July 30, 2018

How Are My Trump Predictions Doing?

Sergi Reboredo/ZUMA

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I have a bad memory, but many of my readers have great memories and periodically remind me of things I’ve said in the past. A couple of days ago, JH emailed to remind me that a year ago I offered up three tests of Donald Trump’s approach to foreign policy:

Immigration. Trump hasn’t done much on the policy side to reduce illegal immigration, but he has stepped up the pace of high-profile raids. He’s also blustered a lot and pissed off just about the entire nation of Mexico. Will this be effective in scaring Latin Americans away from crossing the border into El Norte?

Qatar. The US has been unhappy with Qatar’s support for terrorist groups for several years. Now Trump has decided to turn this into a highly public battle. Will Qatar respond positively to this?

NATO. Every American president has pressed our NATO allies to spend more on defense, with only sporadic success. Trump has decided to up the ante by implicitly threatening to leave NATO if they don’t. Will this finally get them to commit to higher defense budgets?

My prediction, of course, was that Trump would fail on all three of these. So far, I’d say I was right about both illegal immigration (border crossing rates haven’t changed much) and NATO defense budgets (they haven’t committed to anything more than they already committed to Obama). That leaves Qatar, which I haven’t really kept up with. But Trump’s initial response to the Gulf boycott of Qatar was to take Jared Kushner’s advice and support the Saudi position, which got him nowhere. More recently, he’s changed his tune, inviting the emir of Qatar to the White House and extolling him as “a friend of mine — knew him long before I entered the world of politics. He’s a great gentleman.” Also: “A lot of countries were funding terrorism and we’re stopping it. It’s getting stopped and fast. Very important. And you’ve now become a very big advocate, and we appreciate that.”

So did Trump’s initial support of Saudi Arabia produce any change in Qatari behavior? As near as I can tell, it hasn’t, and American influence in general has produced zero movement from either side. So I guess that makes Trump 0 for 3.

But not to worry. There’s still NAFTA and China and Syria and Russia and North Korea and Yemen and Iran. Trump has had no successes there either, but it’s early days. Stay tuned.

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WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

If you can, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones—that exists to make a difference, not a profit—with a donation of any amount today. We need more donations than normal to come in from this specific blurb to help close our funding gap before it gets any bigger.

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