February 10, 2020

Trump’s 2020 Message Will Be Pretty Upbeat

Dana Clarke/U.S. Army/Planet Pix via ZUMA

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David Brooks notes a change in Donald Trump’s pitch:

Trump has cleverly reframed the election. I can see why Nancy Pelosi ripped up his State of the Union speech. It was the most effective speech of the Trump presidency. In 2016, Trump ran a dark, fear-driven “American carnage” campaign. His 2016 convention speech was all about crime, violence and menace. The theme of this week’s speech was mostly upbeat “Morning in America.”

I don’t know if he can keep this tone, because unlike Ronald Reagan, he’s not an optimistic, generous person. But if he can, and he can keep his ideology anodyne, this message can resonate even with people who don’t like him.

This is nothing surprising. All along, Trump’s obvious strategy has been to declare victory and go home. That is, no matter what the reality is, simply claim over and over that things have turned around during his three years as president and America is now great again. The economy is the best it’s ever been. Our military is stronger than ever. We are respected again around the world. No one takes advantage of us on trade anymore. NATO is paying up. It’s OK to say “Merry Christmas” again. Etc.¹

Can Trump keep this up? Of course he can. That’s because nothing is changing. Trump’s theme is and always has been that things are terrible when he’s not in charge and great when he is in charge. We’re now just seeing the second half of this.

¹Reality: The economy is about the same as it was during Obama’s final years. The military is also about the same. Most of our allies think we’ve gone nuts and are just holding their collective breath until we come to our senses and elect a normal person as president. We’ve made no significant progress on trade, and what progress we have made is all stuff we could have had immediately if Trump hadn’t blown up TPP on his third day in office. NATO started paying up when Obama was president. It was always OK to say Merry Christmas.

 

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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.

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