Trump Finally Caves, Gives Money to Vets After Media Badgers Him Into It

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Our story so far: on January 28, Donald Trump pledged $1 million at a charity fundraiser for veterans. Four months later, after considerable digging, the Washington Post was unable to find any evidence that he had made good on his pledge, so they asked his campaign manager about it. On Friday, Corey Lewandowski said “The money is fully spent. Mr. Trump’s money is fully spent.” So who did he give it to? “He’s not going to share that information.”

So the Post kept digging all day Monday. Finally, on Tuesday, we learned that Lewandowski had lied. Trump had not, in fact, given any money to anyone:

Trump said in an interview Tuesday that he pledged the $1 million to the Marine Corps – Law Enforcement Foundation. The mogul notified the group’s chairman, retired FBI official James Kallstrom, in a phone call sometime Monday night, according to Kallstrom’s wife, Sue Kallstrom.

The Washington Post had been querying charities on social media, trying to find evidence that his $1 million had been received by any veterans’ groups. Trump fulfilled his pledge hours later, it appears.

Why had it taken almost four months? “You have a lot of vetting to do,” Trump said….When asked if the Monday donation was in response to questions from the news media, Trump said: “You know, you’re a nasty guy. You’re really a nasty guy. I gave out millions of dollars that I had no obligation to do.”

Even for Trump, this is inexplicable. Whenever you think he can’t possibly be a bigger douche, he proves you wrong. What a revolting human being he is.

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WE'LL BE BLUNT.

We have a considerable $390,000 gap in our online fundraising budget that we have to close by June 30. There is no wiggle room, we've already cut everything we can, and we urgently need more readers to pitch in—especially from this specific blurb you're reading right now.

We'll also be quite transparent and level-headed with you about this.

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.

You're here for reporting like that, not fundraising, but one cannot exist without the other, and it's vitally important that we hit our intimidating $390,000 number in online donations by June 30.

And we hope you might consider pitching in before moving on to whatever it is you're about to do next. It's going to be a nail-biter, and we really need to see donations from this specific ask coming in strong if we're going to get there.

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