Trump and the long con

One of the paradoxes of con artists is that cons always depend on appealing to the mark’s desire for a quick and easy solution but the most profitable cons last a long time. How do you keep people engaged in the scam if you’re siphoning off their money?  

There are several ways, but one of the most common is to ensure that they’re getting a quick outcome that they like. They’ll often wine and dine their marks, thereby coming across as too successful to need the mark’s money, and also increasing the mark’s confidence (and attachment). They might be supporting that high living through bad checks, but more often with credit cards and money from previous marks, or by getting the mark to pay for the high living without knowing. One serial confidence artist who specialized in picking up divorced middle-aged women on the Internet was particularly adept at stealing a rarely-used credit card from the women while they were showering. He then simply hid the bills when they arrived.

Because he seemed to have so much money, the women assumed he wouldn’t be scamming them, and would then hand over their life’s savings for him to invest.

They do this despite there being all sorts of good signs that the guy is a con artist–his life story seems a little odd, he doesn’t seem to have a lot of friends who’ve known him very long, there’s always some reason he can’t write checks (or own a home or sign a loan). There are three reasons that the con works, and that people ignore the counter-evidence.

First, cons flatter their marks, arguing that the marks deserve so much more than they’re getting, and persuade the marks to have confidence in them. They will tell the marks that those people (the ones who are pointing to the disconfirming data) look down on them, think they’re stupid, and think they know better. The con thereby gets the mark’s ego associated with his being a good person and not a con artist—admitting that he is a con means the mark will have to admit that those people were right.[1] The con artist will spin the evidence in ways that show he’s willing to admit to some minor flaws, ones that make the mark feel that she can really see through him. She knows him.[2]

Second, the con works because we don’t like ambiguity, and we tend to privilege direct experience and our own perception. The reasons to wonder about whether a man really is that wealthy are ambiguous, and it’s second order thinking (thinking about what isn’t there, about the absence of friends, family, connections, bank statements). That ambiguous data will seem less vivid, less salient, less compelling than the direct experience we have of his buying us expensive gifts. The family thing is vague and complicated; the jewelry is something we can touch.

Third, people who dislike complexity, who believe that most things have simple solutions, and that they are good at seeing those simple solutions are easy marks because those are precisely the beliefs to which cons appeal. Admitting that the guy is a con artist means admitting that the mark’s whole view of life—that the world has simple solutions, that people are what they seem to be, that you can trust your gut about whether someone is good or bad, that things you can touch (like jewelry) matter.

And it works because the marks don’t realize that they are the ones who’ve actually paid for that jewelry.

There are all the signs of his being a con artist—all the lawsuits, all the lies, the lack of transparency about his actual wealth, the reports that show a long history of dodgy (if not actively criminal) tax practices, the evidence that shows his wealth was inherited and not earned—but those are complicated to think about. Trump tells people that he cares about them; he (and his supportive media) tell their marks that all the substantive criticism is made by libruls who look down on them, who think they know better. The media admits to a few flaws, and spins them as minor.

Trump is a con artist, and his election was part of a con game about improving his brand. But, once he won the election, he had to shift to a different con game, one that involved getting as much money for him and his corporations as possible, reducing accountability for con artists, holding off investigations into his financial and campaign dealings, and skimming.

 And Trump gives his marks jewelry. If you have Trump supporters in your informational world, then you know that they respond to any criticism of Trump with, “I don’t care about collusion; I care about my lower taxes.” (Or “I care about the economy” or “I care that someone is finally doing something about illegal immigrants.”) They have been primed to frame concerns about Trump as complicated, ambiguous, and more or less personal opinion, but the benefit of Trump (to them) as clear, unambiguous, and tangible.

 They can touch the jewelry.

And they don’t realize that he isn’t paying for it; he never paid for it, and he never will. They’re paying for it. They bought themselves that jewelry.

There are, loosely, three ways to try to get people to see the con. First, I think it’s useful not to come across as saying that people are stupid for falling for Trump’s cons (although it can be useful to point out that current defenses of Trump are that he’s too stupid to have violated the law). It can be helpful to say that you understand why he and his policies would seem so attractive, but point out that he’s greatly increased the deficit (that his kind of tax cuts always increase the deficit). It’s helpful to have on hand the data about how much “entitlement”programs cost. Point out that they will be paying for his tax cuts for a long, long time.

Another strategy is to refuse to engage and just keep piling on the evidence. People get persuaded that they’ve been taken in by a con artist incident by incident. It isn’t any particular one, but that there are so many, and they reject each one as it comes along. So, I think that sharing story after story about how corrupt Trump is, how bad his policies are,and what damage he is doing—even if (especially if) people complain about your doing so—is effective in the long run.

Third, when people object or defend Trump, ask them if they’re getting their information from sources that would tell them if Trump were a con artist. They’ll respond with, “Oh, so I should watch MSNBC” (or something along those lines) and the answer is: “Yes, you should watch that too.” Or, “No, you shouldn’t get your news from TV.” Or a variety of other answers, but the point is that you aren’t telling them to switch to “librul” sources as much as getting more varied information. 

Con artists create a bond with their marks—their stock in trade is creating confidence. They lose power when their marks lose confidence, and that happens bit by bit. And sometimes it happens when people notice the jewelry is pretty shitty, actually.

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[1]This is why it’s so common for marks to start covering for the con when the con gets exposed. They fear the “I told you so” more than the consequences of getting conned.

[2] In other words, con artists try to separate people from the sources of information that would undermine the confidence the mark has in the con.