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The claim that Rudy Giuliani had been “inebriated” when he, as Donald Trump’s conspiratorial hype man, pushed the former president to prematurely declare victory over Joe Biden is indeed a distraction. But a day after the American public learned of Giuliani’s apparent condition on election night, the question arises: Is Giuliani wasted…right now?

Hints of an inebriated state abound. There’s the misspelling of “outright” and Bill Stepien, the former Trump campaign manager. The continued push of the false claim that Trump won. And perhaps most egregiously, the choice of Diet Pepsi over Diet Coke as one’s preferred diet soda. Taken together, it’s giving vintage Trump tweet with a fresh hint of melting Giuliani.

But his denial of being drunk only underscores this key takeaway from my colleague Dan Friedman. Giuliani may have taken the time to shoot down the headline-generating drunk claim—garnering yikes and laughs—but his statement conveniently forgets to address the January 6 committee’s most damning allegation. That he, as Trump’s personal lawyer, pushed the then-president into falsely declaring victory, ultimately helping to lay the foundation for the violence at the Capitol.

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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.

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