Time Marches on, and grifters like Kevin Trudeau (and Donald Trump) are still grifting

 

It has been a very busy March for me, and now it's almost April. But in the interest of posting something on this Whirled before the month runs out, here is yet another timely reminder that serial scammer Kevin Trudeau (who may or may not be officially "released" from his 10-year prison sentence -- see graphic above, from the Federal Bureau of Prisons Inmate Locator site), is still a serial scammer, despite persistent attempts by him and his minions to brand him as a humbled, selfless servant to humanity.

Here is one of the most recent performative-humility missives; dated March 21, 2022, it's from the Official Kevin Trudeau Fan Club Page on Facebook:

I tried to follow the link to the full article on the GuruKev site, but apparently it's all password-protected now. It appears that Team KT is really aggressively building that list, prepping for even bigger and better grifts.

But stop, look, and listen. If you haven't done so already, or if you just need a reminder about an anything-but-humble leopard who won't ever change his spots, you can find out more here.

And here.

And here.

And here.

Painfully aware of my own redundancy, I'll say again that Kevin Trudeau is, always has been, and always will be a grifter -- perhaps on a smaller and less dangerous scale than one of his apparent idols, Donald Trump, but it's the same kind of deal. "Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice..."

I'll be back in April with more. And it won't be redundant.

Kevin Trudeau: as prison release date approaches, the KT fraud machine is revving up

From time to time I visit the official Facebook Fan Club Page of serial scammer Kevin Trudeau, aka KT, aka Katie on this Whirled. It's at least a marginally reliable gauge of what's going on in Katie's world as his official prison release date of May 9, 2022 approaches (he's currently on a "home release" program overseen by the Bureau of Prisons). One point that has stood out overwhelmingly for me whenever I peruse the page -- and it's a point I've made here several times over the past few years -- is that Trudeau is prepared to hit the ground running with new or expanded scams once he's released, at least to the extent that he can get away with doing so as a newly released felon who presumably will be on probation for a few years. But then again, as also noted here numerous times, he never stopped hustling throughout his incarceration.

Grin and Barrett
In July 2021 I published a post about Kevin's loyal water carriers begging for bucks on his behalf. One claim made in the minions' message -- which was most likely written by Kevin himself, or at least heavily directed and edited by him -- was that Kevin is more than capable of making zillions of dollars on his own. In part, the message I cited in that post read:

Kevin could easily come out of prison and start an international company again. Mega successful people from all around the world are making multi-million dollar offers to Kevin. They all want Kevin full time and they want to be a business partner with Kevin.

Kevin is getting offers for large amounts of equity in companies, huge salaries, board positions, multi-million dollar cash advances and more to commit full time to their ventures.

The issue, explain the minions, is that as a now-enlightened spiritual master (just call him GuruKev), Kevin will be solely focused on humbly serving humanity ("Selfless Service," no less!), and on lifting the collective vibration of the planet. But he still needs to live, of course, and he needs moneys to do it, and since he'll be too busy saving the world to earn those moneys, he needs a bunch of people to fork over (and over and over and over).

I originally shared that fan club post under the assumption that more than likely most of it is hyperbole, as is the case with anything remotely related to Kevin Trudeau's marketing efforts. Then again, given the serious ethical lapses and scam-friendly business practices of more than one billionaire or rich corporation, maybe there are a bunch of 'em clamoring for Katie. Be that as it may, at least one of his former partners-in-grime, one Donald Barrett, infamous infomercial producer, has actually issued a public invite to Kevin in hopes, one can only assume, that the two of them can pick up where they left off.

I saw Barrett's message on -- you guessed it -- the Facebook KT fan page. It was a short and simple response to a February 21, 2022 post in which the admins, clearly attempting to recruit more "volunteers" to serve The Master, urged people to read about what a sublimely splendid experience it is to "work with Kevin":

Donald W. Barrett KT... Where are you? I can be anywhere anytime.

• 1d

Like Kevin, whose infomercials Barrett used to produce, Donald has had his share of troubles with some of the alphabet agencies of the US government, most notably the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). The Feds took issue some years ago with his claims that a frauduct he was peddling, Supreme Greens, could cure multiple diseases, including arthritis and cancer. He was also nailed for his participation in an infomercial for Trudeau's weight-loss book -- the same matter that ultimately landed Kevin in prison. And to top it off, he got in a spot of trouble with the IRS for failing to report a fairly substantial amount of income from his frauduct-pushing.

Unlike Trudeau, though, Barrett was able to avoid serious prison time. From Salem News, October 7, 2011:

Yesterday, Barrett was given a year of probation by U.S. District Court Judge Richard Stearns. Three months will be spent in a halfway house, and three more on home confinement.

Barrett will also not have to pay the $3,000 fine prosecutors had sought.

It's not entirely clear why, since not only did Barrett's lawyers insist on filing their sentencing memorandum under seal, but U.S. District Court Judge Richard Stearns did not include any specific reasons for the decision in the written sentencing order.

In court, the judge cited only the family circumstances raised by Barrett's attorneys, and in his order listed an "inability to pay" as the reason for waiving the fine.

Barrett's attorneys, William Kettlewell and William Lovett, asked that their sentencing memorandum be sealed from public view because it contains "confidential personal and medical information" about a family member, and also asked the judge to impound the transcript of their sidebar discussion with the judge, according to the case docket.

It appears that there's another thing Barrett has in common with KT: an "inability" to pay the fine imposed for his misdeeds. And Barrett had it relatively easy: his fine was only $3,000.00, as opposed to the nearly $40 million that Trudeau had accrued. But if ya can't pay, ya can't pay.

This piece from Truth in Advertising, originally published in 2013 and updated in 2015, has some info and commentary about both Trudeau and Barrett. While the updating of the article was apparently incomplete -- contrary to a claim in the last paragraph, Trudeau did, in fact, end up in prison -- the core message is spot-on: you can't keep a bad ad man down.

In any case, it seems that Donald Barrett is up and running with a whole new string of hustles, at least if his Facebook page is a reliable indicator. The Intro blurb on his Facebook page describes him as, "Rated as America’s top marketing consultant’s [sic]." When I looked on his page I saw that he is only followed by 159 people at the moment, but I'm sure there will be many, many more as people wake up to the realization that he is, after all, America's top marketing consultant's [sic].

These daze Barrett seems to be heavily involved in the cannabis industry -- not that there's anything wrong with that -- but apparently he's always looking for new business ops. And what better partner to partner with than his old buddy Kevin Trudeau? Who knows... if the two of them get together and start something up again, maybe Barrett's next fine will be much greater than $3,000.00, and he may actually be rewarded with some real prison time. It's something to aspire to, anyway.

The banned plays on (but not on the KT FB page)
I would gladly have attempted to answer Donald Barrett's question about KT's whereabouts, at least to the best of my ability. I would have told him that, as reported on this January 2022 Whirled post, his last known location was in the home of long-time Trudeau loyalist David Krueger, who lives in a near-northwest Chicago suburb. (Trudeau may very well be somewhere else by now, since one of his reported goals is to get back into luxurious surroundings as soon as possible, but he was staying with Krueger as of late 2021.)

But I couldn't write that on the KT Facebook fan page, because it appears that I have finally been banned -- more specifically, blocked from participating in any manner on that page. I'd actually discovered my pariah status earlier this month when I visited the page to see if there was a post about the February 2, 2022 death of longtime KT loyalist and substantial financial supporter Ed Foreman.

Ed not only poured money into Kevin's coffers for years, but he also contributed heavily to the myth of Kevin as a hero and martyr, this recap of Kevin's legal troubles being one example. He even caused a bit of a ruckus in court during the sentencing phase of Kevin's criminal trial (and had to be physically dragged out of the courtroom by federal marshals, and was fined for his efforts). And he shamelessly groveled at the feet of #NeverWasMyPresident Donald Trump just before Trump took office, begging him (in vain, as it turned out) to commute Kevin's prison sentence and pardon him.

But I didn’t see anything on the Facebook fan page about old Ed. That didn't come as a complete surprise, since I had heard from credible sources that Ed had issues with KT being kind of a dickhead since being semi-released from federal sleepaway camp. (I mentioned that in the above-cited January 2022 post as well.) It’s possible that Ed finally saw the light towards the end of his long life, and that he renounced his membership in the Kevin Trudeau Inner Circle of Worship. If that was the case, it's very possible that The Great Master forbade the minions from ever uttering Ed's name again, or perhaps the omission was the decision of the fan page admins, out of deference to their Master. (If I'm wrong, tell me and I'll publish a correction.) 

I am not blocked from seeing or sharing the posts on the KT fan page, only from commenting or even responding — so no more of my ha-ha emojis in response to one of their ludicrous posts that everyone else on that forum takes as profound wisdom. For more than two years, much to my surprise, the admins tolerated my contributions, though a few comments were removed and my words were almost always ignored by the faithful, who, I imagine, considered me to be one of those “rats in your head” that Kevin used to warn them about.

Apparently, however, my last contribution was the last straw. It was a response to a January 31, 2022 post about one of the Kevin Trudeau channels on Telegram. Telegram, as I've previously mentioned, is the infamous social messaging app preferred by right-wing extremists and a host of other unsavory characters in the eight or so years that it has been in existence. Telegram's operational center is in Dubai, UAE, and the owners don’t do much if any moderation, so it’s pretty much "anything goes." Of course, I'm sure that the KT Telegram channels are all on the up-and-up.

At any rate, the post on the KT fan page requested that readers ask Kevin anything, the idea being that he will choose a question to answer on one of his future Telegram performances, which apparently happen every Saturday. Always eager to constructively participate in a conversation, I was the first person to post a question, and it was a perfectly legitimate one, but I guess they didn’t like it.

All I wanted to know was whether Kevin intends to continue promoting the Global Information Network, aka GIN, once he is released from prison, or if he intends to start an entirely new club… or if it all depends upon the willingness of the current “official” GIN owners, the Morters and Blaine Athorn, to do Kevin’s bidding. I think it’s a completely valid question -- one that I've certainly asked here before -- and that it is something GIN members and prospective members need to know, so they can make an informed decision before throwing their money down the toilet.

My guess is that Kevin didn’t like that question. Or perhaps he never even saw it, and the admins just finally got tired of me, which is perfectly understandable because I can be very annoying. Anyway, my question is gone from that forum and so, it seems, am I. The admins are well within their rights to ban anyone they want -- I'm not whining about "censorship" or "First Amendment violations," because neither of these applies -- and I'm surprised it took them so long to get rid of me. But rest assured that I will continue to ask those uncomfortable questions on this forum, and I will also provide uncomfortable answers here, or highly informed speculation at the very least, whenever I receive credible information.

Frauducts in store
It remains to be seen exactly how Kevin Trudeau will exercise his considerable flim-flamming talents once he's released back into the wild. His loyal water carrier Tonya Canada, one of the founders of the fan club and an admin on the fan club's Facebook page, assures us that he has big dreams and visions.

It has been such an honor to work with Kevin for over a year. We have email contact nearly every day. I often think how amazing it is that every day I am receiving positive energy from Kevin as he thinks about me as we are emailing back and forth about different assignments & questions.

I consider it a blessing to be one of his volunteer assistants and work directly with Kevin in his “Vision and Dream”. He is working on something HUGE and I am so thankful for my part and the ability to be of service.

Yeah, I have a pretty good idea what that something HUGE might be. He wants to be the leader of a new Scientology-like cult; L. Ron Trudeau, anyone? Meanwhile, Tonya and other proxies are carrying on his work for him now -- again, under his direction -- and I wouldn't be surprised if he was getting a hefty chunk of change from all of their crapitalistic efforts, as well as from GIN. I have no idea if any of that is a violation of the terms of his home release; I guess that's up to the parole board to decide.

Indeed, when it comes to Kevin Trudeau and frauducts, it seems that the more things change, the more they stay the same. The "Kevin Trudeau Fan Club Store" is prominently featured on the KT Facebook fan page, and also on the official Kevin Trudeau Fan Club web site, and seems as clear a sign as any that the Great Master is benefiting from going back to his huckster roots. Some of store's the offerings include:

• The Fibonacci Life Path Package -- "the ULTIMATE package from I Ching Systems that you can buy!" -- which you can get now for the low, low price of only $3,295.00, marked down from $3,395.00.
• The Kloud by Centropix -- "A Luxurious At-Home System For Molecular Activation" -- for only $4,990.00. It's part of the "Personal" product line in the KT shop, and one of the devices that "Kevin Trudeau uses to protect his personal energy space and his environment from external sources of stress and chaos." (The Kloud was "casually" mentioned in a worshipful post by a young huckster-in-training; see again this Whirled post (under the sub-head, "A dream come true for three lucky rubes"). If The Kloud is too rich for your blood, there's the Cocoon for only $3,690.00, or if you're a real cheapskate, you can slum around with the Bubble for a mere $890.00.
• Elk Antler Velvet Platinum -- Surely you can afford this, you tightwad. It's only $240.00 for one whole fl. oz., and it'll help you regain your youthful "go mode" -- your stamina, endurance, strength, and perhaps even your manly manliness, should that be something you're worried about.

