Donald J. Trump Grifter Days: Coming to Abrupt End and Righty So — Justice Will Prevail

Lost another one: My list has plenty more 

(List: Cons, Scams & Grifts)

Two great articles here from the AFL-CIO in KY (Yes, Mitch McConnell’s home state) and this from Law & Crime on Trump’s latest scam which has now caught up with him from the 2020 election cycle with these two headlines:

From the KY AFL-CIO article:

“Good Riddance to the Grifter-in-Chief”

From the Law & Crime article:

“Trump Donors Fume over Fine Print Which Allowed Campaign to Charge Their Accounts Over and Over”

A few highlights from both pieces – worth the read:

From the KY AFL-CIO article:

Optics is the essence of the Grifter-in-Chief. Trump's just another millionaire elitist who was born rich and grew up on Easy Street. But he pulled off the biggest con in American history by scamming a slew of blue-collar working stiffs into voting for him.

Trump's notion that only rich prople count hearkens to the Robber Barons. 

But while he tried to gull the toiling masses into thinking that he was their guy, most of the old plutocrats openly worshipped at the altar of social Darwinism. That was a gospel of greed which held that if you were poor, it was your fault, that unions made workers lazy and that workplace safety laws were unnecessary because they only preserved lives and limbs of the unworthy. 

Trump strove mightily to hide his social Darwinist side. He welcomed miners and factory and construction workers to his rallies, but as props to stretch the scam. He promised he'd “bring back coal, rebuild our infrastructure, and make shuttered factories hum anew.” 

Coal didn't come back, nor did good-paying factory jobs, even before the coronavirus pandemic. Most jobs are low-paying, non-industrial jobs.

From the Law & Crime article (two sad examples):

In the final weeks leading up to the 2020 presidential election, Donald Trump’s campaign was in dire need of a cash influx to combat the Biden campaign’s ad buys. The solution, according to a bombshell NY Times report (by Shane Goldmacher), was to insert language into donor agreements that set up increasingly opaque recurring charges to donors accounts. 

Trump donors didn’t realize what was going on until it was too late.

First Example: Stacy Blatt, a 63-year-old cancer patient in Kansas City, told the Times that he gave $500 to the campaign in September 2020, despite living on less than $1,000 a month, and was completely blindsided by what followed.

The Times reported: “That single contribution — federal records show it was his first ever — quickly multiplied. Another $500 was withdrawn the next day, then $500 the next week, and every week through mid-October, without Blatt’s knowledge, until Mr. Blatt’s bank account had been depleted and frozen.” 

He was forced to seek help from his brother after his utility and rent checks bounced and he learned his account had been drained of $3,000 in under 30 days.

Second Example: A 78-year-old lady from California made what she thought was a one-time donation of $990 that wound up costing her more than $8,000.

Summary: The plan resulted in the Trump campaign refunding almost eleven percent of what it raised online in 2020, or more than $122 million, a figure that may increase as more claims roll in. The recurring donations swelled Trump’s treasury in September and October 2020, just as his finances were deteriorating.

He was then able to use tens of millions of dollars he raised after the election, under the guise of fighting his unfounded fraud claims, to help cover the refunds he owed.

In effect, the money that Trump eventually had to refund amounted to an interest-free loan from unwitting supporters at the most important juncture of the 2020 race.

From Trump spokesman Jason Miller: He denied any wrongdoing, telling the Times that the campaign “…was built by the hardworking men and women of America, and cherishing their investments was paramount to anything else we did.”

My 2 cents: That statement from Jason Miller tells it all in my view. It shows how scammers, con artists, and grifters like Donald J. Trump operate – he has his whole adult life.

How or why people didn’t see or sense that long before he chose to run for president is mind-boggling, but it underscores his skill and finesse as a hardened but likeable criminal with his “Art of the Con.”

But, now hopefully all that is crumbling down around him and people will once and for all see him for what he truly is: A seasoned and skilled criminal and may go down just like Al Capone on his tax evasion schemes.

Thanks for stopping by.