June 13, 2016

Trump Says Obama Is Probably a Secret ISIS Mole or Something

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From the Washington Post:

Trump’s spokeswoman and campaign manager have yet to respond to a request for a fuller explanation of Trump’s comments about the president.

I have a feeling this sentence is going to get a lot of use over the next few months. As for what this is about, apparently Donald Trump was busily making the TV circuit this morning implying saying outright that “there’s something’s going on” with President Obama and Islamic terrorism. This is, of course, front page news, so now we all have to talk about it. Tomorrow we’ll get the thumbsuckers and fact checks explaining that, no, Obama is not in league with ISIS and he doesn’t hate America—but those will be on A13 because Trump will be on to something else and that will take up the front page.

Plus I guess Trump gave a speech about something. Let’s see…oh, here it is:

This was going to be a speech on Hillary Clinton and how bad a President, especially in these times of Radical Islamic Terrorism, she would be….But today there is only one thing to discuss: the growing threat of terrorism inside of our borders.

Reading through it, it sounds like a teleprompter special. A bunch of mush about getting tough and banning immigration from Muslim countries etc. etc., but without quite so many howlers of fact as usual. I guess we’ll have to keep waiting for the speech about how bad a president Hillary would be.

This is barely worth mocking anymore, let alone covering seriously. I’m off to lunch.

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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.

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