August 10, 2017

Donald Trump Really Has It In For the State Department

What happened while I was at lunch? Let’s see. Jeffrey Lord got fired from CNN for tweeting “Sieg Heil” at someone. Scientists announced that pig-human transplants will be available soon. Other scientists have created mutant ants. And Donald Trump thanked Vladimir Putin for kicking out hundreds of American diplomats.

Wait. What?

“I want to thank him,” Trump said at his Bedminster, New Jersey, golf club, “because we’re trying to cut down our payroll, and as far as I’m concerned I’m very thankful that he let go of a large number of people because now we have a smaller payroll.”

Ha ha ha. That’s a good one, Mr. President. A real thigh-slapper.

I suppose Trump was just trying to deflect a pesky question, but it hardly matters. The president of the United States publicly told a bunch of career diplomats that they weren’t doing anything worthwhile and he’s happy to have an excuse to fire them. He won’t, of course, but that doesn’t matter either. What matters is that we have a president who thinks it’s funny to say stuff like this. I wonder how he’d feel if someone said something similar about our overseas troops?

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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.

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