pruitt. For some reason, though, they failed to mention either Pruitt’s end run around the White House or his firing of officials who questioned his spending habits. When they get around to it, I’m sure they’ll decide those are just nothingburgers too.

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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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