The Final Stages of the Con: Donald Trump, Stolen Elections, and Delusion

In 1986, televangelist Peter Popoff was at the top of his game. Popoff had a wildly successful ministry which centered around faith healing. Walking amidst a vast audience, he would approach apparent strangers. He would, based on divine revelation, know their names, their address and what illness was afflicting them. He would then place his hands on them and heal them. People would rise from wheelchairs, hurl medicine bottles away and proclaim that they had been healed of lifelong illness. Popoff was a sensation.

He was also…a fraud.

For a number of years, James Randi and Committee for Skeptical Inquiry had been trying to figure out Popoff’s trick. Among other things, they planted fake audience members, such as a man in drag that Popoff cured of uterine cancer. But their triumph was intercepting radio transmissions from Popoff’s wife. She was going into the crowd before the show and collecting information on audience members. She would then transmit this information to a receiver in Popoff’s ear, telling him their names, addresses and afflictions. This finally came to a head in 1986, when Randi went on the Tonight Show and revealed the fraud for all to hear, including racist comments made by Popoff’s wife.

Most tellings of Popoff’s tale end with his exposure. But, in fact, the story did not end there. I saw an interview with Randi many years later where he talked about the response to his expose’. And he said the NBC was flooded with calls about the show.

Most of them wanted to get Popoff’s information so they could donate money to him.

You see, the response of many people wasn’t to accept that Popoff was a fraud; it was to think that Randi was. Popoff’s schtick was so effective that a lot of people simply refused to believe the evidence of their own eyes and ears.

Popoff did go into decline after Randi’s expose, declaring bankruptcy in 1987. But that probably had as much to do with financial mismanagement and the overall bursting of the 80’s televangelist bubble. He resurfaced many years later, however, and last I checked now runs another highly successful ministry that has made him wealthy again.

* * *

I thought of this recently when I saw a poll showing that over half of Republicans think that the 2020 election was stolen and that over half think that Donald Trump is still the President. I take those numbers with some salt: asking such absurd questions in a poll can provoke people to respond in the affirmative. Most voters are not chained to Twitter and therefore may be unfamiliar with the conspiracy theories still being promoted by the President and his enablers. But even with that salt, it’s clear that a large number of Republicans think that Donald Trump really won the election.

The response to this has been…about what you’d expect. Smug tweets about how stupid Republicans are. Angry tweets about how racist Republicans are. Hand-wringing tweets about how this is the end of our democracy.¹ It bears pointing out that such conspiracy theories are not unprecedented. Many Republicans insisted the 1960 election was stolen. Some Democrats claimed the elections of 2004 and 2016 were stolen. Jill Stein — Green Party candidate, Vladimir Putin snuggler and post-election grifter — raised millions of dollars from desperate Democrats to do recounts in key states. Hell, just last year many of the people who laughed at Donald Trump turned around and tried to claim that the Kentucky Senate election was stolen based on equally laughable analysis.

But the Trump election fraud claim is something far more insidious than the standard-issue “they stole our votes” cry of the defeated. It did, after all, culminate in an open attack on the Capitol to try to overturn the election. It is a claim that is not fading but being amplified by an increasing number of Republicans, becoming a litmus test in primaries. The Republicans just ousted their third most powerful Congress-critter because she had the temerity to say that Donald Trump was full of it.

I can certainly see why grifters like Rudy Giuliani and Sydney Powell are making this claim. There’s money to be made by promoting these claims — the Trump campaign itself pulled in a quarter of a billion dollars with this scam. But why do rank-and-file Republicans believe this. Is it because they’re stupid? They’re no more stupid than anyone else. Is it because they’re deluded by Fox News? Most of them don’t watch it. No, I think it’s something more basic. Something that goes back to Peter Popoff and every other con artist that slithered down the pike.

It’s because they don’t want to believe they were fooled.

* * *

In 1920 Boston, an investment genius named Charles was the talk of the town. He had a found a way to use international reply coupons — essentially foreign postage converted to US postage — to make enormously profitable investments. His initial investors had gotten all their money back plus a 50% return. Subsequent investors made even bigger profits. By summer, millions of dollars were invested in his scheme.

