You’re being played.
Donald Trump is successfully creating a delusional world of fear and lies to persuade people who later will know better that he is just a ruthless con.
If you’re buying into the racket that Trump is selling this time, you’re about to get stuck with the worst time-share deal in the history of this country.
I get why about a quarter of Americans would fall for Trump’s scam. Some of these people put their faith into a belief that hard work will always lead to success — only to have their lives turned upside down by industry after industry that went after cheap labor abroad. Some of these people are flagrant or closet racists who live in fear of brown and yellow Americans assuming power and doing to them what, as a nation, we’ve done to minorities for centuries. Some of these people see Trump as a savior to route out a government run not by the will of the people, but the will of big-money interest calling the shots in Congress.
These are people who have bought into the decades-long demonization of Hillary Clinton. Clinton most certainly is guilty. But she’s guilty of being a political animal, just like every other U.S. president, congressman, senator, governor and state legislator in history. And she’s guilty of being a woman.
She’s guilty of being hunted and stalked by alt-right critics like Rush Limbaugh and Newt Gingrich, who accuse her of being a “pay-to-play” government official. Her alleged crime is giving an audience to wealthy people from here and abroad in exchange for their donating huge sums of money to the Clinton Foundation. The sole purpose of that foundation has been to address problems in disease- and poverty-ravaged hot-spots on the planet that nobody else cares about. Gingrich? He was thrown out of his office after being found guilty of tax-exempt fraud and ethics violations — by his own party.
Donald Trump’s foundation is now shut down in New York and accused of using money he solicits for his business interests. Fraud.
And her GOP critics in Congress? Each and every one spends endless hours giving an audience to owners of big corporations, industries or interests who donate billions of dollars to their campaigns to keep them in office, Republicans and Democrats alike. These fat-cats don’t donate money to stop the spread of AIDS in Africa or feed starving children. They donate money to lawmakers to get votes for their own cash benefit. The entire American political system is based on pay to play, made even worse by the infamous Supreme Court Citizens United decision. Clinton has used it to help wretched people abandoned by the rest of the planet. Trump has used it to build failed hotels, fraudulent-colleges and bankrupt casinos.
Clinton is being pilloried for stupidly and arrogantly using a non-government email system as secretary of state — just like past secretaries of state and other officials have, as well as endless members of Congress and the Bush administration. The FBI concluded after a long investigation that Clinton did not commit any crime. There was no criminal intent. None. But Trump has exaggerated and outright lied about the issue, convincing those who despise her of his own erroneous “reality.”
These are people who agree with or overlook the indisputable fact that Trump has repeatedly made outlandish racist threats and remarks that have caused his own party leaders to strike out at him. They have, unthinkably, endorsed his Democratic opponent. Trump lashed out against a California judge born in Indiana over his Latino heritage. He struck out against the father of a Muslim American killed while fighting for his country. He struck out against a South American Miss Universe winner — whom he had called a fat pig — after the woman publicly admonished Trump for his callous cruelty, spreading fiendish lies about her.
Military officials, defense officials, justice officials, past presidents and presidential candidates — all Republicans — and every single hard-line, reputable conservative newspaper in the country have all adamantly insisted that Trump is not only unqualified to be president, he is a threat to national and international security, economic stability and the very rule of law.
How can anyone be so deaf to something so clear and consistent?
Because they are being played.
Trump has used the media to persuade people that they can’t trust the media. That the indisputable documentations about his lies, are just lies. He’s used the media to persuade people that the media is to blame for women lining up to tell the same story about being sexually assault by Trump — just like he detailed those crimes himself in the infamous Billy Bush video. Just like he admitted to on past radio shows when he got some kind of thrill and celebrity charge out of being a TV sexual bad boy.
Trump’s blinded fans keep calling it “man talk.” They say the growing list of accusers are liars. Bitches. Sluts.
Why do email phishing scams, car-lot schemes, furniture sales ploys, time-share wrangling and a long list of other grifts still exist? Because they still work. Because there are still suckers out there these con men can count on to believe that they really might get a cut of Mr. Baradhuh Hamilton’s fortune in a Swiss bank that he will share if they just provide their own banking information. There are still people who believe that if they don’t sign for a car on the first lot they visit, they’re going to miss out on the best and only deal of their entire lives. There are still people who think that there is a media conspiracy to persuade America that every single, reputable conservative think-tank, columnist, editor, military official, and past sexual assault victim is lying because they don’t want someone else to get to that Swiss bank account.
Trump is a swindler, and he’s the worst kind. And when he can’t deport all the Mexicans and Muslims? And when he can’t kill trade agreements because those industries and companies that truly own Congress won’t let him? And when he can’t deliver cheap and “wonderful” health care because the health-care and drug industry would never stand for it? And when the terrorists strike here in America again because that’s what terrorists do? Trump will say it’s the fault of the media. The Congress. The rigged system.
His believers won’t get what they want, they’ll only be stuck with him. But not you. You will either say, “I told you so,” or you will realize you’d been played. Or we can all avoid this by voting for Hillary Clinton.
Don’t be played by Trump.
Follow @EditorDavePerry on Twitter or Facebook or reach him at 303-750-7555 or dperry@aurorasentinel.com.