But wait, there's more! Granted, I haven't browsed through the entire store -- I can only take a little bit at a time -- so maybe you can browse for me. If so, perhaps you can tell me if Trudeau and gang are still peddling anything by a crackpot named Alex Chiu, whose Immortality Rings and other bat-crap baubles Trudeau promoted in his first Natural Cures book. I wrote about that a few years ago.

I am well aware that in essence there's really nothing new about this store, other than perhaps its framework as an adjunct of the Kevin Trudeau Fan Club; after all, Trudeau and his various partners and supporters have been promoting these very same types of frauducts and services for many years, through Natural Cures, through GIN (via the GIN Store), and through books and infomercials and newsletters and email blasts and every possible way that a frauduct can be promoted. I've written about some of these efforts over the years, e.g., on this July 2014 post (under the sub-head, "Lamp unto my feet"). I highlight the KT Fan Club store offerings now simply as a way of making (or belaboring, as the case may be) my point that Kevin is up to his same old tricks.

I'll continue to monitor and write about the goings-on in the Kevin Trudeau scampire to the extent that's it's possible for an "outsider" to do so. But I can't do it all myself. My lines of communication are always open, should you have anything to add to the conversation. One point is certain, and it's another one I've repeated ad nauseam on this blog: No matter how he brands and re-brands himself, it's a safe bet that Kevin Trudeau has been and always will be all about the hustle.

Big flap on the border: conspiranoid terrorists/Trump supporters force indefinite closing of National Butterfly Center in Rio Grande Valley

The domestic terrorists are at it again: threats from QAnon conspiranoids and radicalized Trumpsters have forced the 100-acre National Butterfly Center, located in a former onion field along the U.S.-Mexico border in Mission, Texas, to close indefinitely. As reported by The Texas Tribune on February 2, 2022 and elsewhere, the 20-year-old butterfly center has been targeted at least since 2019 by these wackadoodle conspiracy-porn addicts, who have falsely tied the organization to human trafficking.

Never mind that there are zero law enforcement investigations into the organization, or any of its staff members, for human trafficking. Facts don't matter to these zealots. The center's executive director, Marianna Treviño-Wright, said, "They tell these lies in a variety of forms through all of their channels to promote stochastic terrorism."

The trouble most likely began in 2017 when the butterfly center filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration, arguing that proposed construction of the infamous border wall would drive through the center and decimate butterfly habitats. Treviño-Wright suspects that this is what initially attracted the attention of the conspiranoids. (The lawsuit is still ongoing in federal court.)

But a Trumpster/con artist/troll named Brian Kolfage really got the ball rolling in 2019, when he tweeted out false rumors accusing Treviño-Wright of human trafficking. In November of that year, Kolfage and his group, We Build The Wall, began clearing land next to the nature preserve to build a private crowdfunded wall along the border. (In August of 2020, I published a post about Kolfage and his crowdfunding wallscam and vicious trolling -- not to mention his indictment (along with luminaries such as Steve Bannon) for the scam.)

The National Butterfly Center opposed the construction of the wall, citing that it not only violated international treaties but would also be detrimental to the center's ecology. And that's when the attacks from Kolfage began. The following month, the National Butterfly Center obtained a temporary restraining order against Kolfage and his scammy hatriot organization, and then filed a lawsuit claiming defamation and disparagement.

Not surprisingly, the harassment did not stop after the lawsuit was filed. Treviño-Wright claims that she has been the subject of threats via phone, email, and Twitter since then. And late last month, a fringe right-wing congressional candidate from Virginia, Kimberly Lowe, paid a visit to the butterfly center, demanding that the center give her access to the river "to see all the illegals crossing on the raft." Treviño-Wright says that when she asked Lowe to leave the premises, Lowe tackled her. The Daily Beast posted an interesting report about this incident on January 28, 2022. You need to read it.