There were, of course, rumors circulating not everything was on the up-and-up, that no investment scheme could turn such massive profits. But his investors were not dissuaded. After all, a financial writer who’d accused Charles of fraud had been successfully sued for libel. An investor’s lawsuit against Charles had failed. The Boston Post had run an article proclaiming him to be a genius. Big banks continued to lend him money. And that was a key part of his fleeting success — not just that the marks supported him but that powerful entities that should have known better supported him.

Eventually, however, those entities turned on him when it became obvious that something was wrong. The Post reversed course and denounced him. Others pointed out that the sums he claimed to be making required thousands of times as many coupons as existed. They now openly accused him of “robbing Peter to pay Paul”, using new investors to pay off old ones. A crowd showed up at his office demanding their money. But he handed out over $2 million to investors, glad-handed the rest and most walked off thinking everything was fine. In fact, some continued to invest.

Eventually, however, it all came crashing down. His investors were destroyed. Six banks collapsed. And his last name — Ponzi — would become synonymous with such schemes.

* * *

One of the things that con men rely upon is a certain vulnerability. A relative of mine in her 80s knows people who have been swindled by con men pretending to be their bank or the IRS or the police. And when I asked her why this happens, she said it’s because…they’re old. Many of them live alone, so they are vulnerable to someone who is paying attention to them. Many of them are confused by the hectic pace of the modern world and live in fear of inadvertently getting into trouble. Many are afraid of their nest eggs disappearing which, ironically, makes them vulnerable to the very people who want to rob their nests.

Con men — whether they prey on the rich or the poor, the powerful or the powerless — look for those who are at a crossroads. Those who want a chance to get ahead. Those who fear falling further behind. Those who have lost their status and want it back. A person comfortable in their life and their finances will realize the Nigerian Prince is too good to be true. A person nervous about their finances or desperate to move up in life may think this is the chance they’ve been waiting for. That need, that vulnerability crosses many cultural lines. Whether they are conning a rich person in Manhattan or a poor one in Staten Island, the characteristics of the mark remain unchanged. They have to need something: money, friendship, love, respect, health. And the con man promises to give them what they need out of the pure generosity of his heart.

A similar pattern is seen in people who join cults. They are not generally stupid or gullible. They are simply hit at a time when they are vulnerable — because of a change in their life, because of the loss of a loved one, because of financial hardship. And in those moments, someone charismatic appears who seems to have all the answers to their needs. What could be more selfless than to share their spiritual or moral insights? It is very difficult even for the best of us to resist.

The Republican Party may not seem like it is particularly vulnerable these days. They hold a majority of state legislatures and governorships. They are likely to take back both houses of Congress in 2022. The barely lost the last election with one of the most unpopular Presidents in history. But that success at the ballot box conceals an utter vacuum within the party, one particularly acute at the national level. The simple fact is that…the Republican Party doesn’t have any ideas anymore.

Most of their economic policy platform — fiscal responsibility, free trade and free markets — was adopted by the Clinton Administration and still holds sway over much of the Democratic Party, in theory at least. Some of their biggest cultural issues — gay rights and the War on Drugs — have collapsed underneath them. Hell, their plan for universal healthcare was swiped out from under them by Barack Obama. With the exception of abortion, there is arguably no actual guiding principle that unites the Republican Party…except the opposition to Democrats. This is a party that has long been ripe for a political cult. And had the institutions that, like Charles Ponzi’s banks, were ready to support one.

That political vulnerability goes hand-in-hand with actual economic and social vulnerability. The places where Trump draws his strongest support — rural America — is beset with high unemployment, few job prospects and a massive drug crisis. I know it’s fashionable to dismiss the “economic anxiety” explanation for Trump’s support. But I also notice that most of the people making this argument aren’t experiencing any economic anxiety themselves. And my first-hand experience knowing many many Trump supporters is that “the Democrats are destroying America” ideology is very strong. I can’t tell you how many people — people who are doing well themselves and should know better — have told me that Trump was the last hope for America.

The claim that Trump’s support derives from opposition to social change is not incompatible with this; it’s part of it. The social changes our society had gone through just in my lifetime — on LGBT rights, on social mores, on the economy, on technology — would be enough to disorient anyone. And those changes have come with an attitude that if you hesitate to accept them, it’s because you are ignorant, backward and/or bigoted.

When you see where the Republican Party was — philosophically and emotionally — in 2016, it’s not that surprising that Trump could wheedle his way in. There were sensible candidates in 2016 but they were divided. Many of the issues were complicated or difficult for people to wrap their heads around. And into this intellectual, moral and emotional void came a slick charismatic² con man who said it wasn’t that complicated. That the answer was simple; just stop the Democrats.

Everything was simple under Trump, as it is with any con man or any religious cult, for that matter. He cut through the chaotic noise of modern life with simple bromides. Worried about illegal immigrants? Build a wall. Worried about crime? Unleash the police. Worried too many people are in jail? Reform criminal justice and never mind that this is incompatible with your “tough on crime” rhetoric. Economy not so good? Cut taxes and raise tariffs. Worried that other countries might surpass us? Make good deals. Iran sucks? Cancel the nuclear deal. In short, do the opposite of whatever Democrats have done. It was, after all, Democrats that ruined the country³. So, the opposite of their evil must be good.

And all of this pseudo-agenda was run out with the classic con man’s playbook. Never mind if your actions belie your words; just lie. Never mind if you contradict what you said yesterday; just call it fake news. Push forward with utter confidence that you are as right as Peter Popoff was and your detractors are as jealous as Charles Ponzi’s were. Point to your support from big business and talk radio as proof that you’re right, just as Ponzi pointed to failed lawsuits and the Post’s endorsement. And always emphasize that you are doing this not for yourself but for them. Out of the pure goodness of your heart. So, tell them, falsely, that you’re giving up your business empire. And tell them, truly, that you are even forgoing a salary. Because you’re just that generous.

Donald Trump has no political principles because con men never do. It’s not about what they’re selling you because what they’re selling you is themselves. And when people buy into that, they are very reluctant to admit they got snookered.

* * *

In 2002, the film Catch Me If You Can detailed the adventures for Frank Abagnale. Starting at age 15, he went on a fraud spree that spanned the globe, flying over a million miles for free by pretending to be a Pan Am pilot, pretending to be a doctor and a lawyer before finally being caught. Throughout his career, few had questioned his credentials, apparently not wanting to believe that this charming man was a fraud.

Well … maybe. A recent book by journalist Alan Logan claims that even that tale was a giant fraud.

Logan used public records and newspaper clippings to find out the real story. He even spoke to people who knew Abagnale before the myth about his life took off, including a flight attendant Abagnale met in 1969 in an encounter that eventually led to his incarceration.

“What really happened was that, dressed as a TWA (Trans World Airlines) pilot, which he only did for a few weeks, [Abagnale] befriended a flight attendant called Paula Parks,” Logan said. “He followed her all over the Eastern Seaboard, identified her work schedule through deceptive means, and essentially stalked the woman.”

…

Abagnale stayed with the family for a while, in Parks’ room, and she was mortified. She didn’t trust him, but her family did. They cooked meals for him, and introduced him to people in Baton Rouge. He would take the family out to dinner and buy them flowers, earning their trust. All the while he was doing that with checks he stole from them, which he had rifled through. He stole about $1,200 from the family, and more from local businesses in Baton Rouge. In his book, Abagnale claimed that he never ripped off individuals, only hotels, airlines and banks.

Eventually, he was caught and arrested.

For most of the time he claimed to be engaged in this glitzy jet-set life, Abagnale was actually in prison or committing small petty frauds. He eventually started giving lectures about how he was a changed man, culminating in a television appearance and a book which massively exaggerated his exploits. Hell, I believed it myself.

The thing is, Logan didn’t have to dig very far to find this out. Even contemporary newspaper accounts from the 1970s found huge holes in his story. And, with the benefit of 20/20 hindsight, huge sections of his story made no sense. But for 40 years, no one wanted to believe that his fraud was … a fraud. Abagnale was and is funny and charming. He makes his ridiculous stories sound believable. People want to believe him. They want to believe in the “good rogue” who only ripped off corporations, never hurt anyone and was only doing it to live up to his dad’s expectations. Logan’s book has 88 positive reviews on Amazon; Abagnale’s has nearly 1800. I expect that, as good as his reporting is, people will watch the movie and continue to believe it’s the truth. Because they want to. They like the con.

* * *

Trump has something in common with Abagnale: he tells people stories they want to hear. He has spun this tale, which even the media bought until 2016, that he was a great businessman. His supporters circulate stories of his greatness, which he repeats, which are no more real than Abagnale’s claims of pretending to be a doctor. He’s written entire books about his business genius which have little bearing on reality.

For most of his career, Trump persuaded the press that he was a real estate genius because he hadn’t blown all the money his father bequeathed to him. He persuaded people to go into business with him and banks to loan money to him despite a history littered with bankruptcies and business partners left holding the bag. Just when his luck had run out, he persuaded a TV network to cast him in a reality show as a titan of industry and edit the footage to make him seem like a shrewd judge of people. He went on to persuade one of the most sclerotic institutions in American’s politics to choose, as its moral and spiritual leader, a twice-divorced financially ruinous shyster with a history of groping women and ruining the lives of everyone who touched him.

There’s a story in one of his books that perfectly illustrates his approach not just to business but to life:

In 1982, he describes how he was trying to get the Holiday Inn corporation to go in as his partner on his first Atlantic City casino. Before Holiday’s board members would approve the deal, they wanted to see the site where Trump planned to build it.

Trump was worried that the board would turn him down, as they “had yet to do much work” on building the casino. So, he asked his construction crew to round up “every bulldozer and dump truck he could possibly find” and literally pretend to work for as long as the board was on site:

I wanted him to transform my two acres of nearly vacant property into the most active construction site in the history of the world. What the bulldozers and dump trucks did wasn’t important, I said, so long as they did a lot of it. If they got some actual work accomplished, all the better, but if necessary he should have the bulldozers dig up dirt from one side of the site and dump it on the other.

Trump recalls one board member asking why “that guy over there is just filling up that hole, which he just dug.”

In Trump’s eyes, it worked. “The board walked away from the site absolutely convinced it was the perfect choice,” he writes. “In reality, I wasn’t that far along, but I did everything I could, short of going to work at the site myself, to assure them that my casino was practically finished. My leverage came from confirming an impression they were already predisposed to believe.”

The casino got built in 1984. By 1991, it was having serious financial problems. Trump managed to juggle banks and investors until it finally went kaput in 2014. And early this year, in a metaphor so blatant, the worst hack wouldn’t use it, it got demolished.

When you think of Trump’s presidency, think of those trucks running around an empty lot, convincing people to buy into his claims. For four years, he coasted on the economy Obama gave him while doing nothing to ensure long-term stability. For four years, he talked about how much he loved the military while doing nothing to fix the mess at the VA. For four years, he talked about fiscal responsibility while tripling the debt. For four years, he talked about draining the swamp while draining million in taxpayer dollars into his own pocket. For four years, he proclaimed his incredible deal-making ability while walking away from deal after deal that would have gotten him the things he wanted.

And yet…none of this affected his support among the Republican Party. He led them to electoral ruin in 2018 and they didn’t care. He mishandled the pandemic and they didn’t care. He ran down our allies and kissed the asses of dictators and they didn’t care. The trucks rolling around the empty lot were enough.

The general response to this is that Donald Trump is giving Republicans what they want: mindless opposition to the Democrats and mindless opposition to the things they stand for. And that’s true. But it’s incomplete.

What he’s giving them is the lie that every con man gives his marks. Are you going to believe me or your lying eyes? My skeptics don’t hate me, they hate you. They just don’t want you to enjoy the great things I’m giving you. This has been true from the very beginning, as I said in another post about another con.

Whether you think Trump is a great President or an awful President, his career has been defined by humbug. He makes things up as he goes. He claims to be an expert on everything and puts forward his ignorance with supreme confidence. And, like most purveyors of humbug, he appeals to people’s vanity. Trump University appealed to people’s vanity by promising to make them wealthy real estate moguls. Trump steaks did so by promising luxury food at “reasonable” prices. The Trump Shuttle. The Trump hotels. All of it sold by promising the trappings of a glitzy lifestyle for those with a not-so-glitzy budget.

Even his Presidential campaign appealed to our vanity. What was “Make America Great Again” but a statement that America was great, that it had been ruined by nefarious liberals and only Trump would bring us back to the greatness we were owed? Never did he talk about hard work, trade-offs, taxes or sacrifice. No, all these wonderful things were just going to happen. Trade wars are good. And easy to win!

And…Trump’s humbug works. It worked enough to make him rich and famous. It worked enough for 60 million people to vote for him and put him in the White House. It works enough for his approval rating among his supporters to remain sky high. It works enough that when people who do know what they’re talking about contradict Trump, they’re branded as fake news.

