Donald Trump And His Cult
Hello, dear readers and welcome to the fourth article in my The Rich And The Suckers series. In this article, I will be discussing Donald Trump and his supporters. While there have been worse presidents in terms of human rights. (Andrew Jackson, Andrew Johnson, all the presidents that owned slaves, etc.), no president has been as openly corrupt as Donald Trump. No president has enjoyed the cult-like devotion of his supporters like Donald Trump.
Trump's selling point at the beginning of his campaign was his success as a businessman. Trump’s narrative was that he would not be influenced by special interests because he had his own money. Trump supporters thought the United States needed an outsider to drain the swamp. Some political experts, like Kid Rock, told Americans to “let the businessman run things.” This logic is flawed in so many ways.
Donald Trump is not and has never been a successful businessman. Trump's claims that he “took a small loan of a million dollars from my father and turned it into billions” is completely false. The fact is his father spent untold millions of dollars trying to bail out his son's failing businesses. While it's not uncommon for a successful businessman to have a failure, almost all of Trump's businesses have failed. Here is a list of Trump’s failures.
Trump Steaks, Go Trump, Trump Airlines, Trump Vodka, Trump Mortgage, Trump: The Game, Trump Magazine, Trump Ice, Trump University, The New Jersey Generals, Tour de Trump, Trump Network, Trumped!
These are Trump companies that sought bankruptcy protection: Trump Taj Mahal, Trump’s Castle, Trump Casinos, Trump Plaza Hotel, Trump Hotels and Casinos Resorts, Trump Entertainment Resorts.
In a Pulitzer prize-winning New York Times article, reporters David Barstow, Susan Craig, and Russ Buttner, exposed the financial reality of Donald Trump. The article was “based on printouts from the official Internal Revenue Service transcripts.” The article showed that “between 1985 through 1994, Trump's businesses lost more money every year, totaling over a billion dollars.” In 1987, Trump had his book, titled The Art Of The Deal, ghostwritten while being in deep financial distress. This article is one of the reasons why Trump hates the New York Times.
There were two things that saved Trump from total bankruptcy. One was his massive inheritance and the second was The Apprentice TV show. Between 1999, when his father passed away, and 2004, when Donald and his siblings sold all of his father's properties, Donald inherited an estimated 412 million dollars. Although it's yet to be proven, it's suspected that Trump committed fraud so as to pay minimal taxes on his inheritance. Trump would make over 200 million dollars from The Apprentice. This show would also help Trump continue his faults image as a successful business tycoon.
Even if Trump’s story was true, that would not qualify him to be president. Downplaying the $1 million interest-free loan he received from his father in the mid-70s shows how out of touch he is with the common American. The fact that he's a business failure shows that he is a shameless liar who, even with advantages 99% of Americans would dream of, still needed reality TV and a big inheritance to avoid bankruptcy. By Trump supporter logic, “Snooki” from Jersey Shore would have made a good presidential candidate if she had wealthier parents.
Another myth Trump supporters believed with absolutely no evidence is that he is a friend of the working class. Trump has certainly been no friend to those that work for him. An investigative article by USA Today found that Trump was involved in over 3500 lawsuits between 1980-2015. “At least 60 lawsuits, along with hundreds of liens, judgments, and other government filings were from contractors claming they got stiffed.” USA Today also found “24 violations of the Fair Labor Standards Act since 2005 for failing to pay overtime or minimum wage.” Even the lawyers who defended Trump got into legal disputes over Trump's lack of payment.
In 2016 and 2020, Trump lost the presidential election in New York and New Jersey, the two states where he lived and did the majority of his business. However, southern states bought into Trump's lies. Despite all the information about Trump, his supporters stayed loyal. Republicans blaming the liberal media is nothing new. Rush Limbaugh did it quite a lot in the ‘90s. Trump convinced his supporters that anything unfavorable said about him was “fake news.” No matter how much proof there was against Trump, his cult didn't care. A cult doesn’t have to be religious. One definition is having a misplaced or excessive admiration for a particular person or thing. This describes Trump supporters to perfection.
Another selling point of Trump was that he had never been in government, so he was an outsider. His supporters saw this as a good thing. This flawed logic doesn't apply to any other job. Would a person feel better knowing their doctor never went to medical school? Even though Trump told more proven lies than any other president, he got a reputation with his cult for “telling it like it is.” His supporters have always mistaken his disrespect toward those he doesn’t like as an honest man who is unafraid of the liberal agenda.
Trump made millions of dollars selling paraphernalia with his motto, “Make America Great Again. Trump supporters proudly wore their MAGA gear at Trump's hillbilly Nuremberg-like political rallies. These rallies had men and women displaying US and Confederate T-shirts cheering for their failed New York businessman. Trump didn’t fool everybody though. Over half the country was horrified by the orange man. They weren't all Democrats.
