December 29, 2018

Trump Complains Democrats Are Causing the Shutdown. Americans Don’t See It That Way.

The president is tweeting his objections, but not actually talking with Democrats to strike a deal.

Martin H. Simon/CNP/ZUMA

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More Americans fault President Donald Trump for the federal government shutdown than Democrats in Congress, according to a poll by Reuters/Ipsos released this week. But that isn’t stopping the president from going on a Twitter rant, with Trump grumbling on Saturday morning that Democrats “are spending so much time on Presidential Harassment” and that they are prolonging the shutdown.

The poll, conducted December 21 through 25, found that 47 percent of Americans hold Trump responsible, compared to 33 percent who blame congressional Democrats and 7 percent who blame congressional Republicans.

Obviously, that is not how Trump sees it as he’s holed up in Washington, DC this week. On Saturday morning, he complained that the Mueller investigation is a “Witch Hunt Hoax” before tweeting that he is “waiting for the Democrats to come on over and make a deal on Border Security” in order to reopen the government.

The shutdown is only going to affect more agencies and government services as it stretches into its second week, with no apparent resolution in sight when Democrats take control of the House on January 3. More than 800,000 federal workers are affected, and essential staff that have not been furloughed are forced to work without pay.

Trump has insisted that he will only sign a spending bill that includes funding for a border wall, an issue that is not only a nonstarter for Democrats, but for some Republicans as well.

According to Politico, Trump isn’t trying especially hard to strike a compromise with Democrats. Incoming House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has not heard from Trump in weeks.

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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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