This past weekend, the center closed during the We Stand America border security rally after a former state representative informed Treviño-Wright that the place could be a target during the rally. She was advised that she should either stay well-armed or that she should just get out of town. Avid Trumpsters attending the rally did in fact stop at the butterfly sanctuary, and a contributor to the ultra-right site Real America's Voice posted a clip on Twitter, repeating the spurious sex-trafficking claims.

Finally on Wednesday, February 2, the butterfly center closed again, this time indefinitely, citing safety concerns for both staff and public.

If that's not terrorism in your book, then clearly we are reading very different books.

* * * * *

Arguably this saga really began in 2016 with "Pizzagate," the well-known whacked-out conspiranoid narrative claiming that the (nonexistent) basement of a Washington, DC pizza restaurant was the site of a child abuse ring spearheaded by then-Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton and other demonic Democrats. As stupid as that narrative was and is, it was enough to get loads of folks fired up, including a North Carolina man who, armed with an assault rifle, paid a visit to the pizza joint in an effort to investigate the matter.

In the wake of Pizzagate, the far-right conspiracy movement QAnon emerged from the fever swamps of the imageboard website 4chan, building on a narrative about a worldwide cabal of Satanic, cannibalistic pedophiles (especially Democrats and liberal elites!) who operate a sex trafficking ring and who have engaged in wicked conspiracies against #NotMyPresident Donald Trump. And the rest, unfortunately, is history in the making, as QAnon and a general conspiranoid, untethered-from-reality mindset have spread their poison across the right-wing political landscape. What once was fringe is now all too mainstream.

And it's not getting any better. Today a butterfly center, tomorrow... who knows? More than ever, domestic terrorism is a thing, and most of it exists on the right, not only in the US but all across the globe. It would merely be funny, if only it weren't so scary.

Covidiot protests in DC, Ottawa & elsewhere cement the marriage between alt-health "freedom-fighting" conspiranoids & far right

In September of 2021 I published a post about the strengthening alliance between the most vociferous anti-vax/anti-mask/"alt-health" factions and the American right. The post, which is arguably even more useful for the offsite links list at the end than it is for my own contributions in the body, was framed around an October 2021 event at the famous Gaylord Opryland Hotel in Nashville, Tennessee: "The Truth [sic] About Cancer Live" convention. It was promoted as a health symposium, the type that features the expected denigration of conventional medical treatments (in this case, for cancer) and provides a platform for anti-vax propagandizing -- but the political component was undeniable.

True, the speaker lineup at that Gaylord Gullibalooza included some of the loudest and daftest (or most cynical) alt-health luminaries working the sucker circuit today, such as discredited doc and anti-vaxtivist Andrew Wakefield; nutcake Dr. Sheri Tenpenny, who believes COVID vaccines are a plot to turn us all into trans-humanist cyborgs; and conspiracy peddler/health-frauducts pusher/right-wing rabble-rouser Mike "The Health Ranger" Adams, the latter of whom has a money-grubbing finger in both the political-punditry and the alt-health pies. But the main attractions seemed to be incendiary right-wingnut political figures: most notably, top-listed keynoter Eric Trump, and Eldertrump toady and convicted-but-pardoned felon Roger Stone.

The following month, Rolling Stone published a good report/commentary on the event, sounding the alarm, as I and others had, about the marriage between health-nuttery and right-wing politix.

Right-wing figureheads like Trump and Stone aren’t chemo deniers, but they can’t resist a speaking fee, or an opportunity to rile up gullible conservatives already punch-drunk on grievance politics. As Oren Segal, Vice President of the Anti-Defamation League Center on Extremism and host of the podcast Extremely, tells Rolling Stone, gatherings like “The Truth About Cancer Live” are breeding grounds for bad ideas.

“This has been quote-unquote ‘mainstream’ now for a while,” Segal says. “These narratives [have brought] what some would consider legitimate voices together with more fringe [figures] throughout the country for some time, and so obviously the big concern is the more that you have people who have a significant reach or a voice, who are giving voice to conspiracies that seek to undermine democratic institutions, the more that disinformation gets normalized and the more potential for polarization there is.”

