March 27, 2017

BREAKING: Donald Trump Played Golf This Weekend

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The sad thing about this tweet is that it really would be news if Donald Trump was at the White House working this weekend:

But no: Trump played golf at his club in Virginia this weekend, so it’s not clear what Fox was up to here. Perhaps they meant to say that by 5:26 pm on Sunday, Trump was back in the White House.

Normally, I’d suggest that everyone cool it with the golf snark. We’ve now had four consecutive presidents who have taken endless grief every time they hit the links, and it’s pretty stupid. Let ’em golf if they want to. But there are two differences with Trump. First, the guy really does play a ton of golf. You’d think the first few months of a new presidency would be a busy time, but Trump has played 12 rounds of golf, mostly at Mar-a-Lago, in only ten weekends. That’s more than he played before he was president. Second, like an embarrassed drunk, he’s now trying to hide his golf addiction. This weekend marked the second in a row in which his press office tried to pretend that Trump was “meeting with people” at the club, only to have Trump’s golfing exposed, as they must have known it would be, by someone with a cell phone tweeting out pictures. Why do they bother with such flimsy and easily exposed lies?

And while we’re on the subject of Trump, I’d like to note that he’s hit the quadfecta I predicted on Thursday. He has now blamed all four of the following for the failure of Trumpcare:

  • Paul Ryan, for insisting on doing health care before tax reform and then being unable to shepherd the bill through the House.
  • The Freedom Caucus, for voting against his bill.
  • Democrats, for…being the opposition party, I guess.
  • Obama, for deliberately designing Obamacare to fail in 2017.

Apparently Reince Priebus is also taking some heat from within the White House, because he’s pals with Ryan and was supposed to know about all this congressional hoo ha. But it’s not clear if Trump himself blames Priebus for anything.

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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.

payment methods

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