September 13, 2018

Fox News Reports That Fans Are Just “Furious” Willie Nelson Would Have a Rally With Beto O’Rourke

Clearly, they’re true fans.

Jason DeCrow/AP

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On Wednesday, music legend Willie Nelson announced he’d headline a rally for Democratic Rep. Beto O’Rourke, who is challenging Sen. Ted Cruz, at a Texas amphitheater later this month. According to Fox News, fans are absolutely “furious” that a pot-smoking, reincarnation-believing, environmentalist like Nelson would do such a thing.

“My wife Annie and I have met and spoken with Beto and we share his concern for the direction things are headed,” Nelson said in a press release announcing the concert. “Beto embodies what is special about Texas, an energy and an integrity that is completely genuine.”

Nelson shared the press release on his Facebook page, and according to Fox, “fans were taken aback” by the news, writing things like, “I’ve always thought you were a patriot but you have jumped the shark my friend,” or “Beto O’toole aka commrade O’Rourke is a step too far. Let me know when you come back from your bad acid trip. That is all.” Another commented, “Goodbye Willie, I don’t support socialist commies!”

One fan pointed out what we were all thinking: “It has been pretty obvious for a very long time that Willie Nelson is not a conservative.”

Nelson has in the past supported candidates like Ohio congressman Dennis Kucinich, Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders, and once wrote a Trump-inspired song called “Delete and Fast-Forward.” Here are some of the lyrics:

Delete and fast-forward, my son
The elections are over and nobody won
You think it’s all endin’ but it’s just settin’ in
So delete and fast-forward, my friend

…

Delete and fast-forward the news
The truth is the truth, but believe what you choose
When we blow the whole world back to where it began
Just delete and fast-forward again

My word.

The rally is scheduled for September 29.

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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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