Trump Sets New Bar for Presidential Success

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By the way, Donald Trump is getting good marks for today’s speech in Saudi Arabia because he managed to recite it adequately off the teleprompter and didn’t veer off topic into any of the usual Trump idiocy.

Seriously. This is what the coverage is like. Apparently that’s all we expect from a president these days.1

One other note: I’m not sure how many people have noticed this, but Trump has a long history of talking big when he’s on a stage or on TV but backing down when he meets people face-to-face. It’s already happened with China, Japan, Mexico, Germany, and a host of others. Now it’s happening with Saudi Arabia, which seems to have Trump practically in thrall. This should come as no surprise to anyone.

1Of course, the last time this happened was Trump’s state-of-the-union address, and he managed to bollox that up within two days. I won’t be surprised if he does the same this time.

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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.

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