July 5, 2018

Scott Pruitt Is Truly Blessed

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A few minutes ago, as I was biting into a taco, I learned that EPA administrator Scott Pruitt had finally resigned after accumulating a truly astonishing array of weird, penny-ante scandals over the past 18 months. By chance, I had just read an AP piece about life in Donald Trump’s cabinet, where I learned how the president had handled Pruitt’s troublesome behavior at a recent meeting. Here you go:

Agency head Scott Pruitt caught a sharp admonition from Trump to “knock it off” after his ethics problems dominated cable television.

That’s leadership! And check out Pruitt’s resignation letter:

Truly, your confidence in me has blessed me personally…. I count it a blessing to be serving you in any capacity…. My desire in service to you has always been to bless you as you make important decisions for the American people…. I pray as I have served you that I have blessed you and enabled you to effectively lead the American people.

I still haven’t quite figured out Pruitt. His endless little scandals are just so…weird. What’s the right word to describe them? It’s like he was living some bizarre kindergarten version of corporate perkdom. He obviously thought his elevation to Trump’s cabinet entitled him to be treated like an especially fair-haired Fortune 500 CEO, but in practice he acted like a guy who had never set foot in a corporation and had heard only gauzy, faraway stories about CEO perks—and not even understood those very well. What a strange man.

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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.

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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.

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