March 3, 2016

Eventually a Trump Rally Is Going to Boil Over. But When?

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I watched a bit of Donald Trump’s speech this morning, but eventually got bored and went to lunch. I had only tuned in to listen to him insult Mitt Romney, but every time he started up he immediately veered off into some random Trumpism (Mexico will pay for the wall, Obamacare is a trainwreck, etc.) and it took him a minute or two to get back on track. After half an hour he’d basically said that (a) Romney lost in 2012, and (b) Romney begged Trump for his endorsement. That was it. Oh, and Trump is a lot richer than Romney.

Within that half hour, though, I saw no fewer than four protesters start yelling, only to be hauled away by police or Trump security guards. Obviously, this is becoming a thing, a set piece bit of political theater that both sides welcome. But will it remain theater? David French doesn’t phrase things quite the way I would (no surprise there), but he’s got the right idea:

Two sets of political and cultural arsonists are on a collision course — the angry fringe leftist who lives to disrupt versus the angry fringe Trump supporter who is begging for a fight. And when two sides are itching for a confrontation, they usually get it.

….It would be painfully easy for leftist activists to position themselves close to a group of strategically-chosen Trump supporters, initiate a disruption, and then resist the instant the crowd tried to push them out. A racially-charged brawl would be endlessly replayed on the nightly news, complete with injured, bleeding victims, and national tensions would start to boil over.

….So far, the far Left has trained most of its fire on its more moderate allies. That could soon change, and if it does…we could see the worst political violence since 1968.

I don’t really buy the “worst since 1968” line, but there’s not much question that both the protesters and Trump are eventually headed for violence. Trump wants it because it will make him look tough. His supporters want it because they hate the hippies. And the protesters want it in order to show just what a fascist Trump really is.

At this point, the game is to make sure the other side gets the blame when this happens. So the question is: who’s going to show the most discipline? Because in the public eye, whoever throws the first punch will be the one who started the violence. This is a high-stakes media game that depends on a rotating cast of completely random actors—and that makes it potentially pretty scary.

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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.

And we need readers to show up for us big time—again.

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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