January 6, 2021

Here’s One Silver Lining to the Trump Mob in Washington

Bill Clark/Congressional Quarterly via ZUMA

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I’ve been asleep all day, and when I finally woke up I was greeted by news of an insane mob of MAGAnauts occupying the Capitol building. I gather they are being treated with surprising deference since they are, after all, mostly white and therefore considered patriots.

I know that everyone looks to me for the silver lining to things like this, so here goes: this is the perfect opportunity for everyone to finally repudiate Donald Trump completely. He obviously egged on the mob, and this is, finally, behavior that even the most sycophantic Trump supporter can use to break ties if they want to. If enough of them do it, this would ensure that Trump leaves town on January 20 and is forever after ignored and detested until the day he dies. Fox News can pretend he never existed and the rest of the media will have license to ignore him.

Will enough Republicans do this? I don’t know. But they have one last chance to do the right thing. They should take it.

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WE'LL BE BLUNT

We need to start raising significantly more in donations from our online community of readers, especially from those who read Mother Jones regularly but have never decided to pitch in because you figured others always will. We also need long-time and new donors, everyone, to keep showing up for us.

In "It's Not a Crisis. This Is the New Normal," we explain, as matter-of-factly as we can, what exactly our finances look like, how brutal it is to sustain quality journalism right now, what makes Mother Jones different than most of the news out there, and why support from readers is the only thing that keeps us going. Despite the challenges, we're optimistic we can increase the share of online readers who decide to donate—starting with hitting an ambitious $300,000 goal in just three weeks to make sure we can finish our fiscal year break-even in the coming months.

Please learn more about how Mother Jones works and our 47-year history of doing nonprofit journalism that you don't elsewhere—and help us do it with a donation if you can. We've already cut expenses and hitting our online goal is critical right now.

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