September 26, 2018

Why Does Donald Trump Hate Justin Trudeau?

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I’m not going to pretend to be shocked by this, but…seriously?

President Trump said he rejected a meeting with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of Canada during the United Nations General Assembly this week and threatened on Wednesday to punish Canada by taxing the cars it exports into America, signaling a new low in relations between the two nations.

….Mr. Trump said he turned down a meeting with Mr. Trudeau because Canada had treated the United States “very badly” and because of its high dairy tariffs, which are preventing the United States from selling milk into Canada. A spokesman for Mr. Trudeau said the prime minister never requested such a meeting. On Tuesday, Mr. Trump appeared to snub Mr. Trudeau when he did not stand to shake the Canadian prime minister’s hand during a lunch at the United Nations summit meeting.

Unless someone is slipping my mind, Justin Trudeau is literally Donald Trump’s most hated foreign adversary. Justin Trudeau! The prime minister of Canada!

But why? Because Trudeau is movie-star handsome? Because the Trump Tower in Toronto removed his name? Because…oh hell, I can’t even think of anything else. I mean, it can’t really be over milk tariffs. Who the hell cares about that? Is it because Trump is still stewing over Trudeau’s comment that Canada “will not be pushed around” after he retaliated against Trump’s steel and aluminum tariffs? I guess it could be, though other world leaders have said worse things.

I wonder if there’s something else going on? One thing’s for sure, it’s not because we’re running a big trade deficit with Canada.

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WE'LL BE BLUNT.

We have a considerable $390,000 gap in our online fundraising budget that we have to close by June 30. There is no wiggle room, we've already cut everything we can, and we urgently need more readers to pitch in—especially from this specific blurb you're reading right now.

We'll also be quite transparent and level-headed with you about this.

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.

You're here for reporting like that, not fundraising, but one cannot exist without the other, and it's vitally important that we hit our intimidating $390,000 number in online donations by June 30.

And we hope you might consider pitching in before moving on to whatever it is you're about to do next. It's going to be a nail-biter, and we really need to see donations from this specific ask coming in strong if we're going to get there.

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