July 23, 2020

Trump Just Cancelled the Republican National Convention in Jacksonville

Yuri Gripas/Abaca/Zuma

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In a reversal of his previous plans, President Trump announced Thursday that the portions of the 2020 Republican National Convention scheduled to take place in Jacksonville, Florida will be cancelled.

The official business of the RNC—delegates’ nomination of a Republican presidential candidate—will still take place in person in Charlotte, North Carolina, the original convention site. When North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper declared the three subsequent days of speeches and celebrations unsafe amid the coronavirus pandemic, ceremonies were relocated to Jacksonville. Now, they’re cancelled too.

Despite Trump’s previous insistence on holding a full in-person rally to celebrate his nomination, he painted the decision to cancel the event, which he announced at his third coronavirus briefing of the week, as his idea.

“I looked at my team and I said, ‘The timing for this event is not right, just not right, with what’s happened recently, the flare-up in Florida, to have a big convention,” he said. “It’s not the right time.'”

“They said, ‘Sir, we can make this work very easily,'” he continued, before launching into a tangent about the “senseless violence” he claims is plaguing American cities. “I said, ‘There’s nothing more important in our country than keeping our people safe, whether that’s from the China virus or the radical left mob that you see in Portland.'”

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WE CAME UP SHORT.

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.

So we urgently need this specific ask, what you're reading right now, to start bringing in more donations than it ever has. The reality, for these next few months and next few years, is that we have to start finding ways to grow our online supporter base in a big way—and we're optimistic we can keep making real headway by being real with you about this.

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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