Quote of the Day: Trump Says North Korea De-Nuking Will “Start Now”

Terence Tan/MCI via ZUMA

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From Donald Trump, on Kim Jong Un’s plans for his nuclear arsenal:

I mean he’s de-nuking the who-o-o-le place, and he’s going to start very quickly, I think he’s going to start now.

I feel like I’m in some kind of parallel dimension or something. Sure, there’s plenty of skepticism about what Kim is really going to do, but there’s also a lot of folks who are suggesting this is a “good first step,” or we’re “no longer on the brink of war,” or “maybe Trump really does have a new relationship with Kim.”

Have I lost it completely? Where is this stuff coming from? I’ll grant you that this entire process was driven by Kim, and there’s no telling for sure what he’s up to. It’s possible that he really does want to turn over a new leaf. Everything is possible, I suppose. But after reading the joint communique, which was as devoid of substance as a bit of cotton candy, does anyone seriously believe this?

I don’t. But once again we’re stuck in the weird netherworld of “maybe Trump has a bit of a point” after we discover some tiny kernel of semi-truth inside his interminable barrage of nonsense and babble. Why? The man lies about everything. His statements have no special relationship to reality at all. We know this. Everyone knows this. Why do we keep hoping that maybe this time is different?

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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.

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