Right off the bat, let’s acknowledge that Donald Trump has kept some of his campaign promises: he pulled out of TPP, the Paris Accord, and the Iran deal; he recognized Jerusalem as Israel’s capital; he started up a trade war with China; and he’s nominated lots of conservative judges. There are probably a few other small things too.

That’s not the worst record in the world for a politician. But Trump keeps claiming that he’s kept lots of other promises too, and an awful lot of people seem to buy it. If you look a little closer, though, “Promises Kept” is yet another Trump lie.

As Matt Yglesias points out, Trump didn’t just promise to build a wall on the Mexican border. He promised to build a wall and make Mexico pay for it. That was a lie, and one that he’s never even tried to make good on.

Ditto for tax cuts. He didn’t just promise a big corporate tax cut, he promised to raise taxes on the rich. That was another lie.

Nor did he promise merely to repeal Obamacare, he promised to replace it with something better and cheaper for everyone. Yet another lie.

He promised to break up big banks. He promised price controls on prescription drugs. He promised to withdraw American troops from Afghanistan. He promised that he was committed to upholding clean air and clean water goals. He promised a $1 trillion infrastructure package. He promised $20 billion toward funding charter schools. He promised bigger tax deductions for childcare and eldercare. He promised new ethics reforms. He promised to introduce a constitutional amendment to impose term limits on Congress. He promised a federal hiring freeze. He promised to label China a currency manipulator. He promised a lifetime ban on White House officials lobbying for foreign governments. He promised to bring manufacturing jobs back.

Some of these were probably lies that he never intended to follow up on in the first place. Some were things he just forgot about. Some he changed his mind about. And some he tried to implement by, say, writing a few words on Twitter, but never anything more.

This isn’t just partisan nitpicking. These are all real things that Trump promised and that people voted for. The problem is that no one cares. Republicans don’t care because they got a big tax cut and a lot of conservative judges, and that’s all they really wanted anyway. The press doesn’t care because they figure that all presidents fail on lots of things. And liberals are so inured to Trump lying about everything that it’s hard to care all that much about this stuff.

But just for the record: He didn’t try to make Mexico pay for a wall. He didn’t propose a health care program that would be great for everyone. He didn’t raise taxes on the rich. He didn’t introduce price controls on prescription drugs. He didn’t propose a $1 trillion infrastructure program. He did nothing on childcare. He did nothing on ethics reform. He did nothing on troop withdrawals.

Those are all things he promised to the ordinary folks who voted for him. But they were lies. He never seriously intended to follow through on any of them.

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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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