January 6, 2017

Mexico Won’t Pay For the Wall, They’ll Just Be Billed For It

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Donald Trump spent the morning tweeting about the passion of his supporters; Arnold Schwarzenegger’s lousy ratings on Celebrity Apprentice compared to “ratings machine DJT”; his meeting with Anna Wintour and an upcoming meeting with the Condé Nast editors; and the fact that Mexico won’t be paying for the wall after all.

Wait. What’s this about the wall? Well, Trump may have said “Mexico will pay for it” about a million times, but it turns out that if you look carefully at the back side of his “Contract With the American Voter,” he promises to introduce the End Illegal Immigration Act during his first hundred days. Here it is:

Fully-funds the construction of a wall on our southern border with the full understanding that the country Mexico will be reimbursing the United States for the full cost of such wall.

So you see, he was perfectly clear about this all along. You just had to read the fine print. Congress will pay for the wall and then we’ll send Mexico a bill, payable on net 30 terms. This fits well with the Republican plan to “repeal and delay” on Obamacare. Apparently we’re going to delay everything except those tax cuts for the rich. Those will be passed post-haste. Hell, I wouldn’t be surprised if they’re made retroactive to redress the rich for the suffering they’ve endured during Obama’s term in office.

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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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