August 12, 2020

Trump Ramps Up the Racism and Sexism After Harris Makes History

That’s one way to meet the moment.

Stefani Reynolds/ZUMA

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.

One day after Joe Biden announced his decision to name Sen. Kamala Harris as his running mate, a history-making choice that saw the first Black woman and the first South Asian American woman to be nominated on a major party’s presidential ticket, President Trump is sticking to familiar terrain:

Let’s unpack this one. Right off the bat, Trump ramped up his use of outdated, sexist labels in order to make a blatant appeal to white suburban women—who by the way, overwhelmingly disapprove of the president these days. Continuing to stoke false and racist fears that America’s suburbs will be destroyed by a Biden presidency, he then suggested that Cory (note the spelling) Booker, the Black senator from New Jersey, would lead an effort to restore an Obama-era fair-housing policy that the Trump administration ended last month. (As my colleague Aaron Wiener explained when Trump first brought the issue to the forefront last month, Biden has embraced much of Booker’s housing plan for his own platform.) All this, Trump claimed, laid the groundwork for a suburban “invasion.”

The tweet is a generous serving of the racism and sexism we’ve long seen from this president. On the heels of the groundbreaking Harris news, it’s all the more glaring.

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.

payment methods

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.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate