The right-wing scammers who paved the way for Trump
A new book shows how conservative grift started long before branded bibles and $400 sneakers.
Good article but I think the thing it misses is those that currently make up “the base” on the right seem to share the commonality of wanting to be conned. The Christian nationalists, the conspiracy theorists, the buyers of whatever snake oil are currently on offer all want easy, unnuanced answers that continue to validate whatever they’re used to. They ignore systemic issues in favor of the fear du jour because solving the real problems strike at their sense of identity and they’re willing to believe literally anything rather than face the issues that really matter. A feedback loop has taken hold of the GOP which just keeps cranking them further and further away from any sort of reasonable ideology and instead replaced it with spurious and unfounded anxieties and fears. The media has constantly exacerbated this because it increases their metrics and ad dollars to sell the side show.
Would it be incorrect to think that Mark Twain already described how scammers feed off the US religious right in "Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" (1884). I am referring to "The King" and "the Duke".
When there’s a good 30% chunk of the population that’s taught not to think critically, and aggressively refuses to do so - the temptation is real.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
In 2024 alone, Trump debuted $399 gold sneakers emblazoned with the American flag, sold a $60 “God Bless the USA” Bible endorsed by singer Lee Greenwood, and convinced millions to purchase stock in Truth Social’s unprofitable parent company.
The book’s author, Joe Conason, is a veteran New York journalist; he personally knew some of the key figures in the scammy right’s history, like mobbed-up lawyer and Trump mentor Roy Cohn.
Cohn, who worked for McCarthy, figured out a way to transmute that popularity into profit: exploiting fears of Communism to, among other things, finance a lavish trip to Europe.
I spoke to Conason about this fascinating, hidden-in-plain-sight history: about how it started, why it succeeded, how it paved the way for Trump’s rise, and whether there’s any equivalent grifting culture on the American left.
Richard Viguerie was a guy who had been brought into the direct mail business with the Buckley crowd — Young Americans for Freedom, which was their central organization, aside from the National Review, for raising money.
So now, we get the leading Republican presidential candidate hawking multi-hundred-dollar sneakers and an America-themed Bible as a means of making money — a full integration of political party with scam ventures.
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