January 14, 2019

24 Hours of Trump in Less Than a Hundred Words

Ting Shen/Xinhua/ZUMA Wire

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.

So let’s see. In the past 24 hours Donald Trump has:

  • Suggested Elizabeth Warren should do campaign ads with her husband dressed in full Indian garb.¹
  • Mocked Jeff Bezos over his divorce.
  • Quoted Patrick Buchanan on border security.²
  • Retweeted Geraldo Rivera saying the FBI is … I’m not sure … deranged or corrupt or something.
  • Said the fake news has “truly gone MAD.”
  • Claimed that gas prices are down because he deregulated energy.³
  • Rejected his pal Lindsey Graham’s proposal to re-open the government.
  • Warned that he would “devastate” Turkey if they attacked the Kurds.

And that’s only a single day! I understand that Trump has already passed that test where you have to distinguish an elephant from a pinball machine, but I wonder if we could use something a little more sophisticated. He sure seems to be going downhill fast.

¹Why not Warren herself? That is a mystery.

²Buchanan’s statistics about the number of arrests by ICE are not actually wrong, as near as I can tell, but he leaves out a lot. For example, here is our current “crisis”:

³For what it’s worth, gasoline prices are down because oil prices are down. And why are oil prices down? This has nothing to do with any deregulation fantasies, since none of Trump’s proposals have gone into effect yet. The real reason oil prices have dropped is because (a) in October the market got worried about a glut in oil supplies, (b) Trump then handed out lots of waivers to his sanctions on Iran, which reduced fears that Iranian oil shipments would halt, and (c) everyone is worried that Trump’s erratic economic policies make a recession this year more likely.

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.

payment methods

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.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate