June 23, 2018

Trump Officials Can No Longer Eat Out in Peace

Sarah Sanders, Kirstjen Nielsen, and Stephen Miller have all faced pushback over dinner.

Chris Kleponis and Ron Sachs/CNP/ZUMA; Cheriss May/NurPhoto/ZUMA

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It’s been a rough week for Trump administration officials trying to enjoy a dinner out.

First came the run-in on this past Sunday, when White House adviser Stephen Miller was hounded while eating at DC’s Espita Mezcaleria. According to the New York Post, diners called him a “real-life fascist begging money for new cages.”

On Tuesday, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen was forced to leave Mexican restaurant MXDC after hecklers descended on the Washington eatery shouting, “Shame!” “End family separation!” and “If kids don’t eat in peace, you don’t eat in peace!”

(The New Yorker noted their odd choice of dining venues, given the political optics.)

A couple of days later, protesters gathered outside Nielsen’s home, blasting the ProPublica audio of detained children crying at an immigration facility.

Then, on Friday night, White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders was asked to leave The Red Hen, a farm-to-table restaurant in Lexington, Virginia. “I explained the restaurant has certain standards that I feel it has to uphold, such as honesty, and compassion, and cooperation,” the restaurant’s co-owner, Stephanie Wilkinson, told the Washington Post.

Well, there’s always Chick-fil-A.

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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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