Behind His Back, the Whole World Thinks Trump Is a Joke

Claessens/Euc/Ropi via ZUMA

No, wait. And then he said he really likes french fries but not German chocolate cake. And he loves the Eiffel Tower but thinks it would look better in gold. No, seriously, that's what he said. And he thinks you should smile more. I swear.

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Let’s count up our ruined relationships around the world:

  • We’re in a trade war with China and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin says talks have “broken down.”
  • The North Korea summit was obviously a joke. Kim Jong Un blew off Secretary of State Mike Pompeo during last week’s follow-up, which participants said was a complete waste of time. North Korean negotiators failed to even show up for yesterday’s talks about POW remains.
  • NATO is in shambles after Trump spent his time in Brussels slamming everyone and everything in sight.
  • The EU writ large is none too happy about Trump’s love affair with the likes of Viktor Orbán and Marine Le Pen, nor with his notion that the whole point of the EU is to oppose the United States.
  • Our relationship with Britain is in the deep freeze after Trump kicked off his state visit with an incendiary interview in the Sun in which he blasted Theresa May and suggested Boris Johnson would make a great prime minister.
  • Ditto for Germany after Trump accused Angela Merkel of being in Vladimir Putin’s pocket.
  • Canada and Mexico are both infuriated too, partly over Trump’s insulting trade theatrics and partly over his wall.

So who do we still have good relations with? Israel, I suppose. Saudi Arabia. Russia, if we’re stretching the meaning of good. And I guess the new Five Star bros in Rome are sort of sympatico with Trump.

Anyone else?

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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.

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