May 12, 2020

Trump Stormed Off After a Racist Confrontation With a Female Reporter. Now He’s Declaring Conspiracy.

Oliver Contreras/ZUMA

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President Trump’s abrupt exit from a White House news conference Monday afternoon felt instantly familiar. It was, after all, hardly the first time he had gone after a female reporter. Nor was it Trump’s first go at targeting a woman of color with racist rhetoric.

The president seemed set off by a question from CBS reporter Weijia Jiang—”Why are you saying that to me, especially?”—that she lodged seconds after Trump suggested Jiang, an Asian American, ask China about his compulsion to frame coronavirus tests as some kind of global competition.

“I’m saying that to anybody who would ask a nasty question like that,” Trump shot back.

But his grim facial expression—and subsequent refusal to take another question from Jiang’s White House press corps colleague, CNN reporter Kaitlin Collins—appeared to belie that very explanation. For just a few moments, Trump seemed to recognize that he had, once again, done an oopsie dog whistle.

Still, Trump couldn’t let a very public tantrum be the last word. Hours after walking out of the news conference, he dashed off to his mental safe space and declared conspiracy:

By the next morning, Trump was retweeting praise for his behavior, and claiming, without evidence, that Asian Americans shared his fury with China’s actions in the coronavirus pandemic. 

This whole timeline reads like a nightmare, but we shouldn’t ignore the president baselessly accusing female reporters of taking part in a political plot to tank his reelection after getting called out for racism. Trump’s meltdown came at the same time he relaunched a conspiracy-fueled campaign claiming Barack Obama has committed “the biggest political crime in American history,” a wildly absurd accusation that came after Trump reportedly was angered at the former president calling his coronavirus response “an absolute chaotic nightmare” during a private phone call. Taken together, the attacks capture our thin-skinned president turning back to the greatest hits of his political career—racism, misogyny, conspiracy theories—to distract attention and responsibility from a public health crisis that crossed 80,000 deaths over the weekend. 

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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.

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