August 10, 2017

Paul Manafort Squealed, Now He’s In the Hot Seat

Hey, remember that meeting last year between Don Jr. and the Russian attorney? The one that was set up because the attorney promised some dirt on Hillary Clinton? Sure you do. But how did anyone find out about that, anyway? Bloomberg tells us today that Paul Manafort was the snitch:

Manafort had alerted authorities to a controversial meeting on June 9, 2016, involving Trump’s son Donald Jr., other campaign representatives and a Russian lawyer promising damaging information on Hillary Clinton, according to people familiar with the matter. The president and his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, were dragged into the matter as details repeatedly emerged that contradicted the initial accounts of that meeting.

Hmmm. Isn’t that interesting? Maybe it explains why Donald Trump’s pals at the National Enquirer have suddenly decided to go after Manafort:

This is the kind of revenge that happens in movies but not in real life. In the Trump Era, however, reality TV is real life.

By the way, it’s worth noting that Trump’s connection to the Enquirer is yet another way for him to talk to his base. DC reporters don’t read the Enquirer, after all, nor do they take it seriously. But Trump’s fans do. Between Twitter, Trump’s rallies, Fox News, Drudge, the Enquirer, and talk radio, Trump supporters are fed a full media spectrum of alternate reality. There’s probably about a quarter of the country that’s literally as out of touch with the real world as any North Korean peasant.

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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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