Few were surprised when the "We Build the Wall" crowdfunding effort, where rank and file conservatives shelled out to build a tiny section of the big, beautiful border wall, turned out to be a gigantic scam, according to a recent federal indictment. It was only slightly more surprising that Steve Bannon, President Trump's former chief strategist, was a central part of the grift. He was arrested by federal marshals last week, and faces charges of money laundering conspiracy and wire fraud conspiracy. Hilariously, it seems one of the alleged conspirators, Brian Kolfage, spent some of the ill-gotten proceeds on a boat called the "Warfighter."
But this scheme is one small wave in an ocean of fraud. Half of conservative politics now — particularly the infestation of conspiratorial insanity that is rapidly devouring the Republican Party — runs on this kind of small-bore grifting. Look behind the latest bug-eyed theories about Democrats being space lizard cannibals or coronavirus vaccines being a secret plot to brainwash citizens, and odds are you will find some kook hawking snake oil remedies to eagerly receptive rubes. It follows that a stringent crackdown on petty scams and quack medicine would go some distance towards cleansing American politics of madness. (...)
In this they are following a long tradition of other right-wing grifters. Alex Jones of InfoWars has long sold supplements with ridiculous lies about how they will make you stronger, healthier, and smarter (or cure COVID-19). BuzzFeed News sent some of them to a testing lab and found they were just vitamins and other ordinary supplements sold at a preposterous markup. As Alex Pareene and Rick Perlstein have written, this kind of thing has been a foundational part of conservative politics for decades.
By the same token, basically all of Trump's business empire — the fraudulent Trump University, the grift Trump Foundation, and various other Trump-branded trash — has been a similar type of scam after he squandered his father's inheritance (on which he dodged taxes in a likely illegal fashion) on real estate and casino failures. Of course as president he is constantly violating the Constitution by nickel-and-diming the government to use his own facilities.
It thus makes perfect sense that the very top of conservative politics, the Trump re-election campaign, has apparently been infested with fraud and self-dealing. Trump's previous campaign manager, Brad Parscale, recently departed the effort under suspicion that he had directed millions of dollars into his and his friends' pockets. As Josh Marshall writes at Talking Points Memo, "Criminality and fraud come like breathing to the president and seemingly everyone around him. Like recognizes like. Thieves and cons sense a fellow traveler." No wonder the campaign has crossed the billion dollar mark in its spending faster than any in history.
[ed. Tip of the iceberg. See also: Spotting $62 Million in Alleged P.P.P. Fraud Was the Easy Part (NYT).]
But this scheme is one small wave in an ocean of fraud. Half of conservative politics now — particularly the infestation of conspiratorial insanity that is rapidly devouring the Republican Party — runs on this kind of small-bore grifting. Look behind the latest bug-eyed theories about Democrats being space lizard cannibals or coronavirus vaccines being a secret plot to brainwash citizens, and odds are you will find some kook hawking snake oil remedies to eagerly receptive rubes. It follows that a stringent crackdown on petty scams and quack medicine would go some distance towards cleansing American politics of madness. (...)
In this they are following a long tradition of other right-wing grifters. Alex Jones of InfoWars has long sold supplements with ridiculous lies about how they will make you stronger, healthier, and smarter (or cure COVID-19). BuzzFeed News sent some of them to a testing lab and found they were just vitamins and other ordinary supplements sold at a preposterous markup. As Alex Pareene and Rick Perlstein have written, this kind of thing has been a foundational part of conservative politics for decades.By the same token, basically all of Trump's business empire — the fraudulent Trump University, the grift Trump Foundation, and various other Trump-branded trash — has been a similar type of scam after he squandered his father's inheritance (on which he dodged taxes in a likely illegal fashion) on real estate and casino failures. Of course as president he is constantly violating the Constitution by nickel-and-diming the government to use his own facilities.
It thus makes perfect sense that the very top of conservative politics, the Trump re-election campaign, has apparently been infested with fraud and self-dealing. Trump's previous campaign manager, Brad Parscale, recently departed the effort under suspicion that he had directed millions of dollars into his and his friends' pockets. As Josh Marshall writes at Talking Points Memo, "Criminality and fraud come like breathing to the president and seemingly everyone around him. Like recognizes like. Thieves and cons sense a fellow traveler." No wonder the campaign has crossed the billion dollar mark in its spending faster than any in history.
by Ryan Cooper, The Week | Read more:
Image: Illustrated | Getty Images, Alamy, iStock[ed. Tip of the iceberg. See also: Spotting $62 Million in Alleged P.P.P. Fraud Was the Easy Part (NYT).]
