Trump Says Iran Has a Nuclear Weapons Program. He’s Lying.

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Here’s the latest from the White House:

My, that’s quite the spectacular lie. Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu did give a speech today about Iran’s nuclear program, but it was mostly just political theater. It was delivered in English and was little more than a rehash of the long-known fact that Iran had a nuclear bomb program back in the early 2000s. But it was shuttered 15 years ago—and Iran’s uranium enrichment program was shut down after they signed the 2015 nuclear deal with Obama.

I assume that either today or tomorrow some White House flak will “explain” that this whole thing was just a typo. The s key is right next to the d key! Or that an intern wrote it. Or that “nuclear weapons program” refers to filing cabinets full of old engineering papers. Or something. Who knows?

UPDATE: The White House has already quietly edited their statement to change Iran has to Iran had. It looks like “it was just a typo” has the early lead!

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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.

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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