May 7, 2018

The Big Lie

AP Photo/Danny Johnston

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I imagine most of you already know this, but just in case:

This is basically the unanimous view on Fox News in prime time. If you watch Fox—or listen to Rush or read Breitbart—this is what you believe. Ignore the fact that the Attorney General, the deputy attorney general, the FBI director, and Mueller himself were all put in place by Donald Trump or his appointees. The developing party line is that once Democrats and their allies in the deep state finally realized that Trump was for real and the jig was up, they invented Mueller. His entire investigation is a monstrous, Democrat-fueled deception designed to bring down a president elected by working-class voters who were finally fed up with liberals destroying our country.

This is their story, and it’s spreading more and more widely in conservative ranks. All the conspiracy theories of the past few years; all the “deep state” nonsense; all the hysteria over Benghazi and Hillary’s emails and the war again Christianity: all of it has been spadework for this. Soon, we’re going to find out if Donald Trump really can shoot someone on Fifth Avenue and get away with it because the American conservative movement has convinced its supporters that it wasn’t a gun, it wasn’t Trump, no one died, and it was all Photoshopped by Democrats anyway.

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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.

And we hope you might consider pitching in before moving on to whatever it is you're about to do next. We really need to see if we'll be able to raise more with this real estate on a daily basis than we have been, so we're hoping to see a promising start.

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