Before Trump won the presidency, many Republicans spoke poorly of him. The Bush family (George H., George W., and Jeb) all opposed Trump. Chris Christie, Mitt Romney, and Arnold Schwarzenegger did as well. Senator Lindsey Graham despised Trump before he was elected. Graham called Trump a “race-baiting, xenophobic, religious bigot.” He said Trump “doesn’t represent my party. He doesn't represent the values that men and women who wear the uniform are fighting for. He's the ISIL man of the year.” Ted Cruz despised Trump as well after Trump called his wife ugly. Graham and Cruz would reverse their positions and kiss Trumps’ ass once he was elected.
I was foolish enough to believe that with the nomination of Trump, Christianity was no longer going to be first priority in the Republican Party. After all, Trump was a casino owner on his third marriage who used profanity and had no ties to the church. Despite this, Republican Christians would show their disgusting hypocrisy by backing Donald Trump. These Christians overlooked Trump’s numerous sexual assault and harassment accusations and lawsuits. What would come out in October of 2016 was a smoking gun. A recording of Donald Trump bragging to Access Hollywood host Billy Bush about sexual assault came out. In this video, Trump was talking to Bush about a failed attempt to seduce Nancy O'Dell, Bush’s co-host at the time. This was the recording: “I moved on her and failed. I’ll admit it. I did try and fuck her. She was married. And I moved on her heavily. In fact, I took her out furniture shopping. She wanted to get some furniture. I said, ‘I’ll show you where they have some nice furniture.’ I took her out furniture shopping. I moved on her like a bitch. But I couldn’t get there. And she was married. Then all of a sudden I see her, she’s now got the big phony tits and everything. She’s totally changed her look.”
Although Trump got some backlash from the Republican Party, a huge majority stayed loyal. Trump also kept most of his support from right-wing Christians. Trump apologized, saying it was “locker room banter.” Trump's Christian supporters forgave him, believing he had learned his lesson. After all, he didn't do something horrible like be gay or use birth control.
Robert Jeffrey, pastor of the mega-church First Baptist Dallas, said, “No Evangelical I know is expecting Trump to lead our nation in a spiritual revival. But seven years of Barack Obama have drastically lowered the threshold of spiritual expectations Evangelicals have of their president. No longer do they require their president to be one of them. Evangelicals will settle for someone who doesn't hate them like the current occupant of the Oval Office appears to.” To sum up right-wing Christianity: Adulterer, casino owner, doesn’t feel he needs forgiveness — Good. Black, married Christian, has been going to the same church for 20 years — Bad.
In November of 2016, despite losing the popular vote by almost 3 million, Trump won the Electoral College and became the 45th president of the United States. Before Trump even gave the State of the Union Address, there was widespread evidence that the Russians had interfered in our presidential election. Not only did Trump deny this but he would continue to side with Vladimir Putin against United States intelligence offices. I imagined Ronald Reagan rolling over in his grave to see an American president taking the side of a former KGB agent over the FBI, CIA, and NSA. This would not affect Trump's popularity with his cult, who would continue to refer to the Democrats as Marxist.
It would take multiple encyclopedia-sized books to cover all the corruption during Trump's four-year presidency. One thing remained constant. No matter how much evidence, his cult stayed loyal. Trump's approval rating never got above 45%, but he was always able to count on his sycophants. These people would commit acts of vandalism and violence in support of him. No matter what he did, stealing from charities, and even using campaign money to pay off his legal fees, he did not lose his following. They would either call the allegations fake, justify or ignore them.
In 2020, Joe Biden defeated Trump by almost 7 million votes. Donald went to his playbook and accused vote counters of fraud. Trump's attorneys had over 50 cases thrown out of court due to lack of evidence. Ignoring this, on January 6th of 2021, Trump's morons rioted and overran the perimeter of the Capitol building. Many of his supporters were arrested and a few innocent people were killed. When Mitch McConnell and Mike Pence publicly conceded the election to Biden, some of Trump’s supporters would threaten their lives. Today Trump is still facing multiple indictments. No matter what happens, his supporters will stay by his side. Even on the unlikely chance Trump serves jail time, you can count on some of his nut jobs to try to bust him out.
Although I have conservative friends, none of them voted for Trump. I have no respect for his followers, as they have no respect for anyone else. Despite their talk of making America great again, they despise everything good about this country. Trump supporters cannot claim they love the United States while trying to overturn a democratic election. They whine about cancel culture, even though they tried to cancel over half of the country's votes. These people aren't going away. Even after Trump dies, there will be other right-wing demagogues waiting to take his place.