February 14, 2017

Spicer Is Spinning Flynngate As a “Matter of Trust, Pure and Simple”

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From the White House briefing room:

The answer turns out to be January 26. That’s three weeks ago.

Spicer is insisting that Trump fired Flynn due to an “erosion” of trust. “It was a matter of trust, pure and simple,” he’s said over and over. And yet, oddly enough, Trump’s trust in Flynn didn’t crater when he was told about Flynn’s lies. It apparently cratered only after the Washington Post made Flynn’s lies public. Funny that.

Now Spicer is trying to blame the Obama Justice Department for withholding its information about Flynn for 13 days. Nice try, Sean.

Oh, and Spicer says the real story here is all the leaks. Sure, Flynn is a story, but the press should consider the source. They should investigate that. Oddly, back when all those hacked Russian emails were gnawing away at Hillary Clinton’s campaign, nobody on the right thought that was an issue. All that mattered was that this information was becoming public. I guess that’s no longer operative.

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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.

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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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