May 21, 2017

Road to Riyadh, Day Two

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When I first saw this picture, I figured it was just a dumb Photoshop and skipped on by. But no. This is real:

King Salman seems genuinely fascinated by this modern miracle. El-Sisi obviously doesn’t give a shit and is just being polite. Trump looks like he’s trying to commune with Sauron. Naturally this turned into a huge Twitter meme instantly, and I imagine we’re going to be seeing this picture around for years.

And contrary to what I reported earlier, it turns out that Trump didn’t quite manage to recite today’s speech off the teleprompter correctly. He was apparently so nervous about the whole radical Islamic terrorism vs. violent extremism vs. Islamist extremism thing that he blew it:

Trump had been in Saudi Arabia for about 36 hours at that point. Only 150 hours to go.

UPDATE: ZOMG! The full picture of Trump and the orb might be even more awesome than the cropped shot.

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WE'LL BE BLUNT

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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