June 6, 2018

Trump Congratulates Putin’s Biggest Booster for Primary Win

The Trump Chicken visits Dana Rohrabacher's district to entertain the voters.Matt Masin/The Orange County Register via ZUMA

For indispensable reporting on the coronavirus crisis, the election, and more, subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily newsletter.

Last night, Donald Trump’s most loyal spear carrier in Congress, Rep. Devin Nunes, won his primary impressively with 58 percent of the vote. Trump’s #2 man in Congress, Kevin McCarthy, won even bigger, taking home 70 percent of the vote. But Trump didn’t bother congratulating either of them. Only one guy running for Congress got the coveted Trump tweet this morning:

Rohrabacher’s district is the one that put the jungle in jungle primary, featuring a total of 16 candidates. He has a pretty good chance of losing in November, but he is famous for one thing: being Vladimir Putin’s biggest booster in Congress. I guess that’s what it takes to get Trump’s blessing these days.

DOES IT FEEL LIKE POLITICS IS AT A BREAKING POINT?

Headshot of Editor in Chief of Mother Jones, Clara Jeffery

It sure feels that way to me, and here at Mother Jones, we’ve been thinking a lot about what journalism needs to do differently, and how we can have the biggest impact.

We kept coming back to one word: corruption. Democracy and the rule of law being undermined by those with wealth and power for their own gain. So we're launching an ambitious Mother Jones Corruption Project to do deep, time-intensive reporting on systemic corruption, and asking the MoJo community to help crowdfund it.

We aim to hire, build a team, and give them the time and space needed to understand how we got here and how we might get out. We want to dig into the forces and decisions that have allowed massive conflicts of interest, influence peddling, and win-at-all-costs politics to flourish.

It's unlike anything we've done, and we have seed funding to get started, but we're looking to raise $500,000 from readers by July when we'll be making key budgeting decisions—and the more resources we have by then, the deeper we can dig. If our plan sounds good to you, please help kickstart it with a tax-deductible donation today.

Thanks for reading—whether or not you can pitch in today, or ever, I'm glad you're with us.

Signed by Clara Jeffery

Clara Jeffery, Editor-in-Chief

We Recommend

Latest