July 23, 2018

Donald Trump Threatens to Annihilate Iran But No One Really Cares

Brian Cahn via ZUMA

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Just before midnight, something got President Trump agitated and he hurled this tweet out into the ether:

So this is where we’re at. The president of the United States threatens to annihilate a country he doesn’t like and…

…it’s mostly treated like playground bluster from a ten-year-old. Nearly everyone seems to be acting like this is just a stupid joke to make fun of, as if it came from a parody of a James Bond movie or something.

Etc. By Monday morning Sarah Sanders will have invented some absurd interpretation of what Trump meant and everyone will shrug and pretend to accept it. Trump himself, of course, will refuse to explain anything, claiming that he doesn’t want to give away his game plan. The State Department will issue some kind of tough-but-not-really statement that will explain nothing. And the rest of the Republican Party—aside from the usual lunatic fringe cheering this on—will slink away to their offices, desperately hoping that no one will ask them for comment.

And then we’ll move on. This is how seriously people take the United States of America these days. This is what our country has come to.

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We need to start raising significantly more in donations from our online community of readers, especially from those who read Mother Jones regularly but have never decided to pitch in because you figured others always will. We also need long-time and new donors, everyone, to keep showing up for us.

In "It's Not a Crisis. This Is the New Normal," we explain, as matter-of-factly as we can, what exactly our finances look like, how brutal it is to sustain quality journalism right now, what makes Mother Jones different than most of the news out there, and why support from readers is the only thing that keeps us going. Despite the challenges, we're optimistic we can increase the share of online readers who decide to donate—starting with hitting an ambitious $300,000 goal in just three weeks to make sure we can finish our fiscal year break-even in the coming months.

Please learn more about how Mother Jones works and our 47-year history of doing nonprofit journalism that you don't find elsewhere—and help us do it with a donation if you can. We've already cut expenses and hitting our online goal is critical right now.

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