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Still spinning, unsure what to make of last night’s debate?

Amid the bad (I mean really bad) crap that spun out of it, a sliver of a silver lining—according to our own David Corn—is that the debate “provided voters accurate impressions of these two men.” Trump was “full of lies and bluster.” Biden “stumbled through some answers” but came across as “competent.” You can read Corn’s full analysis here.

Throughout the evening, Mother Jones reporters provided the analysis and commentary necessary to make sense of…whatever that was. Ali Breland peeked into the internet conversation by the Proud Boys, who celebrated Trump’s order to “stand by.” Breland wrote:

In their publicly viewable Telegram channels, the Proud Boys immediately responded to Trump’s words with an eruption of praise. “Stand by!!! PROUD BOYS ARE HEROES!!!” one member of a large channel wrote. “They begged him to stab us in the back and he didn’t,” another wrote in a different channel.

Nathalie Baptiste elucidated the exhausting experience of watching older white men discuss race while using “law and order” as a shorthand to call for the entrenchment and reinforcement of racial hierarchies. Kara Voght pointed out that, yes, Trump is going after your health care. Jeremy Schulman caught the false both-siderism of newspaper headlines this morning. And Rebecca Leber unpacked the surprisingly substantive climate change discussion.

Big picture? It’s this point from our editor-in-chief, Clara Jeffery: Trump wants to delegitimize everything.

PLEASE—BEFORE YOU CLICK AWAY!

“Lying.” “Disgusting.” “Scum.” “Slime.” “Corrupt.” “Enemy of the people.” Donald Trump has always made clear what he thinks of journalists. And it’s plain now that his administration intends to do everything it can to stop journalists from reporting things it doesn’t like—which is most things that are true.

We’ll say it loud and clear: At Mother Jones, no one gets to tell us what to publish or not publish, because no one owns our fiercely independent newsroom. But that also means we need to directly raise the resources it takes to keep our journalism alive. There’s only one way for that to happen, and it’s readers like you stepping up. Please do your part and help us reach our $150,000 membership goal by May 31.

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PLEASE—BEFORE YOU CLICK AWAY!

“Lying.” “Disgusting.” “Scum.” “Slime.” “Corrupt.” “Enemy of the people.” Donald Trump has always made clear what he thinks of journalists. And it’s plain now that his administration intends to do everything it can to stop journalists from reporting things it doesn’t like—which is most things that are true.

We’ll say it loud and clear: At Mother Jones, no one gets to tell us what to publish or not publish, because no one owns our fiercely independent newsroom. But that also means we need to directly raise the resources it takes to keep our journalism alive. There’s only one way for that to happen, and it’s readers like you stepping up. Please do your part and help us reach our $150,000 membership goal by May 31.

payment methods

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