December 23, 2018

Donald Trump Did Two Things Right This Week

Kyle Mazza/NurPhoto via ZUMA

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“Do you think Donald Trump has done anything right?” a friend asked me a few months ago. That was a tough one. Aside from trivial stuff, I think I eventually conceded that China really did deserve some tougher trade treatment and that the AT&T/Time Warner merger deserved to be stopped. Trump did both of these things for the wrong reasons, and in the case of China screwed up the execution epically. But I more-or-less supported the underlying concept behind both of them.

This week added two more items. First, Trump decided to withdraw from Syria. Once again, he did it for the wrong reasons, and there’s every reason to think he’s going to execute his decision as badly as possible. Still, I basically agree with him that we should never have been there and should pull out now even if it means accepting some ugly consequences.

Today brought the fourth item. After finally figuring out what James Mattis’s resignation letter really meant, Trump moved up Mattis’s final day in office to December 31 and replaced him with Deputy Secretary of Defense Patrick Shanahan. This was the right decision for two reasons. First, Mattis really had no right to set his own resignation date in the first place. He should either have consulted Trump about it or else simply resigned and allowed Trump to name the date. Second, Mattis wrote a truly brutal resignation letter. Trump was too dumb to figure this out for a while, but once he did he had no choice but to get rid of Mattis as soon as possible. It’s simply not possible to keep working with a Defense Secretary who has publicly declared that he believes his commander-in-chief is too soft on our enemies, too contemptuous toward our allies, and pays too little attention to national security and American values. Mattis may have said these things diplomatically, but he said them.

So there we have it: two more things Trump has done that I agree with. As usual, he did them badly and for the wrong reasons, but at least he got them right.

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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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