Quote of the Day: Emergency? What Emergency?

Martin H. Simon/CNP via ZUMA

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From President Trump on the $6 billion he’s going to take from the military to build his wall:

I said, “What were you going to use it for?” And I won’t go into details, but it didn’t sound too important to me.

Good to know! But really, this is the most important thing Trump said:

I could do the wall over a longer period of time, I didn’t need to do this, but I’d rather do it much faster….The only reason we’re up here talking about this is because of the election, because they want to try and win an election which it looks like they’re not going to be able to do. And this is one of the ways they think they can possibly win is by obstruction and a lot of other nonsense. And I think that I just want to get it done faster, that’s all.

I assume this will be Exhibit A in the lawsuits that will be brought against Trump’s declaration of emergency. “I didn’t need to do this,” he said, and with that the game is up. Congress explicitly refused to appropriate the money he wanted, and Trump thinks this is just an election ploy. It’s hard to see how any judge can agree that this is a true emergency in the face of this admission on national TV.

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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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