April 4, 2020

“One of the greatest answers I’ve ever heard.”

Gripas Yuri/Abaca via ZUMA

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A couple of days ago John Roberts asked a question. President Trump immediately tossed it to Mike Pence, who used up nearly a thousand words saying nothing responsive. Remarkably, Roberts followed up not once, not twice, but four times:

You were considering, last month reopening the Healthcare.gov exchanges. There has been a determination not to do that. Could you tell us what the rationale was behind that decision?

But about people who don’t have insurance?

Understood, Mr. Vice President. But there will be people who don’t have insurance —

But, again, Mr. Vice President —

I’m sorry to belabor a point, but that’s for people who —

Finally Trump took pity on Pence and showed him how a pro does it: “It’s something we’re really going to look at,” he said, which in Trumpspeak means that it’s never going to happen. But it also cuts off followups at their knees. What more can you ask? Trump then praised his veep:

I think it’s one of the greatest answers I’ve ever heard, because Mike was able to speak for five minutes and not even touch your question.

This is how these briefings go, and that was between Trump and a Fox reporter. You can just imagine how the rest of it went. It’s pure circus, pure campaign event, pure ratings bonanza, pure performance art. This is why they shouldn’t be broadcast live.

UPDATE: To my great surprise, Trump did end up looking at it. Yesterday he announced that he would pay hospitals for uninsured COVID-19 patients as long as they didn’t charge the patients anything. Good for him.

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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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