May 10, 2018

Stephen Colbert Breaks Down All the Scandals Surrounding Michael Cohen

A “man who looks like cigarettes smell.”

It’s a difficult task keeping up with the mounting legal troubles engulfing Michael Cohen, President Donald Trump’s longtime personal lawyer.

There’s last month’s FBI raid into Cohen’s offices, Rudy Giuliani’s baffling statements confirming the president reimbursed Cohen for money to silence adult film star Stormy Daniels, and documents this week that reportedly show a firm connected to a Russian oligarch paid Cohen $500,000. Those documents also revealed Cohen was aggressively pitching large corporations access to the president shortly after the 2016 election.

If all that has left you reaching for a stiff drink, Stephen Colbert has a useful breakdown of Cohen—a “man who looks like cigarettes smell”—and the embattled Trump fixer’s seemingly never-ending scandals. The Late Show host also made sure not to spare corporations like AT&T for seeking insight into Trump via Cohen. 

“You paid for insight into this administration? He’s a horny old racist who likes cheeseburgers more than his children. $200,000 please.”

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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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