October 11, 2016

Donald Trump Takes to Twitter to Stoke a GOP Civil War

“The shackles have been taken off me.”

Evan Vucci/AP, File

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You probably couldn’t tell from the way Donald Trump bulldozes through political norms like a child stomping on a sand castle, but apparently the Republican nominee has not been free to be himself. Until now.

On Tuesday, Trump proclaimed himself free of “shackles” that had been holding him back and proceeded to lash out at House Speaker Paul Ryan and the Republican establishmentarians who have been distancing themselves from his campaign.

On Monday, Ryan had held a conference call with his caucus and told him he would no longer defend Trump after a 2005 video of the GOP nominee bragging about groping women was released last week. (Ryan, however, has not rescinded his endorsement of Trump.) Meanwhile, Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus on Monday declared that the party is still wholly behind Trump.

But Trump’s tweetstorm Tuesday is throwing cold water on the unity message the RNC is trying to convey by turning on Ryan and stoking intraparty unrest.

Fifteen minutes later, Trump tweeted again, attacking his party.

Thirty minutes later, he still wasn’t done.

If Trump loses in November, he seems bent on bringing the Republican Party crashing down with him.

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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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