Donald Trump Has a Few Regrets

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Donald Trump said today that there were a few things he regretted saying in the heat of the campaign. However, he didn’t say what he regretted, and everyone immediately suggested that reporters should ask him for specifics. The list below is just off the top of my head, but here are a few things he might admit that he regrets:

  1. Saying I opposed the Iraq War, even though it was a lie.
  2. Implying that I opposed withdrawing from Iraq, even though it was a lie.
  3. Attacking a Muslim family that lost their son in Iraq.
  4. Suggesting that we should register all Muslims in the US.
  5. Saying that Ted Cruz’s father was involved in the JFK assassination.
  6. Calling Hillary Clinton the “founder” of ISIS.
  7. Saying that I might break our NATO guarantee by not defending the Baltics.
  8. Trying to renege on a $1 million donation to a vets charity until the Washington Post embarrassed me into it.
  9. Saying the real unemployment rate was 44 percent, which I knew was a lie.
  10. Saying that my companies offered child care to their employees, which was another lie.
  11. Confirming a story that I sent my personal jet to ferry soldiers stuck at Camp Lejeune, yet another lie.
  12. Continually claiming that neighbors of the San Bernardino shooters saw bombs in their apartment, also a lie.
  13. Claiming that I saw a video of Iran unloading pallets of cash.
  14. Claiming that I saw thousands of Muslims celebrating on 9/11, even though I didn’t.
  15. Tweeting that 81 percent of white homicide victims are killed by blacks.
  16. Saying that the Obama administration was deliberately sending Syrian refugees to red states, which was a lie.
  17. Saying that Carly Fiorina is ugly.
  18. Repeatedly claiming that America has the highest tax rate in the world, a huge lie.
  19. Telling Anderson Cooper that I still don’t really know if Barack Obama was born in the US.
  20. Claiming that more than 300,000 veterans have died waiting for VA care.
  21. Saying that vaccines cause autism, which is a disturbing and genuinely damaging lie.
  22. Denying that I suggested Japan should get nuclear weapons, even though I said exactly that to Chris Wallace of Fox News.
  23. Calling Hillary Clinton a liar when she said—accurately—that I had suggested Japan should get nuclear weapons.
  24. Claiming that judge Gonzalo Curiel was biased against me because of his Hispanic heritage.
  25. Promising that I would tell all Trump properties to allow guns on their premises.
  26. Slyly implying that maybe President Obama is actually sympathetic to ISIS.
  27. Not releasing my income tax returns even though I promised to, and then lying about this being due to an IRS audit.
  28. Saying that John McCain was no kind of war hero because he got captured.
  29. Mocking a disabled reporter in front of a huge crowd.
  30. Claiming in a debate that I never called Marco Rubio “Mark Zuckerberg’s personal senator” even though that’s exactly what I called him.
  31. Being a cheapskate who never donates any money to charity.
  32. Saying that I support torturing enemy combatants.
  33. Suggesting that maybe somebody ought to assassinate Hillary Clinton.

I’m sure there are plenty of big insults and lies not on this list. I don’t have the memory of a 20-year-old anymore. But this should be enough to get everyone started.

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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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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.

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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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