May 20, 2016

Donald Trump, Still a Skinflint?

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David Fahrenthold reports today that Donald Trump’s $6 million fundraiser for veterans actually raised only $4.5 million. I don’t have a big problem with that. Sometimes people make pledges and then back out of them. That’s life in the fundraising biz, where a 75 percent fulfillment rate probably isn’t unheard of. But Fahrenthold managed to identify two of the donors who backed out. One was a shopping mall magnate. The other was…

The other donor had made a much bigger promise: Trump, with his vow to give $1 million. In the past few days, The Post has interviewed 22 veterans charities that received donations as a result of Trump’s fundraiser. None of them have reported receiving personal donations from Trump.

Did Trump make good on his promise to give from his personal funds? “The money is fully spent. Mr. Trump’s money is fully spent,” Lewandowski said.

Who did Trump give to, and in what amounts? “He’s not going to share that information,” Lewandowski said.

This is just weird. Is it really possible that Trump reneged on his promise to donate $1 million? That would be completely nuts. It would be like me promising to toss in twenty bucks for an office party gift and then backing out, even though I knew there was a good chance I’d be caught. What kind of pathological skinflint would do that?

And yet, if he has donated $1 million, what possible reason is there for not telling us where it went? That’s crazy too, since it inevitably leads to stories just like this one. Even Trump’s most rabid fans would probably hold it against him if it turns out he lied about making a donation to veterans.

Aside from everything else, Trump is one seriously weird dude.

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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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