January 6, 2021

Here’s One Silver Lining to the Trump Mob in Washington

Bill Clark/Congressional Quarterly via ZUMA

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I’ve been asleep all day, and when I finally woke up I was greeted by news of an insane mob of MAGAnauts occupying the Capitol building. I gather they are being treated with surprising deference since they are, after all, mostly white and therefore considered patriots.

I know that everyone looks to me for the silver lining to things like this, so here goes: this is the perfect opportunity for everyone to finally repudiate Donald Trump completely. He obviously egged on the mob, and this is, finally, behavior that even the most sycophantic Trump supporter can use to break ties if they want to. If enough of them do it, this would ensure that Trump leaves town on January 20 and is forever after ignored and detested until the day he dies. Fox News can pretend he never existed and the rest of the media will have license to ignore him.

Will enough Republicans do this? I don’t know. But they have one last chance to do the right thing. They should take it.

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Managing an independent, nonprofit newsroom is staggeringly hard. There’s no cushion in our budget—no backup revenue, no corporate safety net. We can’t afford to fall short, and we can’t rely on corporations or deep-pocketed interests to fund the fierce, investigative journalism Mother Jones exists to do.

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