October 6, 2020

Trump Is Now Fundraising Off His COVID Lies

Donald Trump holds his face mask in his hands on the White House balcony after he returned from Walter Reed National Military Medical Center.Alex Brandon/AP

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In a fundraising email sent to supporters Tuesday morning—titled “Best I’ve felt in 20 years!”—President Trump continued to downplay the threat of the coronavirus while seeming to suggest that therapeutics alone could defeat the disease that has claimed more than 210,000 American lives.

“Don’t be afraid of Covid,” the email says. “Don’t let it dominate your life! This is the greatest country in the world, and under the Trump Administration, we have developed some really great drugs and knowledge. WE WILL BEAT THIS, TOGETHER!”

The email is a continuation of the president’s theatrical performance of good health, even as he appeared to gasp for breath outside the White House Monday night. There is still no vaccine or known cure for the virus, though Trump has had access to a superb level of care and experimental treatments that have been denied to most Americans who have suffered from the disease. But instead of resting and getting better, Trump promises in his email to get back to work.

“Now, I am fired up and ready to KEEP FIGHTING FOR YOU!,” it says. “This is the FINAL STRETCH of the Election and we can’t take any days off.” Still, it is unclear what, if anything, Trump is doing to protect the virus from spreading within the White House, where countless housekeepers work in close proximity to the president. Trump’s resistance to even the most basic precautions against COVID-19 took symbolic form when the president, presumably still infectious, removed his mask while standing on a White House balcony Monday evening.

Trump’s last official outing before announcing his COVID-19 diagnosis was a campaign fundraising event in New Jersey, where he flouted social distancing guidelines. As my colleague Russ Choma reported:

President Donald Trump, who announced on Friday that he had tested positive for COVID-19, did not wear a mask during a Thursday afternoon campaign fundraiser at his Bedminster, New Jersey, golf club, according to a person who was at the club. Trump mingled with the crowd of about 150 donors, at one point going table-to-table to shake hands with attendees, according to the source, who asked not to be identified. This behavior is typical for Trump when he visits the club—members often approach him to shake hands and chat. But this time, Trump may have been contagious.

Read the full fundraising email below:

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WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

If you can, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones—that exists to make a difference, not a profit—with a donation of any amount today. We need more donations than normal to come in from this specific blurb to help close our funding gap before it gets any bigger.

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