Con men thrive on skepticism. They thrive on telling their marks that “they” don’t want you to know the truth. Fact checks aren’t ignored; they’re touted as proof of the con man’s bona fides.

In everything that Trump has done you can see the echoes of Peter Popoff or Charles Ponzi or Frank Abagnale. Or Billy McFarland or Bernie Madoff or Enron. Or any other con man in history. Slag your skeptics, tell your marks you’re the only one they can trust, threaten to sue or actually sue your detractors, proclaim vindication at every turn. Turn on the charm, throw around what little money you have, act like a bigshot. Fake it until you make it. And if you don’t make…keep faking it. It’s the art of the con.

Trump kept this act going for 74 years. But 2020 turned out to be the thing Donald Trump at long last could not con and bluster his way through. First there was the pandemic. It turned out that viruses weren’t particularly susceptible to Trump’s act. Not that he didn’t try. We went from “there is no virus” to “it’s contained” to “it’s no worse than the flu” to “the Democrats would have done worse” and are circling back to the final stage of “it’s all China’s fault”. But the virus didn’t care for the humbug; it just kept killing. And then came the election. Trump, who had touted himself as a huge winner who had won the greatest landslide in American history in 2016…became one of the few incumbents to go down in flames, losing to a doddering Joe Biden in the most well-documented and thoroughly audited election in American history.

And so, we find ourselves in the final stage of the con. Trump’s glorious promises have been revealed for the empty promises they always were. We are a nation still recovering from a pandemic, a nation in debt up to our eyeballs and a nation struggling to have sensible discussions on racial issues. The Republican Party — now completely bereft of ideas on the national level — only clings to power because of structural advantages in the Electoral College, House and Senate which allow them to win operational majorities even with voting minorities. Trump’s glorious reign not only ended in his humiliating electoral defeat but in his becoming the only President to be impeached twice and the only President to be effectively removed from power before his term was up, to judge by what happened between 1/6 and 1/20.

And when the con is revealed, and the marks find themselves deceived their response is…to double down. To insist that it’s all lies. To proclaim that the con man is the only one telling them the truth. And the con man and his enablers are out there 24/7 telling them, “Yes …yes, it’s all lies.”

People don’t buy this because they’re stupid. Or because they are gullible. They buy it because they’re human. And one of the things human beings resist is the idea that they’ve been fooled. The people who defended Ponzi, the people who defended Popoff, the people who defended Madoff, the people who have defended every con man in history did so because they don’t want to believe they’d been conned. No one wants to be the mark.

Because if it turns out that Donald Trump was indeed a terrible President. If it turns out his big economy was held up by deficit spending and borrowing. If it turns out he did to the country what he did to all his business partners, then half a decade of political passion was spent in vain. Then all the merchandise they wore was useless. Then all the votes they cast might as well have been flushed down the toilet.

It’s worse than people just losing their money to the likes of Ponzi. Tens of millions of people invested electorally, emotionally and financially in the idea that Donald Trump would not only protect them from the abyss, but bring America back to the glorious past. They gave him their political principles. And he gave them defeat.

When seen in this light, Trump’s insistence that he won the election is not just the empty rhetoric of a defeated populist. It’s the con. It’s a con man trying to explain away the exposure. It’s Ponzi insisting his investments were fine. It’s Popoff insisting the exposure was a trick. Who are you going to believe? Me or your lying eyes? And, at least for now, most of his supporters don’t want to believe their lying eyes. No one ever does.

* * *

So, with all this, what to make of the recent reports that Donald Trump honestly believes that he will soon be restored to power? This isn’t just lying CNN saying this. It’s conservative outlets citing multiple sources.

If this is true, then we have finally reached the apotheosis not just of Donald Trump’s presidency but of his entire life. He has finally managed the ultimate. He has finally managed to con himself.

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1. Not entirely unjustified, given some of the voting restrictions Republicans are trying to enact.
2. I know I’ll get heat for calling Trump “charismatic”. It’s difficult for those of who despise the man to see that his supporters like him. He uses simple words and doesn’t hedge what he says. He makes jokes which fall flat with his opponents but amuse his supporters. He is to conservatives what late night talk show hosts are to liberals.
3. For all 20 seconds they controlled it.