January 18, 2017

Donald Trump Is Already Campaigning For 2020

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I mentioned in passing yesterday that Donald Trump’s tweets aren’t meant for the press or for Congress or for people like you and me. They’re meant for his fans. Today brings a pretty good example of this:

This is obviously laughable. Even if you take Trump at face value, he’s been responsible for no more than a tiny handful of jobs, and he hasn’t negotiated a lower price on anything yet, let alone “massive” cost reductions on military purchases. So why bother tweeting something that makes him look ridiculous?

Because he needs his supporters to continue thinking he’s a miracle worker. To them, this tweet is a simple progress report. Even if anyone bothers fact checking it, they’ll never see it. All they see is Trump keeping them apprised of the tremendous progress he’s making in draining the swamp and bending Washington to his will.

But surely he can’t keep this up for multiple years, can he? At some point, after all, even people who don’t pay much attention to the news will eventually realize there’s a disconnect between reality and Trump’s big talk. Then they’ll start to see Trump for the empty hustler he is. Right?

This is the $64,000 question. I wish I knew the answer. For now, I’ll just say that I’m not sure. A lot of it depends on events, of course, and a lot of it depends on how successful Trump is at blaming other people for everything that goes wrong. Depending on circumstances, it’s possible that the true believers will stay on board forever, even if he shoots someone on Fifth Avenue.

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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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