We Should Have Seen It Coming

In the wake of the 2016 election, I mused about what a Trump Presidency would be like

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American Deceptulism (first published Nov 20, 2016, edited here for clarity)

We Americans must have a reputation for gullibility so great that it strains believability. In any number of critiques that appeared in the media during the recently concluded campaign, President-elect Trump was often described by detractors as a con man. Yet the fact that he may be pulling off the highest stakes “pig-in-a-poke” grift in modern history has not stirred the outrage one might expect from a nation (or, to be precise, slightly less than half a nation) of marks. In this variation of the bait-and-switch, Trump has promised one thing and seems poised to deliver another.

With the Trump transition team working in the near secrecy of his eponymous Fifth Avenue headquarters, we have only speculation as to whom he will tap to fill the seats in his Cabinet and the numerous other government posts. We are getting, however, a sense of the character and shape of a Trump administration from the initial appointees who were announced: Reince Priebus as White House Chief of Staff and Steven Bannon, Breitbart CEO and self-proclaimed anti-establishmentarian, as chief strategist. This was followed by the news that Senator Jeff Sessions will be named Attorney General, retired General Michael Flynn, National Security Advisor, and Congressman Mike Pompeo, Director of the CIA. The effusively erratic Rudolph Giuliani remains part of the Trump inner circle, though without a specific portfolio.

“Drain the swamp?” Doesn’t seem like it. Aside from Bannon, the others are creatures of the swamp. Those who voted for the Donald because he would “shake things up” may slowly realize that they’ve been duped. A proper analogy to the situation would be a war between Mafia crime families. What we have here is the Provolone family wrestling control of the rackets from the Lasagnas. Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.

Trump, who is reported to be a creature of habit, will no doubt attempt to continue in campaign mode. He can be expected to use Twitter in much the same way that FDR used his radio-broadcast “fireside chats” to speak directly to the public. We can anticipate learning of grandiose plans that are short on detail. This is what has worked for him throughout his career and is what he believes to be the reason he won the election. Think of P.T. Barnum with a Twitter account.

Much is being made in the media about Trump’s stated desire to do big things in infrastructure with a “one trillion dollar” package to create jobs and rebuild our crumbling roads and bridges. Even some Democrats are signaling a willingness to work with the ribbon-cutter-in-chief on this type of program.

But, wait- this, too, is mostly smoke-and-mirrors.

In a nutshell, the Trump plan will not require the Federal government to borrow and spend money. Instead, it will grant substantial tax credits to private parties who, in turn, will raise the money to finance construction. In return, the private firms get to own the assets- toll roads and toll bridges, for instance- and capture the revenue for themselves. Progressive economists and journalists ranging from Lawrence Summers and Paul Krugman to Brad Plummer of Vox have offered detailed critiques of this game of three-card monte. Private equity firms, for example, would have little incentive to invest in unprofitable ventures such as sewer systems and public transportation. At its core, Trump’s plan is simply a scheme to transfer public wealth to insiders in the private sector.

It is said that, as we get older, we become more and more the person we always were. If you believe that, and if you study Donald Trump’s career- the lawsuits, the bankruptcies, the non-payment of contractors, etc.- there is no reason to believe that the seventy-one-year-old version will be different. To those on the left who fret about his racism and misogyny, they are missing the point: As deplorable and divisive as his rhetoric is¹, it is only misdirection, the classic tactic of the con man. And for the Republicans who are already doing their end-zone dance in anticipation of enacting their conservative agenda, they may be just as shocked when they realize they, too, have been conned. The Trump economic plans revealed during the campaign- massive tax cuts, holding the line on entitlements- would greatly increase the Federal budget deficit, anathema to conservatives. This is where the Republican Congress will no doubt run smack into Steven Bannon, chief advocate for “destroying the state”².

Writing in Rolling Stone last February (“How America Made Donald Trump Unstoppable”), Matt Taibbi was eerily prescient about what was portended by Trump’s candidacy:

It turns out we let our electoral process devolve into something so fake and dysfunctional that any half-bright con man with the stones to try it could walk right through the front door and tear it to shreds on the first go

And Trump is no half-bright con man, either. He's way better than average.

So, then what is Trump’s game? We are getting hints of it already, less than two weeks after the election. Foreign diplomats are reportedly booking rooms at the Trump hotel in Washington and renting office space in Trump buildings. He interrupted his work on the transition to meet with business partners from India on Saturday. He is not placing his businesses into a blind trust but relinquishing control to his children. At the same time, there have been reports that he is seeking security clearances for his children and his son-in-law, Jared Kushner. The stock of Deutsche Bank, which is fighting a fourteen billion dollar fine sought by the US government, rose after the election. The bank is one of the few financial institutions known to have extended credit to Trump’s businesses.

If this all seems too prosperous to grasp, perhaps it’s because we are suffering the collective embarrassment of the mark who finally realizes they’ve been fleeced. No one wants to admit to being taken advantage of, to being a sucker. You can, of course, believe whatever you choose. I will cling to my skepticism.

Update, May 12, 2025

The first Trump Presidency proved to be more of a disaster than I (or most anyone else) anticipated. Impeached twice while in office, he capped the final year of his term by mishandling the COVID pandemic. The final act of Trump 1.0 was his inciting the January 6 insurrection. Out of office, he faced multiple felony charges, was found guilty of fraud in New York, and avoided Federal prosecution by being re-elected. As surprising was his first electoral victory was, his second was, given the circumstances, inexplicable to a rational mind.

We are nearing 4 months into the second Trump Presidency and he is once gain proving to be more the person he always was- a malevolent narcissist, a serieal liar, and an inveterate con artist. He is motivated by a resentment that seems rooted in a deep sense of in security. He is shameless, but a proper analysis would find that it the entire nation that should be ashamed. Afterall, we should have seen it all coming.

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1. These issues are, of course, problematic. However, they are not new to American society, and it can be argued that Trump brought them to the surface for the purpose of mobilizing support for his candidacy.

2. Bannon has often repeated that “I'm a Leninist. Lenin wanted to destroy the state, and that's my goal, too. “