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Here’s a quick evening roundup of Trump fuckuppery. First up, I’m sure you remember that the original White House story behind James Comey’s firing was that deputy AG Rod Rosenstein had recommended it and Trump just went along. Well, it turns out there was a reason this story was abruptly retracted and revised today:

Second, poor old Sean Spicer is once again in the crosshairs:

Every few weeks we hear that Trump is sounding out replacements for Spicer, but somehow Spicer always seems to ride out the storm. But I have to say that being fired now, before things really descend to Ron Ziegler level, might be the best thing Spicer could hope for.

Finally, in non-Comey fuckuppery, Trump refused to let US photographers into the Oval Office for his meeting with the Russians this morning. However, he did allow a TASS photographer in, apparently under the impression he was just taking snapshots for Vladimir Putin’s grandkids:

Trump (a) didn’t know that TASS is a news agency, (b) didn’t realize that letting a TASS photographer into the Oval Office might not be a great idea from a security point of view, and (c) didn’t realize that publishing pictures of this meeting was the whole point Vladimir Putin had asked for it in the first place. Putin wanted evidence to show that Russia was back, baby, and this was it. It’s scary how easily Trump was played on all this. It’s also scary that apparently none of his advisors had the courage to tell Trump any of this stuff.

UPDATE: I have been informed that the correct spelling is fuckuppery, with two p’s. I had no idea this was even a word, let alone one I could misspell. However, it’s now corrected. I hope this acts as a lesson to you all.

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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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