Evil Master Plies His Skills, Collecting Millions After Indictment Announced
The master flim flammer is doing it again and very likely, because of his indictment, he may be on pace to top the $2 billion he raised in free media in his mercurial 2016 presidential campaign.
As a sign of his enduring allure and the totally insane, blind allegiance of his disciples, trump’s presidential campaign raised more than $5 million in the 48 hours after his indictment was handed down last Thursday in connection with hush money paid to a porn star. He already capitalized on the indictment by raking in $1.5 million in three days after announcing on March 18 that he was going to be arrested the following Tuesday. Since then, sales of trump flotsam also has intensified with the sale of everything from trump clothing to NFTs. Already, the floor price for trump’s NFT collection went up more than 20 percent to as high of around $1,098.
With money like that flowing like an unending river, it makes it even harder for potential adversaries to use conventional methods to raise the kind of money needed for a bruising and expensive campaign.
A grand jury in Manhattan voted to indict trump for an alleged hush money payment in the weeks leading up to the 2016 presidential election. The payment of $130,000, which was paid to a porn star through Trump’s then-fixer Michael Cohen, was being investigated for potential campaign finance violations. Cohen pleaded guilty to tax evasion charges in 2018 and served time in prison.
The tsunami of giving from trump’s hypnotized followers will surely keep snowballing as his legal problems grow in New York, Georgia and Florida.
Trump’s appearance at his arraignment is being carefully orchestrated to get the maximum exposure and the maximum campaign contributions, to put the ex-president and blue chip grifter in the most favorable light of a martyr being persecuted by legions of corrupt Democrats.
Since the announcement of his indictment, trump’s mug has been everywhere; leading the news stories in print and on-line publications, and crowding out other news on broadcast media in much the same way that his ubiquitous face seemed to surface on every talk show and every news show leading up to the 2016 election.
In 2016, the Media Research Center examined a two-week period and found that trump took up nearly 78 percent of CNN’s prime time GOP campaign coverage. For those two weeks, out of 747 total minutes of exposure, the media gave trump 580 minutes. The 16 other candidates got a combined total of just 167 minutes.
Trump’s arrest photo may become the most downloaded and most profitable photo in the history of the Internet. Undoubtedly, the mug shot will be emblazoned on everything from advertisements, to trump shirts to trump underwear to trump hats, socks, playing cards and just about anything you can imagine advertising trump.
The bombastic trump and his sycophants took all of about 20 minutes after the first news of the indictment before they began their maniacal fundraising pitches.
“The Left thought that they could break us with yet another witch hunt,” says the first email from trump. “They thought that by threatening my possible arrest and arraignment, it would force us to end our 2024 campaign. They were sorely mistaken, Friend.”
Another trump email went out a bit later from trump’s “Save America Joint Fundraising Committee,” warning that “We are living through the darkest chapter of American history.” The e-mail pleaded, “Please make a contribution — of truly any amount — to defend our movement from the never-ending witch hunts and WIN the WHITE HOUSE in 2024.”
Soon after the indictment announcement, Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., got downright weepy when he went on Fox News to beg viewers to donate to trump. Graham just may be angling to be in trump’s good graces so he can win a plum appointment if trump is elected next year.
“To the conservatives out there, make sure you vote,” said Graham, a trump foe before he changed into a trump bootlicker. “If you got friends, make sure they vote. If you don’t have any friends, go make some friends. But you need to help this man, Donald J. Trump. They are trying to drain him dry. Give the president some money to fight this bullshit. This is going to destroy America.”
Republican Kari Lake, the defeated Arizona candidate for governor, was equally quick to grovel, possibly in hopes of being named trump’s vice presidential running mate. Lake who still refuses to admit she lost, tweeted, “As soon as I saw the news that the Soros-DA indicted President Trump, I immediately made a donation to 45/47’s campaign. If you can, let’s send them a message. $5, $10, $500 — it all helps. AND — you get a T-shirt. DONATE TO TRUMP!” Soros refers to billionaire, Jewish philanthropist George Soros who has funded many campaigns, including the N.Y. District Attorney’s election.
On the night of the indictment announcement, the trump camp sent out another email promising a T-shirt with the words “I Stand With Trump” to anyone contributing $47 or more.
