October 12, 2016

President Obama Sniffs His Hand at a Campaign Rally to Prove He’s Not Demonically Possessed

But did he smell sulfur? Ask Alex Jones.

<a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/whitehouse/30192882505/">The White House</a>/Flickr

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On Monday, conspiracy radio host Alex Jones made a major announcement: White House sources had informed him that Hillary Clinton and President Barack Obama are “abject, psychopathic” demons “from Hell.”

Jones has hosted Donald Trump on his radio show, InfoWars, and quickly emerged as one of the Republican nominee’s leading boosters in conservative media. So at a rally Tuesday in Greensboro, North Carolina, Obama decided to respond. “I was reading the other day, there’s a guy on the radio who apparently, Trump’s on his show frequently, he said me and Hillary are demons. Said we smell like sulfur. Ain’t that something!”

Obama then paused to smell his own hand.

“Now, I mean, come on, people!” he said.

Trump only appeared on Jones’ show once, but both men have close relationships with conservative dirty trickster Roger Stone, a Nixon campaign vet who serves as an informal Trump adviser and a frequent InfoWars guest.

Jones, in case you’re unfamiiar with him, is a 9/11 Truther who claims the Sandy Hook massacre never happened. He has been critical of past Republican candidates, but he can’t get enough of The Donald. Jones also helped to popularize the “Hillary for Prison” t-shirts that are now ubiquitous at conservative rallies, and his show is an incubator for some of Trump’s wildest accusations—including the claim that the November election will be “rigged.”

“It is surreal,” Jones commented on his program in August, “to talk about issues here on air, and then word-for-word hear Trump say it two days later.”

But maybe Jones had a point. If Obama’s not the devil, how does the president explain this?

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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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