January 9, 2018

Here Is My Full-Scale Crisis Communications Plan for Donald Trump

Kevin Dietsch/CNP via ZUMA

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LOL:

The White House is struggling to contain the national discussion about President Trump’s mental acuity and fitness for the job, which has overshadowed the administration’s agenda for the past week….Trump privately resents the now-regular chatter on cable television news shows about his mental health and views the issue as “an invented fact” and “a joke.”

….Some Trump allies voiced frustration that the White House does not appear to have implemented a full-scale crisis communications plan. “When you raise an issue like the mental acuity of the president, there is no organized effort to push back,” said one ally, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to talk candidly. “How do you disprove a fallacy?”

Actually, fallacies are disproven all the time. That’s why they’re called fallacies in the first place. In this case, it would be easy to disprove that Trump is a moron, and in a spirit of bipartisan magnanimity I’m going to reveal how to do it free of charge. Are you ready? Here it is:

Have Trump give a live TV interview in which he addresses policy issues in depth and shows that he has actual, demonstrable knowledge of a variety of topics. Points will be deducted for every meandering mention of (a) Hillary Clinton, (b) fake news, (c) his record-breaking election victory, (d) the FBI, (e) the unfairness of the Russia investigation, (f) his IQ, (g) collusion between Democrats and Russia, (h) how he personally turned around the economy, or anything else that’s so off-topic it’s not even in left field.

A bright high school senior could do this, so the bar is set pretty low. You don’t need a full-scale crisis communications plan. This is all it would take.

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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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