Quote of the Day: Emergency? What Emergency?

Martin H. Simon/CNP via ZUMA

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From President Trump on the $6 billion he’s going to take from the military to build his wall:

I said, “What were you going to use it for?” And I won’t go into details, but it didn’t sound too important to me.

Good to know! But really, this is the most important thing Trump said:

I could do the wall over a longer period of time, I didn’t need to do this, but I’d rather do it much faster….The only reason we’re up here talking about this is because of the election, because they want to try and win an election which it looks like they’re not going to be able to do. And this is one of the ways they think they can possibly win is by obstruction and a lot of other nonsense. And I think that I just want to get it done faster, that’s all.

I assume this will be Exhibit A in the lawsuits that will be brought against Trump’s declaration of emergency. “I didn’t need to do this,” he said, and with that the game is up. Congress explicitly refused to appropriate the money he wanted, and Trump thinks this is just an election ploy. It’s hard to see how any judge can agree that this is a true emergency in the face of this admission on national TV.

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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 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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