Trump's Dupes Just Don't Care

The Republican establishment has belatedly begun attacking Donald Trump for being a con man and a liar. The problem is, Trump supporters don't care:

On the issue of the now-defunct Trump University—which offered real estate seminars that cost students up to $35,000, and which is the subject of three lawsuits that allege Trump defrauded students by misrepresenting what the "university" was—Travino admitted it was a "black mark" on Trump's record. "But I don't care," he added. And he doesn't think Trump's supporters will care either.

And:

Matthew Higgens, a Trump supporter from Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, felt the same way about Trump University. "To be honest with you, I don't care," he said. Higgens said other Republicans hadn't gone after predatory for-profit colleges that get students to take out loans for degrees and jobs that don't pan out. "How can you point the finger at one guy?" he asked. "It's ridiculous." 

No, it's not ridiculous. The crooks running those other phony for-profit "universities" aren't running for president. Why do Trump's dupes think that a man under indictment for fraud is going to fulfill any of his campaign promises?

Trump is suckering the his supporters exactly the same way that he suckered those idiots who blew $60,000 on worthless Trump University degrees.

The main reason people say they support Trump is that "he tells it like it is." They hate "establishment" politicians because they say whatever they need to say to get elected, and they never deliver on their promises.

The thing is, Trump is doing exactly the same thing: he's making promises he will never keep, and is at this very moment doing the exact opposite of what he promises. Trump is promising to stop immigrants from entering the country, yet Trump hires foreigners by the thousands to work at his casinos, hotels and construction sites (and even married two foreigners). Trump talks about slapping huge tariffs on Chinese goods, yet his Trump-brand merchandise is made in China and Asia.

But, yeah, I know. Trump supporters don't care. They just want to stick it to the politicians they hate, without really getting that Trump will be even worse than the guys they're trying to stick it to.

Trump has made a big deal about how he's funding his own campaign, and isn't beholden to campaign contributors because he hasn't taken their money. Okay. Like many Americans, he cynically thinks if you give a candidate money, you own the candidate.

But the corollary to that is: if you don't give a candidate money he owes you nothing. That means Trump believes he owes the people who simply voted for him even less than nothing. Trump is going to do whatever's good for Trump, not those broke and angry losers who put him in office. And the people who send $50 or $100 checks to Trump without ever meeting him and extracting a promise from him? They're the biggest losers ever, giving away money with no promise of any return whatsoever....

When Trump said, "I could stand in the middle of 5th Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn't lose voters," he was bragging about himself, implying that his supporters are duped losers following a shiny object.


Trump is repeating the prejudices of white people -- saying what he thinks they want to hear -- in order to get elected, dressing it up as "telling it like it is." He's making insane proposals about walls and tax breaks to set out an initial negotiating position, fully intent on dialing down the crazy when he comes to the negotiating table after he's elected.

That's not just my take on it, that's Trump's standard negotiating tactic: ask for the moon when what you really want is the lot on the corner. Throw your negotiating partner off balance with your daring and bravado, and he'll think he's getting a great deal when you screw him over. It's also what Trump told the New York Times editorial board in the "off-the-record" part of a January interview, according to a story on Buzzfeed.

Trump constantly carps about "political correctness," but he has already said that as president he'll be the most politically correct person in the world.

Trump is exactly the kind of wheeler-dealer politician that all his followers claim to despise. He's promising concentration camps for illegal immigrants. He's promising to lock certain Americans up en masse the way Japanese Americans were during WWII. He's promising to torture Muslims and murder their wives and children in cold blood.

He will never do any of that because these acts are violations of the Constitution and war crimes, and most of the FBI and the American military will disobey such illegal orders, and Trump doesn't want to be impeached or sent to the Hague to face a war crimes tribunal.

Trump is blustering hate to get primary votes from whites who feel downtrodden and left behind: just like the people who got suckered at Trump University. After he gets the Republican nomination, he'll back off on most of this crap for the general election, telling people that they misunderstood what he said, that he was just exaggerating for effect. He didn't really mean it, he'll say, it was just the heat of the moment. Or he'll say he was just repeating what he heard someone else say, and wasn't really sure it was true and he didn't mean it in any case.

But Trump's dupes will remain faithful. They'll rationalize that he's lying to to get win the general election, but that once he's in office he'll do what he promised in the primary.

In other words, he'll be acting just like any other politician. Because he is like any other politician, except that he's even less honest than most.


If you listen to the way Trump talks, it's obvious that he's being intentionally misleading -- or senile. He will repeat something three times, then say the opposite, then ask it as a question, then make a joke, then talk about how popular he is, what a loser his opponents are, and how well he's doing in the polls, and how much we're going to win, and how much money we're going to make by suing everyone for libel (yeah, he said that). It's all bullshit


Once he's in office, Trump will do whatever it takes to make him look good to himself. That will probably mean making tons of deals, and throwing away every campaign promise he ever made. Trump will blame Congress and the Democrats for stymieing him, and he'll sue a bunch of newspapers and websites for insulting him, and he'll swear a couple of times and the dupes who elected Trump will still fall for the act and think he's great. Even though he will have swindled them in the biggest con in history.

The truth is, there's no way to know what Trump will do as president. Everything he says is pie-in-the-sky crap. He's taking his supporters for a ride, and it'll cost this country a lot more than one of those worthless Trump University degrees.