The Long Con

Confidence men, and women, have been around for centuries.  Ever since the first “thimblerigger” placed a pea under a tailor’s thimble and challenged his mark to bet which of three thimbles held the pea, we have had conmen.  The thimblerigger of old built confidence using a “shill” who would regularly win money by easily identifying the correct thimble.  The “mark” would sense some easy money in this simple game, greed would kick in, and the mark would always lose.

Thimblerigger, The Conjurer

We have long been amused by such schemes as they have been depicted in our movies.  We had The Sting in 1973 starring Paul Newman and Robert Redford as sneaky crooks who use streetwise double-crosses to swindle another, even bigger crook, Robert Shaw.  The movie won seven Academy Awards including best picture.  Other notable celluloid entertainments that depict confidence schemes with aplomb are The Grifters, The Usual Suspects, Catch Me If You Can, Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, and Oceans 11, 12, & 13.  For TV watchers we had The Rockford Files with various short con and long con stories, usually involving Jim Rockford’s sidekick, Angel Martin (Stuart Margolin).

Redford and Newman in The Sting

The schemes even have colorful names like melon drop, badger game, Spanish prisoner, and the money-box scheme.  While each of these scams has certain unique characteristics to earn their moniker, almost all rely on some weakness or trait that is identified in the mark which can be exploited to benefit another.  Such weaknesses can be greed, love, hate, or fear.  They can also be certain normally good traits such as religion or patriotism.

The majority of cons are simple or so-called, short cons.  The more complex cons usually involve more characters and can have multiple victims.  These are known as long cons.  They are generally elaborate confidence games that develop in stages over an extended time where the swindler gains the victim's trust with small benefits before reaping larger awards at the expense of the mark.  If the long con is done expertly, the victim may never know they have been swindled.

The Conning of America

This brings us to the real subject here, Donald John Trump, perhaps the most proficient practitioner of the long con the world has ever seen.  Yes, “The Donald” may rank right up there with 20th-century greats like Charles Ponzi, Bernie Madoff, and Matt the Knife.  We could even throw in this group the fictional Keyser Söze, whose alter-ego “Verbal” was a petty con artist who spread Keyser Söze’s fame and mythical status with self-description.

Is Donald Trump a con artist?  Well, his good buddy and fellow Republican, Marco Rubio thinks so.  His actual quote on political talk shows was, “We’re on the verge of having someone take over the conservative movement and the Republican Party who’s a con artist.”  He went on to say about Trump, “he has made a career of sticking it to working Americans.”  These are not isolated ramblings of one Republican, but this same moniker has been used by Ted Cruz and Mitt Romney in describing Trump.

All politicians bend the truth, tell a little white lie, fabricate a tall-tale, fib, or otherwise embellish the truth to their benefit.  This does not a conman make.  No, there is a difference between even an egregious lying politician and a true conman.

According to David Maurer, historian of the con, “To figure out if someone is a con artist, one needs to ask two questions, first, is their deception knowing, malicious, and directed, ultimately, toward their own personal gain?  Second, is the con a means to an end unrelated to the substance of the scheme itself?”  Normally, the goal is profit but it can also be a desire for power and control over other people’s lives.  That power can be manifested in adulation, reputation, or just knowing that they control the lives of others.  This latter goal is to elevate themselves to god-like status.  Sound like someone you know?

Donald Trump exhibits another trait of the con artist, flattery.  Good conmen know that one of the best ways to gain confidence is to tell people what they want to hear rather than what might be true.  Sell someone on a vision of the world they desire.  Tell a white supremacist that you despise immigrants who are taking their jobs while you yourself are hiring undocumented immigrants to work in the demolition of the Bonwit Teller building and the construction of Trump Tower or to provide maintenance and housekeeping services at Mar-a-Lago.

Trump hires foreign workers at his properties.

Donald Trump also uses emotion, which he lacks, to appeal to others to gain support.  Patriotism is claimed by hugging a podium American flag while secretly calling fallen soldiers, “losers.”  Adherence to Christian values is espoused while openly violating most of the Ten Commandments, specifically 2, 3, 6, 7, 8, 9, and 10.  I might even be able to make a case for a violation of the first commandment about having no other gods when he believes he is a god, but I’ll let that one pass.  If you believe that Donald Trump is a patriot in any other sense in that it benefits him politically, you have been conned.  If you think Donald Trump is a fine example of a good Christian, you have been conned.

The president understands the con and declares that he will not be a victim as he understands the true art of the conman.  His use of the term to describe the activities of others is a classic projection.  It takes one to know one.  His Trump University was a confidence scheme that defrauded thousands of unwitting students who fell for the hype.  There was also Trump Network (a pyramid scheme) and Trump Institute (victims paid thousands to listen to tapes to hear lectures on wealth-creating secrets endorsed by Trump).  Michael Bloomberg in talking about Trump famously stated, “I’m a New Yorker, and New Yorkers know a con when we see one!”

