Grifting 101: Trump Played His Fan Club Perfectly
First up, I’m back from vacation. Today and tomorrow, I’ll be on radio from 12pm to 7pm. I’ll do my show nationally 12pm to 3pm ET, then focus just on Georgia politics and the wrap up of the Georgia legislative session from 4pm to 7pm, filling in for Mark Arum, the drive time host on WSB Radio. So yeah, six hours of radio with an hour between to eat, etc. Fun times.
Now, to the main event. The willingness of diehard Trump supporters to let Trump think for them has yet again proven profitable for Trump. Yes, some of you will be offended by that sentence, but let’s work this out and note I’m including many members of the political press, including reporters at the New York Times and the Lincoln Project folks in this as Trump diehards. After all, many of them go broke without Trump.
We were all told to expect an indictment by this past Tuesday. Trump’s team let it be known that the Manhattan DA and the Trump team had been talking. Trump expected an indictment and then an arraignment with him in handcuffs. Given the sourcing, it had the veneer of credibility. It now looks, however, more like a grift.
Trump put out a fundraising link and his diehard supporters poured cash into his coffers. Then, Trump used the opportunity to seed new attacks against Ron DeSantis that got echoed through Trump’s universe of diehard supporters. DeSantis, at first, was not doing enough to speak out. Then, when DeSantis did speak out, he did not speak out aggressively enough and dared cast aspersions on Trump. It was “an attack” when Trump is about to be arrested by a partisan DA. It was disloyal, which is a recurring theme Trump intends to use against DeSantis.
Trump then was able to beautifully play that into the narrative that DeSantis had a bad week and had been thrown off his game. The New York Times and others willingly obliged Trump. The Lincoln Project began an attack on DeSantis. The Times testified to how badly DeSantis handled his performance of playing second fiddle to Trump.
And then?
And then we learned the grand jury didn’t even meet for several days. Now Trump claims they might have dropped the case altogether.
In other words, Trump generated a pile of cash, attacks on DeSantis, made himself look like a victim, and nothing actually happened.
It’s all actually really impressive as a stunt even if it is all like the boy who cried wolf.
The pattern will repeat itself because it was so successful. An indictment might yet come. The cash will keep coming too. I applaud the effort, though it might wear thin as Trump’s supporters, people without great wealth, keep sending him more money for indictments that never come.
It’s like in 2022, Trump raised close to $150 billion million to get “MAGA Republicans” elected then barely spent any of it on them. But his supporters keep falling for it, keep sending him money, and keep doing his bidding. Republicans who used to reject personality cults are all in on it now.
By the way, you should read David French in the New York Times — yes you should — about how unwise it would be for the District Attorney to actually pursue this prosecution.
Speaking of 2022, did you hear about Trump at the Waco event?
Y‘all, we all just witnessed an election where 13% of Republicans and a majority of independents all voted for the Democrats because they were tired of the crazy and the 2020 stolen election nonsense. This is the first midterm election since George W. Bush’s 2002 midterm were a majority of independents voted for the incumbent White House party.
Across the country, in the exit polling of people who voted, the voters said they did not want to advance candidates tied to the stolen election and January 6th stuff. That appears to be how Trump wants to run in 2024, which suggests he’ll bring in a lot of money and lose again.
As I have said recently, whining, not winning, is the MAGA 2.0 mission.
Spot on commentary. At the same time the MAGA crowd gets conned on the financial end, they are being led to believe that Florida is not a Republican success story but is just doing well because of the weather, the man the press dubbed "DIEsantis" was actually the biggest lockdown governor, and that DeSantis owes his political success to Trump and is disloyal even though Trump gave the Democrats two Senate seats in 2020 as well as a major propaganda win by sending his goons to the Capital (not to mention by not conceding the election he upended America's long tradition of peaceful transition of power started by Washington). The sad thing is that this bile and manipulation still garners Trump support and diehard fans. It's all branding with no substance. If Republicans vote for him rather than the guy who might be able to fix the country, we deserve to lose.
First of all welcome back.
Part of me wants just anyone beside this current administration. And the sooner the better. With everything that is going on I don’t see how this country can survive much longer.
With that being said, I want Trump to just go away . He is like a 6th grade bully. I’m so afraid that he is going to divide the party and we will have four more years of this sh……t show. Please Mr. Trump have a seat for the good of the country that you say you love so much.