April 3, 2014

NBC Lands Exclusive With George W. Bush By Letting His Daughter Interview Him

Because chatting about paintings among family now counts as journalism.

Jenna Bush Hager with her father in 2008.Lawrence Jackson/AP Photo

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NBC’s Today landed a hot exclusive for their Friday episode. The show will air an interview with former president George W. Bush, who has been press-shy in retirement. For the rare interview, the network brought in their most august, hard-hitting journalist to non-enhanced interrogate Bush: his daughter, Jenna Bush Hager. The president’s daughter has been a correspondent for Today and NBC News since 2009. Back then, Today‘s executive producer Jim Bell said the president’s daughter hadn’t been hired for her political connections. According to the Associated Press: “Bell said Hager won’t be covering politics. He said he didn’t consider the job as a down payment for a future interview with her father, who has been living quietly in Texas since leaving office earlier this year.”

What will Bush Hager ask her father? Will she quiz Bush about the Senate’s investigation of the CIA’s torture program during his tenure? Ask him how he feels about the long-term unemployed who have struggled to find work after the recession that began under his watch? See if he agrees with his former vice president, who thinks we should bomb Iran?

No, silly. Bush Hager will have a pleasant little chat about her father’s retirement hobby of painting. The Bush Presidential Library in Dallas is set to rollout a new exhibit this week featuring Bush’s portraits of 24 “world leaders.” Based on advance excerpts of the interview provided by NBC, Bush Hager poses challenging questions such as whether any of the subjects have seen their portraits yet (they haven’t) and whether her mom was offended when her dad tried to paint her (“Yeah, don’t paint your wife,” he jokes). Journalism!

Here’s a preview of the interview from Thursday’s show:

 

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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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