February 16, 2016

Always Bring a Nuke to a Knife Fight

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Yesterday Donald Trump finally went ballistic over Ted Cruz’s attacks against him. After listing half a dozen alleged lies, he made this threat:

One of the ways I can fight back is to bring a lawsuit against him relative to the fact that he was born in Canada and therefore cannot be President. If he doesn’t take down his false ads and retract his lies, I will do so immediately.

The great thing about this is that Trump doesn’t even bother pretending that he wants to sue Cruz because he truly believes Cruz isn’t a natural-born citizen. He just flat-out admits that he plans to do it as revenge for Cruz being mean to him. The Golden Rule here is simple: “They pull a knife, you pull a gun. He sends one of yours to the hospital, you send one of his to the morgue.”

This appears to be a considerable source of Trump’s appeal. His supporters don’t care much about actual political positions; they care about having a mean SOB in office. They probably like Trump more because he’s going after Cruz out of anger rather than as a matter of principle.

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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.

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