Much of the standard trump merch includes the obligatory “Take America Back,” “Don’t Blame Me I Voted For Trump” and the ever popular, “Expose The Biden Crime Family.” There’s also a Donald Trump talking figure with a flag and a recording of 17 Lines in “Trump’s Own Voice.”
One of the more creative though blasphemous posters shows a shadowy Jesus Christ behind and with his hand on trump’s shoulders. In an equally sacreligious vein, another T-shirt proclaims “Jesus is my Saviour; Trump is My President.” And right up there with Jesus is the shirt with the message, “God, Guns and Trump.”
A black trump shirt would certainly make John F. Kennedy turn in his grave as it shows Kennedy standing alongside trump, with the apparent message that trump stands with American giants.
The LBGTQ community also takes a hit with the red T-shirt and the acronym, LGBT, and above each letter, “Liberty, Guns, Beer and Trump.” Another shirt uses the LGBTQ acronym to mean “Let’s Get Biden To Quit.”
The anti-trump merch is every bit as creative. One shirt notes “Trump Sandwich-White Bread- Full of Baloney w/Russian Dressing and a Small Pickle.” Another shows Trump behind orange bars above the words, “Prison Bitch.”
A black T-shirt shows a cartoon picture of trump behind bars with the words, “First President in U.S. History to be Indicted, March 30, 2023. Please, Don’t Grab Me by the P***Y!”
In the 2016 race to the White House, trump proved to be an evil genius in dwarfing his opponents in generating free publicity news and commentary about his campaign on television, in newspapers and magazines, and on social media. Through use of his well-rehearsed charm and outrageous campaign claims, over the course of the 2016 campaign, he earned nearly $2 billion worth of media attention, about twice the price of the most expensive presidential campaigns in history.
I’ve tried to understand trump’s popularity and the best explanation I’ve seen was in a Jan. 11, 2021 interview in Scientific American with Bandy X. Lee, a forensic psychiatrist and president of the World Mental Health Coalition.
Lee was asked what attracts people to trump and what is their “animus or driving force?”
Lee said the reasons are multiple and varied but the two major emotional drives are “narcissistic symbiosis and shared psychosis.”
Narcissistic symbiosis are the developmental wounds that make the leader-follower relationship so attractive. Lee explained narcissistic symbiosis.
“The leader, hungry for adulation to compensate for an inner lack of self-worth, projects grandiose omnipotence — while the followers, rendered needy by societal stress or developmental injury, yearn for a parental figure,” Lee said. “When such wounded individuals are given positions of power, they arouse similar pathology in the population that creates a ‘lock and key’ relationship.”
Shared psychosis, also referred to as “folie à millions,” “madness for millions” or “induced delusions” refers to the infectiousness of severe symptoms that goes beyond ordinary group psychology.
“When a highly symptomatic individual is placed in an influential position, the person’s symptoms can spread through the population through emotional bonds, heightening existing pathologies and inducing delusions, paranoia and propensity for violence — even in previously healthy individuals,” Lee said.
The cure, Lee said, is removal of the individual causing the exposure.
She explained how violence is “a life impulse gone awry.”
“Briefly, if one cannot have love, one resorts to respect. And when respect is unavailable, one resorts to fear. Trump is now living through an intolerable loss of respect: Rejection by a nation in his election defeat. Violence helps compensate for feelings of powerlessness, inadequacy and lack of real productivity,” Lee said.
Many causes create followers but one important psychological injury arises from “relative, not absolute, socioeconomic deprivation.”
“Yes, there is great injury, anger and redirectable energy for hatred, which Trump harnessed and stoked for his manipulation and use. The emotional bonds he has created facilitate shared psychosis at a massive scale,” Lee said.
Presenting facts or appealing to logic are fairly unsuccessful “when the mind is hijacked for the benefit of the abuser.” Lee advised not to confront the beliefs of trump’s supporters “for it will only rouse resistance.” Persuasion, she said, should not be a goal but the effort should be toward changing circumstances that led to faulty beliefs.
She advised that in addressing trump supporters, “one should maintain one’s own bearing and mental health, because people who harbor delusional narratives tend to bulldoze over reality in their attempt to deny that their own narrative is false.”