November 2, 2020

I Am Furious Republican Grifters Are Now Resistance Heroes

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An edited transcript of a Slack conversation between me and my editor about the Lincoln Project, the Never Trump–led organization that has managed to emerge as Resistance icons—despite the fact that the tireless work of all their now proud, ever-so-concerned-never-Trumpers led to the mess we are in.  

Me: I can’t tell you how many times in the last few months I’ve yelled, “Oh, now I’M the asshole.”

My editor: LOL, that would be a great Lincoln Project ad

Me: Except, I hate them.

My editor: Fair, but why do you hate them? Because they made such a fucking mess of the world and are now backing off?

Me: Yes. They’re essentially Victor Frankenstein in the crowd with a pitchfork. Every thing they did to the Republican Party led to this moment. 

My editor: Yeah…totally right.

Me: And now they get to be all, “Oooh, my precious country!” Like, fuck off, you built it this way!

My editor: This could be a great post. NOT that I will ever force you to do one.

Me: I feel like [redacted] likes them.

My editor: That’s probably true, but you do have some strong facts on your side.

Me: Republicans really need to leave Abraham Lincoln alone. He’s dead, let that man rest.

My editor: When I looked at Steve Schmidt on 60 Minutes, Schmidt who was responsible for pushing Sarah Palin onto the Republican ticket in 2008, thereby legitimizing the crazies in the party, I wanted to say, “You are to blame!” 

Me: Watching MSNBC with him and Nicole Wallace being all “Oooh, those Republicans are so pesky!” Gee, whose fault is that? 

My editor: LOL, love “pesky.” Yes, we do know know whose fault it is. But to really find out we can look forward to the Lincoln Project’s collective mea culpa book tour. 

Me: “Here’s my book on how I was cancelled, I am also a contributing talking head on CNN!” Like damn, CANCEL ME INSTEAD. 😩

My editor: Yeah, 100 percent. Everyone loves the reformed sinner, I suppose. But they seem to have amnesia.

Me: They’re not so much reformed as just pretending it never happened. I mean Rick Wilson was tweeting racist things in 2015. Now he’s a resistance hero? Forgiveness works in mysterious ways.

My editor: Well, so does repentance.

Me: Makes me wish cancel culture was real. —Nathalie Baptiste 

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WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

Because the in-depth journalism on underreported beats and unique perspectives on the daily news you turn to Mother Jones for is only possible because readers fund us. Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism we exist to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

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Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

If you can right now, please support the journalism you get from Mother Jones with a donation at whatever amount works for you. And please do it now, before you move on to whatever you're about to do next and think maybe you'll get to it later, because every gift matters and we really need to see a strong response if we're going to raise the $253,000 we need in less than three weeks.

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