March 16, 2018

2018 Is the Year of Trump Unchained

The Washington Post, once again, regales us with an inside story about the Trump White House “based on interviews with 19 presidential advisers and administration officials.” This time the piece focuses on all the people who have been fired—or are about to be fired—and how it’s affecting the mood of Trump staffers. Here’s a quick rundown:

Staffers are gripped by fear and un­certainty … administration in turmoil … the mood inside the White House in recent days has verged on mania … anxious and nervous … characters in an absurdist farce … betting about which staffer will be ousted next … “Everybody fears the perp walk” … death watch for McMaster.

So who’s in danger? Just about everyone:

[National Security Advisor] H.R. McMaster … with whom he never personally gelled … Veterans Affairs Secretary David Shulkin has attracted Trump’s ire for his spending decisions as well as for general disorder … Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson, who has generated bad headlines for ordering a $31,000 dining room set for his office … Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt, who has been under fire for his first-class travel at taxpayer expense … Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke, whose agency spent $139,000 to renovate his office doors … Education Secretary Betsy DeVos drew attention this week when she stumbled through a pair of high-profile television interviews … [Chief of Staff John] Kelly’s departure could be imminent.

Whew! The Post also reports that Trump is thrilled about finally ignoring all the Chicken Littles and just putting the damn steel tariffs in place. And everything turned out fine! See? So now he wants to do all the other stuff that he knows in his heart is right, but that his tedious advisors keep resisting with “facts” and “studies.”

So 2018 will be the year of Trump Unchained. We’ll finally get to see Trump being Trump. And just you wait. Everyone who says you “just can’t do” stuff like tearing up NAFTA and nuking North Korea will be proven wrong. It should be a fun year.

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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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