If you’re like me you get texts and emails warning you to be ever vigilant about scams. Your bank, your cell phone service provider, your credit card company, internet provider, you name it. Your wife, who clicked on a phishy party invite that sent out bogus party invites to all of her email contacts inviting them to a party at our house, is acutely aware. The party is on the 16th. If you show up I have some stale potato chips and a box of crackers but don’t expect any booze. You’ll have to leave by 9:30pm. I have a rigid bedtime routine.
Now, here is my personal scam warning. Anytime you find yourself staring at an advertisement, or a narrative with promotional details of any kind with the name “Trump” attached to it, you should avoid it like it was a habitat of hantavirus infected rats. Case in point- the cell phones the Trump boys were promoting last summer.* In June Don Jr. and Eric launched the Trump smartphone, “proudly designed and built in the U.S.,” gold plated, of course. and was priced at $500. To ensure delivery, the web site advised you to send the boys $100 as a pre-order deposit.
A cursory examination of the fine print revealed a disclaimer that stated the Trump’s involvement with the phone is strickly its branding only and they had nothing to do with the development, manufacture or anything related to it. Within a couple weeks of the initial offer, the claim “Made in America” was removed from its description and replaced with “designed with American values in mind.”
The phones have never been shipped. Last month Trump Moble updated its terms to say the $100 was not a deposit for the pre-order but “a conditional opportunity if Trump Mobile later elects, in its sole discretion, to offer the Device for sale.”
There’s more to the restrictions and warnings included in the update, not to mention the massive conflict of interest involved between the Trump’s and the federal agencies that control the approval for the business’s activities.
Of course there are plenty of pissed off people that paid $100 for a phantom phone. But come on! Scamming is what the Trump family is famous for-from the bogus Trump University to skimmiing practically everything from his so called charity, the Trump Foundation. By now people should know better. People who voted for him have to know at least something of his nafarious businesss activities, and the father has instructed the boys well in seeking mutual fortune. My guess is Trump’s supporters must feel a great scam artist makes a great president.
Now after much chest thumping bluster and ignorance of the geopolitical world, he has plunged the nation into an ill conceived conflict with Iran. He keeps saying we are winning when in fact that is another of his scams. He has let a third rate country wedge him into a corner that he is flailing to get out of. And the U.S. taxpayers have thus been scammed into paying for his war. It’s infuriating. And embarassing. Because of Trump’s hubris nothing is moving through the Strait of Hormuz. That in turn affects most of the other countries on the planet in one way or another, so they are also paying a price, and they had nothing to do with his elecition. We did that. Ya. It’s fucking embarassing.
When asked by a reporter to what extent Americans’ financial situation is motivating him to make a deal with Iran, he replied:
“Not even a little bit. The only thing that matters when I’m talking about Iran—they can’t have a nuclear weapon. I don’t think about Americans’ financial situation. I don’t think about anybody. I think about one thing—we cannot let Iran have a nuclear weapon. That’s all.”
The highlighted sentences are of course revealing. But his general intransigence, right now over Iran’s nuclear capability, is how we got in this mess in the first place. He basically is saying Iran has to give up its nuclear material. At this point that will almost assuredly require boots on the ground. It’s one of the many things he should have thought of before starting his “excursion.”
Getting back to the highlighted text, nothing says “I could not give a shit about the Americans’ financial situation” like suing himself for 10 billion dollars. He is suing the IRS for damages he claims occured when a contractor released his tax returns in his first term. Thus Trump is the plaintiff and he also runs the agency that is the defendant. He has figured out the perfect scam. He can hardly loose. That’s taxpayer money he’s after in the IRS and 10 billion would wipe out 80 percent of its budget. And double his current wealth. Nevermind that during his 2016 campaign he said he had no problem releasing his tax returns as soon as the IRS completed its audit. Once he secured the presidency he asserted since he won the election no one must have really wanted to see the documents anyway. How does this guy maintain his grip on his base? He encapsulates everything MAGA supposedly abhors about the government. He’s a rich elitist lining his pockets and those of his cronies and doing diddly for the general public. He has single handedly made the lives of the non privileged more expensive by immersing us into this ridiculous war, something he promised his supporters he would never do. He is and has always been a con artist dazzling with smoke and mirrors.
Trump the scam artist. No one does it better.
*Most of the information about the Trump boys smartphone adventure I gleaned from the Substack of Heather Cox Richardson. She’s amazing.