February 19, 2016

Quote of the Day: Donald Trump Was Against the Iraq War No Matter What He Actually Said at the Time

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From Donald Trump, asked on September 11, 2002, if he was in favor of invading Iraq:

Yeah…I guess so. I wish the first time it was done correctly.

That’s Donald being “loud and strong” against the Iraq War. For the record, his explanation is, yeah, he said it, but it was probably the first time anyone had asked him. But for sure he was against it a little later. Seriously. He was.

As you might expect, being confronted with this didn’t even cause him to break stride. He immediately segued into a lengthy rant about how he was totally opposed to the war and everyone knew it, there were all sorts of headlines, and it destabilized the whole Middle East, it was responsible for ISIS and Libya and, um, Syria, the biggest mistake ever in American history, and it was Obama’s fault too, just a disaster, and Saddam didn’t bring down the towers, it was probably the Saudis, and did I mention that it was a complete and total disaster? And I was against it. Totally.

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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.

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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.

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