September 8, 2016

Donald Trump Just Demonstrated That He Knows Precisely Nothing About National Security

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The phrase “not even wrong” is a cliche by now. It was Wolfgang’s Pauli’s reaction to a physics paper he had been given to read, and it basically means that something is so far off point that it’s entirely meaningless. It’s like asking about 2+2 and answering “blue.”

This is what Donald Trump sounded like tonight at the Commander-in-Chief Forum on NBC. It’s hardly even possible to fact-check him. What have you done in your life to prepare for sending men and women to war? I have great judgment. Can we afford a president who pops off all the time with stuff he later regrets? After my visit to Mexico, some guy was forced to resign. Do you really believe you know more about ISIS than the generals? Obama has reduced the generals to rubble. After you crush ISIS, how will you make sure another terrorist group doesn’t come back? I’d take the oil. How would you take the oil? I would just leave some guys behind where the oil is. How would you de-escalate tensions with Russia? Did you see that China didn’t put out stairs for Air Force One last week? Do you really want to be complimented by a guy like Vladimir Putin? We’re losing jobs like we’re a bunch of babies. What are you doing to prepare for being president? I’ve been endorsed by 88 admirals and generals. How much time are you spending on this? A lot.

Meanwhile, host Matt Lauer spent a full third of his time with Hillary Clinton badgering her about emails. Welcome to Campaign 2016.

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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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