November 13, 2019

The Impeachment Hearing Is About to Start. Trump Is Already Short-Circuiting.

A historic morning indeed!

Douglas Christian/ZUMA

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As the first day of televised impeachment hearings prepare to go live, let’s pause to take the temperature inside the White House, where President Donald Trump appears to be short-circuiting: 

After kicking off the morning with those nods to Fox News, Trump then opted to keep things short, sticking closely to his catchphrase defenses against the biggest threat to his presidency.

To translate: the “READ THE TRANSCRIPT” demand, as we previously explained, has served as Trump’s go-to rejoinder to the investigation; “NEVER TRUMPERS” is his attempt to falsely paint the witnesses in the impeachment inquiry as politically biased.

All that followed a late night of retweeting and quoting in advance of what’s all but certain to be a historic day, as House Democrats attempt to convince the country that Trump abused his power to coerce foreign intervention in the 2020 election. The president appears to have left his morning wide open for the opening remarks, so prepare yourself for some more meltdowns.

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We need to start raising significantly more in donations from our online community of readers, especially from those who read Mother Jones regularly but have never decided to pitch in because you figured others always will. We also need long-time and new donors, everyone, to keep showing up for us.

In "It's Not a Crisis. This Is the New Normal," we explain, as matter-of-factly as we can, what exactly our finances look like, how brutal it is to sustain quality journalism right now, what makes Mother Jones different than most of the news out there, and why support from readers is the only thing that keeps us going. Despite the challenges, we're optimistic we can increase the share of online readers who decide to donate—starting with hitting an ambitious $300,000 goal in just three weeks to make sure we can finish our fiscal year break-even in the coming months.

Please learn more about how Mother Jones works and our 47-year history of doing nonprofit journalism that you don't elsewhere—and help us do it with a donation if you can. We've already cut expenses and hitting our online goal is critical right now.

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