May 27, 2018

Trump Tweets About “Young and Beautiful Lives” Destroyed by Russia Investigation

Poor George.

AP Photo/Mike Stewart

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.

While outrage spreads about reports of immigrant children who the government placed with traffickers and then lost by the hundreds, Donald Trump is spending his Sunday morning decrying the treatment of another group of young people: those whose lives have been “devastated and destroyed” by the Russia investigation.

“Who’s going to give back the young and beautiful lives (and others) that have been devastated and destroyed by the phony Russia Collusion Witch Hunt?” Trump tweeted Sunday morning. “They journeyed down to Washington, D.C., with stars in their eyes and wanting to help our nation…They went back home in tatters!”

Trump seems to be referring to young upstarts like George Papadopolous, the 30-year-old advisor to his presidential campaign who tried to set up a back channel between the campaign and the Kremlin in 2016, then pled guilty to lying about it to the FBI. Or maybe he’s talking about Hope Hicks, the 29-year-old former White House communications director who resigned a day after telling a House Intelligence Committee that she had occasionally been asked to tell “white lies” on behalf of the Trump administration. 

It’s not the first time Trump has tried to blame the Russian investigation for the sad state of the country’s affairs. In February, he tweeted that the FBI is “spending too much time trying to prove Russian collusion with the Trump campaign.”

The think-about-the-children line of defense is especially galling, but what else is the president supposed to do on a Sunday morning? It’s not like he’s busy.

WE CAME UP SHORT.

We just wrapped up a shorter-than-normal, urgent-as-ever fundraising drive and we came up about $45,000 short of our $300,000 goal.

That means we're going to have upwards of $350,000, maybe more, to raise in online donations between now and June 30, when our fiscal year ends and we have to get to break-even. And even though there's zero cushion to miss the mark, we won't be all that in your face about our fundraising again until June.

So we urgently need this specific ask, what you're reading right now, to start bringing in more donations than it ever has. The reality, for these next few months and next few years, is that we have to start finding ways to grow our online supporter base in a big way—and we're optimistic we can keep making real headway by being real with you about this.

Because the bottom line: Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism Mother Jones exists to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we hope you might consider pitching in before moving on to whatever it is you're about to do next. We really need to see if we'll be able to raise more with this real estate on a daily basis than we have been, so we're hoping to see a promising start.

payment methods

WE CAME UP SHORT.

We just wrapped up a shorter-than-normal, urgent-as-ever fundraising drive and we came up about $45,000 short of our $300,000 goal.

That means we're going to have upwards of $350,000, maybe more, to raise in online donations between now and June 30, when our fiscal year ends and we have to get to break-even. And even though there's zero cushion to miss the mark, we won't be all that in your face about our fundraising again until June.

So we urgently need this specific ask, what you're reading right now, to start bringing in more donations than it ever has. The reality, for these next few months and next few years, is that we have to start finding ways to grow our online supporter base in a big way—and we're optimistic we can keep making real headway by being real with you about this.

Because the bottom line: Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism Mother Jones exists to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we hope you might consider pitching in before moving on to whatever it is you're about to do next. We really need to see if we'll be able to raise more with this real estate on a daily basis than we have been, so we're hoping to see a promising start.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate