March 8, 2017

Trump Touts Obama Job Creation in Tweet

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Donald Trump on Monday:

I know, I know, it’s just a Trump tweet. Who cares? Well, I was curious about how this went down, so I clicked on the press statement:

President Trump made a promise to bring back jobs to America. The spirit of optimism sweeping the country is already boosting job growth, and it is only the beginning.

….Darren W. Woods, chairman and chief executive officer of Exxon Mobil announced the company’s investment program during a keynote speech today to an oil and gas industry conference in Houston, Texas. “Investments of this scale require a pro-growth approach and a stable regulatory environment and we appreciate the President’s commitment to both,” said Woods.

The weasel wording immediately alerted me that this was BS, but just as I was about to fire up Google to check it out, I read further:

The company’s Growing the Gulf program consists of 11 major chemical, refining, lubricant and liquefied natural gas projects at proposed new and existing facilities along the Texas and Louisiana coasts. Investments began in 2013 and are expected to continue through at least 2022.

They’re not even bothering to make us do any work anymore. They just admit straight up in the White House press release that this all started under President Obama four years ago. I guess they know they’ll get called on it if they don’t admit this, and they don’t really care anyway. All they care about is that their fans see “45,000 jobs” and “construction & manufacturing.” They’ll believe anything Trump says, and 45,000 sounds like a pretty big number. Mission accomplished.

Just for the record, the country added 20,000 jobs per month in construction alone over the past six years. ExxonMobil is adding about 400 jobs per month. Here’s the chart. Trump’s starting point is 6.8 million.

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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.

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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