October 31, 2018

Paul Ryan Just Discovered What Happens When You Disagree With Trump

For once the House Speaker had the temerity to comment on the news of the day.

Tasos Katopodis/Getty Images

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Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) has come up with every possible excuse to avoid commenting on the news of the day. 

“I’m not going to take the bait this morning,” he said when asked about Donald Trump’s support for torture. 

“I haven’t paid that close attention to it,” he said when asked about Scott Pruitt, the Environmental Protection Agency’s scandal-plagued ex-administrator. 

“I haven’t seen the details yet,” he said when asked about a remarkably optimistic White House budget.  

So when the Speaker of the House, who is not running for reelection, finally decided to chime in on Donald Trump’s threat to eliminate birthright citizenship for undocumented immigrants by executive order—something legal scholars have roundly described as unconstitutional—it seemed only fitting that the president would retort that Ryan “knows nothing about” the topic. 

A spokesperson for Ryan did not immediately respond to a request for comment about Trump’s tweet, but the Speaker once told reporters: “I’ve decided I’m not going to comment on the tweets of the day or the hour. I haven’t seen them all, to be candid with you.”

WE CAME UP SHORT.

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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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