June 13, 2016

Trump Fundraiser Says You’ll Be Screwed If You Don’t Get on Board Now

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BuzzFeed’s Ben Smith was at Mitt Romney’s big annual bash in Park City this weekend, which fairly seethed with anti-Trump sentiment. However, Trump had an ally in attendance: Anthony Scaramucci, the former Obama supporter who became a former Romney supporter who became a former Scott Walker supporter who became a former Jeb Bush supporter and is now a Donald Trump fundraiser. This history suggests that Scaramucci doesn’t actually care much for Trump, but hey—he’s a hedge fund manager. He’ll sell whatever dog food he has to sell. And right now that’s Donald Trump.

But Smith’s story sure doesn’t make Scaramucci look very effective in this role. “Scaramucci tried a series of approaches in quick succession,” the story says, but those approaches look to me like they came from a sixth grader. You don’t want eight more years of government regulation, do you? You don’t want to abandon Paul Ryan, do you? You don’t want to hurt the Republican Party, do you? And anyway, Trump “needs your wisdom,” possibly the most hilarious serious sales pitch anyone has ever made on behalf of Trump. These are all pathetically obvious approaches. Then Scaramucci tried a harder sell:

“Let me ask you one other question,” he said. “What if he wins?”

“Do you want Sean ‘Puffy’ Combs to be the secretary of state and Gary Busey to be on the Supreme Court?”

This, Scaramucci suggested, is what Republicans can expect if they don’t get on the Trump Train now. (Combs and Busey — who Trump fired in 2013 on Celebrity Apprentice — support Trump. However, the candidate’s actual appeal to Republicans is how very very responsible he will be about Supreme Court appointments.)

“Everybody should oppose him, he wins anyway, and he should open the tent?” he asked, shaking his head.

Wait. WTF is this supposed to mean? It sounds like Scaramucci is saying that if mainsteam Republicans oppose him but Trump wins anyway, Trump is going to give the establishment a big fat middle finder by appointing two idiots to the Supreme Court. Because, you know, at least the idiots supported him from the beginning.

That’s the sales pitch for Donald Trump? I dunno. Scaramucci’s a rich guy, so I guess he knows how to sell. But if he ever offers his services to me, I think I’ll politely decline. On the bright side, though, I learned that the guy who wrote How to Find Your Fortune Without Losing Your Soul is now supporting Donald Trump. That was good for a laugh this morning.

WE CAME UP SHORT.

We just wrapped up a shorter-than-normal, urgent-as-ever fundraising drive and we came up about $45,000 short of our $300,000 goal.

That means we're going to have upwards of $350,000, maybe more, to raise in online donations between now and June 30, when our fiscal year ends and we have to get to break-even. And even though there's zero cushion to miss the mark, we won't be all that in your face about our fundraising again until June.

So we urgently need this specific ask, what you're reading right now, to start bringing in more donations than it ever has. The reality, for these next few months and next few years, is that we have to start finding ways to grow our online supporter base in a big way—and we're optimistic we can keep making real headway by being real with you about this.

Because the bottom line: Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism Mother Jones exists 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 hope you might consider pitching in before moving on to whatever it is you're about to do next. We really need to see if we'll be able to raise more with this real estate on a daily basis than we have been, so we're hoping to see a promising start.

payment methods

WE CAME UP SHORT.

We just wrapped up a shorter-than-normal, urgent-as-ever fundraising drive and we came up about $45,000 short of our $300,000 goal.

That means we're going to have upwards of $350,000, maybe more, to raise in online donations between now and June 30, when our fiscal year ends and we have to get to break-even. And even though there's zero cushion to miss the mark, we won't be all that in your face about our fundraising again until June.

So we urgently need this specific ask, what you're reading right now, to start bringing in more donations than it ever has. The reality, for these next few months and next few years, is that we have to start finding ways to grow our online supporter base in a big way—and we're optimistic we can keep making real headway by being real with you about this.

Because the bottom line: Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism Mother Jones exists 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 hope you might consider pitching in before moving on to whatever it is you're about to do next. We really need to see if we'll be able to raise more with this real estate on a daily basis than we have been, so we're hoping to see a promising start.

payment methods

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