February 9, 2017

Your Morning Trump

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President Trump met with airline executives today:

Mr. Trump said the air-traffic control system is “totally out of whack”….“We want the traveling public to have the greatest customer service and with an absolute minimum of delays,” Mr. Trump said. “And we have an obsolete plane system, we have obsolete airports.”

What’s your guess? When he said “obsolete plane system” was he referring to air traffic control? Probably. Do you think he’s aware that the FAA is already in the middle of rolling out NextGen, a massive upgrade of America’s air traffic control? Probably not. Would it be nice to have a president who doesn’t sound like a third grader? I think so.

In other news:

  • Trump is pissed off at Sen. Richard Blumenthal for passing along the news that Supreme Court nominee Neil Gorsuch called Trump’s attack on the judiciary “demoralizing” and “disheartening.” Trump’s response: attack Blumenthal for misrepresenting his Vietnam-era military service a couple of times, and imply that he’s lying again even though several other people have confirmed Gorsuch’s comments.
  • Trump is also pissed off at John McCain for having the gall to suggest that a military operation under the Trump administration could be anything other than a resounding success.
  • Kellyanne Conway joined her boss this morning in trying to pump up sales of Ivanka Trump’s clothing line. Unlike her boss, however, Conway is not exempt from conflict-of-interest rules. However, enforcement of ethics rules is usually left to the head of the federal agency—which in this case is Donald Trump. I think we can expect a pretty relaxed attitude toward these kinds of violations.

Welcome to Thursday.

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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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