A Note About Trump’s Tweets

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I feel like I need to remind people of this periodically:

Donald Trump’s tweets are not aimed at you and me, and analyzing them as if they were will lead you badly astray. They are aimed solely at his core supporters in the electorate and the media.

In other words: don’t think of them as endlessly outrageous and provocative (“How can he say something like that?!?”). That gets you nowhere because you’re starting from the wrong premise. Think of them instead as routine communiques that Trump thinks are necessary to retain his base support. This allows you to analyze their meaning both more accurately and far more interestingly.

That is all.

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GREAT JOURNALISM, SLOW FUNDRAISING

Our team has been on fire lately—publishing sweeping, one-of-a-kind investigations, ambitious, groundbreaking projects, and even releasing “the holy shit documentary of the year.” And that’s on top of protecting free and fair elections and standing up to bullies and BS when others in the media don’t.

Yet, we just came up pretty short on our first big fundraising campaign since Mother Jones and the Center for Investigative Reporting joined forces.

So, two things:

1) If you value the journalism we do but haven’t pitched in over the last few months, please consider doing so now—we urgently need a lot of help to make up for lost ground.

2) If you’re not ready to donate but you’re interested enough in our work to be reading this, please consider signing up for our free Mother Jones Daily newsletter to get to know us and our reporting better. Maybe once you do, you’ll see it’s something worth supporting.

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