August 17, 2020

A Brief History of Why Donald Trump Hates the Postal Service

Andrej Sokolow/DPA via ZUMA

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Some of you may be wondering why President Trump seems to have it in for the Postal Service. It’s a short story:

  • Trump hates the Washington Post, which is owned by Jeff Bezos.
  • Trump tweeted about this once and Bezos responded with a joke. Trump can’t stand jokes at his expense, so he hates Bezos.
  • Bezos is CEO of Amazon, therefore Trump hates Amazon.
  • The Postal Service delivers some of Amazon’s packages. As a matter of revenge, Trump wants them to raise the rates they charge Amazon.
  • They have refused to do so, therefore Trump hates the Postal Service.

Believe it or not, that’s all there is to it. Trump has been waiting five years for an opportunity to take revenge on the Postal Service, and the current ruckus over vote-by-mail has given him his chance. He’s pretending that it’s all about ballot fraud and inefficient management and so forth, but it’s really about the fact that Bezos—who is considerably richer than Trump—once made a modest joke about Trump and the Postal Service got caught in the crossfire.

Yes, ladies and gentlemen, that’s how the United States of America is governed these days.

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THE FACTS SPEAK FOR THEMSELVES.

At least we hope they will, because that’s our approach to raising the $350,000 in online donations we need right now—during our high-stakes December fundraising push.

It’s the most important month of the year for our fundraising, with upward of 15 percent of our annual online total coming in during the final week—and there’s a lot to say about why Mother Jones’ journalism, and thus hitting that big number, matters tremendously right now.

But you told us fundraising is annoying—with the gimmicks, overwrought tone, manipulative language, and sheer volume of urgent URGENT URGENT!!! content we’re all bombarded with. It sure can be.

So we’re going to try making this as un-annoying as possible. In “Let the Facts Speak for Themselves” we give it our best shot, answering three questions that most any fundraising should try to speak to: Why us, why now, why does it matter?

The upshot? Mother Jones does journalism you don’t find elsewhere: in-depth, time-intensive, ahead-of-the-curve reporting on underreported beats. We operate on razor-thin margins in an unfathomably hard news business, and can’t afford to come up short on these online goals. And given everything, reporting like ours is vital right now.

If you can afford to part with a few bucks, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones with a much-needed year-end donation. And please do it now, while you’re thinking about it—with fewer people paying attention to the news like you are, we need everyone with us to get there.

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