October 22, 2018

A Quick Correction of Donald Trump’s Standard Stump Speech

So what is Donald Trump lying about lately? I don’t feel like repeating his lies, so here’s a quick and non-comprehensive correction of what he’s been telling his fans at his rallies:

  • There are no riots here in California.
  • Democrats do not want to give Cadillacs to undocumented immigrants.
  • Republicans do not have any kind of plan to lower middle-class taxes next year.
  • Illegal immigration is not increasing.
  • We do not have a $110 billion deal to supply arms to Saudi Arabia. We don’t really have any kind of deal at all, let alone one of that size.
  • Selling arms to Saudi Arabia, in whatever quantities, will not generate 500,000 jobs. Or 600,000 jobs. Or 1 million jobs. The entire defense industry only employs about 300,000 people in the first place, and Saudi Arabia is not that big a customer.
  • There’s no evidence that the caravan of migrants walking north from Guatemala includes any Middle Eastern terrorists.
  • Crime is not increasing.
  • Trump has not started building his wall. Nor is Mexico paying for his nonexistent wall.
  • Trump’s various health care plans did not protect people with pre-existing conditions.
  • The Veterans Choice Act was signed into law by President Obama in 2014, not by Trump. In 2017 Trump signed a bill approving a new version of the act that he likes better, but without bothering to fund it.
  • US Steel is not opening eight new plants. Or seven. Or six. Or even one.
  • Democrats will not destroy Medicare or Social Security.
  • Democrats do not advocate open borders. Democrats have placed a number of immigration proposals on the table over the past decade or so, and they’re all easy to find and read.

These are just the recent highlights. The list will undoubtedly expand substantially the next time Trump opens his mouth.

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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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