Whether they want to admit it or not, it’s becoming increasingly clear that MAGA Hatters are victims of a con game. A scam. A grift. A long end. In the old days, these gullible souls were referred to by the Roper as “Marks”, “Stooges”, “Mugus”, and “Rubes”.  And they’ve been Bamboozled! Hornswoggled! Scammed by a fast-talking Flim-Flam Man! Hoodwinked by a self-aggrandizing, ignorant Buffoon! - Aundra Willis Carrasco, Trump: The Greatest Con Job In American History.

During Trump’s 2016 campaign he regaled his followers with a reading of a song called The Snake where a woman is begged by a snake to take him home and when she does so, he bites her.  The age-old lesson is that she knew he was a snake when she took him in.  The wink-wink, nudge-nudge here is that we knew who he (Trump, not the snake, easily confused) was when we allowed his election.  I say allowed here because we either voted for him, didn’t vote at all, or didn’t vote in sufficient numbers to prevent his election.  Both the song of The Snake and the old frog and scorpion parable are fitting analogies as to why he can commit otherwise unforgivable transgressions and still have a following.

Entire books have been written about Trump's Grifting

Trump is a conman and grifter who surrounds himself with like individuals.  We have his Secretary of Commerce, Wilber Ross who lied about his net worth for at least a decade; was accused of financial crisis-era insider trading by European lawmakers; concealed his investments in a Russian shipping company with ties to Vladimir Putin, and allegedly bilked colleagues out of millions.  We also have Kris Kobach, Trump’s voter suppression guru who was hired to investigate voter fraud who bilked small towns in a clever scheme where he would convince them to pass anti-immigration laws and then he would be hired to defend them when the inevitable lawsuits materialized.  Towns went bankrupt and Kobach made hundreds of thousands of dollars.  We all know of Paul Manafort’s credentials for tax fraud and money laundering.

For those of you who still think Trump is a patriot and a supporter of the military, you might want to know of the antics of Trump appointed Mick Mulvaney. He is the White House budget director, who is working to suspend routine exams of lenders for violations of the Military Lending Act that protects service members and their families from fraud, predatory loans, and credit card gouging.  This makes it easier for wealthy businesses to run scams on service members.

Then, the former owner of Trump University that was fined over $25M for deceptive practices, appointed Betsy DeVos as Secretary of Education with a mandate to roll back regulations that would protect students from abuses from other for-profit schools and colleges.  She also announced another rule change that would make it more difficult for students to get debt relief if defrauded.

I didn’t know much about Trump before his election in 2016 but didn’t take long to get a read on this huckster.  At first, I figured he was a not-too-bright buffoon who stumbled into the presidency during a perfect storm.  That perfect storm materialized when he was to follow our first African American president who may have saved General Motors but didn’t force the company to preserve American jobs.  Farmers, truckers, factory workers, coal miners, steelworkers, small-town business owners, and an entire blue-collar swath of middle America were not better off than they had been.  At least they were an easy sell.  Many had a healthcare that they didn't have before but, how quickly people forget.  If you blame the government for your plight, what better solution than an outsider and “successful” businessman.  His opponent would be the first woman president and a government insider.  

Trump, was also supported by the evil geniuses of Stephen Miller and Paul Manafort who assisted with the long con on America.  I still don’t give Trump more credit in this diabolical scheme than him being an excellent conman and grifter of much repute, but he needed the spirit guides of Miller and Manafort.  I believe it was this team that used the blighted blue-collar economy, racism, and the zeal of the evangelical community in the most diabolical long con in our nation’s history.  They conned blue-collar workers into believing a wealthy TV reality star would improve their lot.  They conned evangelicals into believing this womanizing philanderer, fraudster, and crook was the second coming of Christ.  Convincing the white supremacists and neo-Nazis that he was a racist at heart and would further their belief system was not a con but merely an easy validation process. Trump squeaked to a narrow electoral college victory and became the 45th president of the United States.

You’ve been conned.  We’ve been conned.  A nation has been conned.  Not all of us, but surely just enough in the right states to pull this off.  It’s time to wake up and smell the “napalm in the morning” because this nation is literally burning from neglect and mismanagement.  To quote Judge Judy Sheindlin, “Don’t pee on my leg and tell me it’s raining.”  This president has been about shady business practices for decades and now that he is beyond the law, he plans to stay where he is through any and all means necessary.  Lying, cheating, stealing, defrauding, and monetizing the presidency for personal gain, are not just tools of his trade, they are a lifestyle.

Collection of Memes

While this nation will probably survive another four years of Trump, our democracy may never recover.  Our standing in the world has been diminished and that status will be difficult to regain.  Trump took the reins of this presidency with a rising economy and, Coronavirus aside, the fundamentals are still there.  It will take the first two or three years of a Biden presidency before we may see a turn-around.  It could take longer if he needs to fight a McConnell run Senate.  

Top Trump Aides Who Now Support Joe Biden

A number of Republicans have seen the light and now openly support Biden.  Six senior White House officials have denounced Trump and now support Biden.  The Lincoln Project is an American political action committee formed in late 2019 by several current and former Republicans. The goal of the committee is to prevent the reelection of Donald Trump in the 2020 presidential election and defeat his supporters in the United States Senate.