October 16, 2019

Unimpressed With the Debate, Trump Offers a New Conspiracy for Impeachment

Dire predictions if “any of these clowns became President!”

Brian Cahn/ZUMA

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President Donald Trump is claiming to be unimpressed with his Democratic challengers after Tuesday’s presidential debate in Ohio. But never one to decline an opportunity to bash his rivals or push a wild conspiracy theory, the president took to Twitter Wednesday morning and linked what he considered lackluster performances to the rationale for Democrats’ impeachment inquiry.

The current impeachment investigation has a very clear, if not overly narrow rationale: It is centered on his efforts to coerce a foreign power into digging political dirt into Democrats. Nevertheless, the president continued to rail against the inquiry Wednesday morning and claim that the economy would tank if any of his Democratic opponents defeated him.

But perhaps what’s most noteworthy about Trump’s post-debate ramblings is what he didn’t say. Tuesday’s debate was the first since the impeachment probe was launched, and therefore the first debate appearance by Joe Biden since becoming one of the central figures in that very investigation. So why isn’t Trump tearing into Biden? Maybe like the rest of the Democratic primary, Trump’s calculus has moved on.

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In "News Never Pays," our fearless CEO, Monika Bauerlein, connects the dots on several concerning media trends that, taken together, expose the fallacy behind the tragic state of journalism right now: That the marketplace will take care of providing the free and independent press citizens in a democracy need, and the Next New Thing to invest millions in will fix the problem. Bottom line: Journalism that serves the people needs the support of the people. That's the Next New Thing.

And it's what MoJo and our community of readers have been doing for 47 years now.

But staying afloat is harder than ever.

In "This Is Not a Crisis. It's The New Normal," we explain, as matter-of-factly as we can, what exactly our finances look like, why this moment is particularly urgent, and how we can best communicate that without screaming OMG PLEASE HELP over and over. We also touch on our history and how our nonprofit model makes Mother Jones different than most of the news out there: Letting us go deep, focus on underreported beats, and bring unique perspectives to the day's news.

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