July 19, 2016

Melania Trump Helps Us Forget Rudy Giuliani Was a Speaker Tonight

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Melania Trump just gave her speech, but I’m not sure I heard it all. My ears were still ringing from Rudy Giuliani’s 15-minute shriek about how we were all going to die if Hillary Clinton gets elected president. Damn. Was he afraid the microphones weren’t working, or what?

Trump was smart to have Rudy go on just before Melania. She might have been a little nervous, but anyone would have seemed like a cool, refreshing breeze after Rudy’s yawp (my favorite part: “Donald Trump will lead by leading”). Needless to say, Melania didn’t say much except that Donald was a great guy, but I guess that’s OK. It would have been nice to hear a few personal anecdotes explaining why she actually likes him, but maybe those are hard to come by.

On the downside, I lost my bet with myself. I figured Donald would use his introduction to talk about himself as usual, but he didn’t. He actually restrained himself and just introduced his wife and then left the stage. Maybe he really is pivoting for the general election.

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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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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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