August 3, 2019

5 Years Ago, Trump Said an Ebola Doctor Should “Suffer the Consequences!”

Now the president is celebrating Kent Brantly’s recovery.

Dr. Kent Brantly arrives at Emory University Hospital on August 2, 2014.WSB-TV Atlanta/AP

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President Donald Trump on Saturday retweeted a message from evangelical leader Franklin Graham celebrating the the recovery of Kent Brantly, a doctor who contracted Ebola five years ago while fighting a devastating outbreak of the disease in Liberia. Brantly—who was working with Samaritan’s Purse, a missionary organization run by Graham—might well have died had he not been flown to state-of-the-art medical facilities in Atlanta. A second missionary aide worker who contracted the disease around the same time, Nancy Writebol, also survived after being flown to Atlanta for treatment.

The heroism of Brantly, Writebol, and the people who saved their lives is absolutely worth celebrating. But it’s a remarkable about-face for the president. Trump, who at the time was not yet a Republican presidential candidate, spent days stoking fears about the threat he (wrongly) claimed the evacuation posed to people in the United States. He demanded that the Obama administration “stop the EBOLA patients from entering the U.S.” and declared that people who fight deadly diseases overseas “must suffer the consequences!” He said that Brantly and Writebol should be treated “at the highest level” in Liberia—an incredibly callous suggestion given that just days earlier, one of that country’s top doctors had himself died of the disease. Ultimately, nine of the 11 Ebola patients—82 percent—treated in the United States survived; the survival rate in Liberia was far lower.

Trump’s five-year-late reversal on the issue is certainly welcome. It coincides with a major Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo—one that his administration has done far too little to combat.

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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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