September 22, 2016

Donald Trump Is Still a Birther

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Ben Garbarek, a local news reporter in Toledo, asked Donald Trump today what it was that changed his mind about President Obama’s birthplace:

BG: This announcement earlier this week with you saying that you believe President Obama was in fact born in the United States, after all the years where you’ve expressed some doubt, what changed?

Trump: Well I just wanted to get on with, I wanted to get on with the campaign. A lot of people were asking me questions. We want to talk about jobs. We want to talk about the military. We want to talk about ISIS and get rid of ISIS. We want to talk about bringing jobs back to this area because you’ve been decimated so we just wanted to get back on the subject of jobs, military, taking care of our vets, etc.

He also asked Trump about his foundation:

BG: And with the Washington Post report out this week about the Trump Foundation. Could you explain to people why you may have used some charitable donations for personal uses?

Trump: The foundation is really rare. It gives money to vets. It’s really been doing a good job. I think we put that to sleep just by putting out the last report.”

This is all the usual gibberish, barely worth taking note of. Except for one thing: Trump must know that he’s going to have to answer these questions in the debate on Monday. Even if Lester Holt turns out to be a complete doofus, he’s going to insist on Trump actually addressing the substance of these issues. When did you change your mind about birtherism? What changed your mind? Why did you use a charitable foundation to pay business expenses? Have you done it more than the two times the Post caught you at?

I know Trump never does anything as lame as prepping for a debate, but his staff must at least be mulling over what kind of answer he’s going to give to these questions. This kind of huffing and puffing isn’t going to cut it on live national television.

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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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