June 29, 2017

Trump Takes Break From Trying to Throw 22 Million People Off Health Care to Lob Misogynistic Insults

“She was bleeding badly from a face-lift.”

On Thursday morning, after hundreds of people marched outside the Capitol to protest Republican efforts to repeal and replace Obamacare, President Donald Trump focused his attention on launching a nasty attack on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” branding hosts Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski as “psycho” and “crazy.” 

The president’s tweetstorm was particularly cruel towards Brzezinski. Describing her as “low I.Q. Crazy,” he claimed she had been “bleeding badly” from plastic surgery during a previous visit to his Mar-a-Lago estate.

While the MSNBC hosts enjoyed a friendly relationship with Trump for a good portion of the presidential campaign, since his inauguration the show has been largely critical of the president’s behavior and policies. 

After CNN recently retracted a report concerning Trump and Russia, the president’s obsession with disparaging the media gained new traction this week. 

Here is Brzezinski’s response following Trump’s personal attack: 

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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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