My only quibble with Mr. Segal is that bit about "legitimate voices." While he qualified his statement by including "what some would consider," the truth is that there really aren't that many legit voices in the alt-health movement these days. But his point, and those made in the Rolling Stone piece, are well taken, and are congruent with the points I tried to make in my own post in September.

I just don't think that the perils of these unholy alliances can be overstated. The evidence is everywhere. On January 23, 2022, for example, there was a big march in Washington, DC protesting (COVID) vaccine and mask mandates. The next day, The Daily Kos published a piece about the event, observing that even though the anti-vaccination/"holistic health" movements began life as largely left-wing/liberal/hippie phenomena, things have changed:

As this Sunday’s “Defeat the Mandates” march in Washington, D.C., however, showed us, there’s no longer anything even remotely left-wing about the movement. Populated with Proud Boys and “Patriot” militiamen, QAnoners and other Alex Jones-style conspiracists who blithely indulge in Holocaust relativism and other barely disguised antisemitism, and ex-hippies who now spout right-wing propaganda—many of them, including speakers, encouraging and threatening violence—the crowd at the National Mall manifested the reality that “anti-vaxxers” now constitute a full-fledged far-right movement, and a potentially violent one at that...

Indeed, promotions of violence, as well as vile displays of antisemitism and Holocaust trivialization, were everywhere.

Many of the rally attendees wore yellow replicas of the Star of David badges that were forced upon Jewish victims of the Holocaust, and many of them carried signs referencing both that horrific episode of history and the German Nazi regime that inflicted it. So did other speakers, such as Del Bigtree, CEO of the anti-vaccination group Informed Consent Action Network, who added a threatening tone directed at journalists.

"Unlike the Nuremberg Trials that only tried those doctors that destroyed the lives of those human beings, we're going to come after the press,” Bigtree told the crowd.

Violence was also an undercurrent in the audience, some of whom carried signs suggesting a lethal response: “Shoot those who try to kidnap and vaccinate your child.” Another agreed with Bigtree, calling for “Nuremberg Trials 2.0.”

I have zero patience with those who trivialize the Holocaust by comparing vaccine and mask mandates to the atrocities committed by the Third Reich last century against 6 million Jews (and more than 5 million non-Jews). Yet making this comparison seems to be a common rhetorical tactic among right-wing "freedom fighters" who should know better and should be ashamed of themselves.

And by the way... Memo to the ignoranti:
Vaccine mandates do not violate the Nuremberg Code.

When you parrot that "Nuremberg Code/Geneva Convention violation" narrative you are diving into dangerously stupid territory. And I'm talking about the level of stupid occupied by the likes of cancer quack/fake doctor/fraudster/neo-Nazi Leonard Coldwell, as evidenced in this copy-and-paste post on his Facebook timeline on January 20, 2022. [Click on the pic to enlarge it if you need to, but be warned that the time it takes you to read this screed is time you will never get back.]

The Daily Kos piece I cited above (here's that link again) pinpointed the COVID-19 pandemic as a turning point in the development of the alliance between anti-vaxxers and far-right wingnuts, with increased radicalization of the allied factions and resulting endangerment of public health and safety.

The coalescence of the anti-vaccination movement with other far-right conspiracist movements—particularly the authoritarian QAnon cult—has been an ongoing phenomenon since COVID-19 broke out in 2020, and the radicalization of its believers has been gathering steam increasingly since. Likewise, the inherently violent nature of many of these movements has resulted in an increasing drumbeat of real-world violence directed at health care workers, local authorities, and anyone who supports the pandemic measures.

Yep, and it's pretty scary.

Of course, the phenomena we're discussing are not limited to American culture and politics. All across Europe, for instance, there's a growing anti-mandate movement that is attracting far-right groups and is fomenting violence. It's been happening in Germany, and in Austria (and Belgium and the Netherlands and France), and in Italy... and it just seems to be getting worse.

And closer to home, if your home is in North America, witness the yuuuge march on Ottawa this past weekend, attended by Canadian truckers and apparently thousands of non-trucker allies who clogged up and bogged down Canada's capital city in order to protest COVID mandates. Originally the purpose of the protest was to rail against a rule requiring truckers to show proof of vaccination upon returning to Canada from the U.S.; those that don’t are required to quarantine for 14 days. But the event soon evolved into a more sweeping protest against COVID mitigation mandates in general. And while overall it has reportedly been a "peaceful" event for the most part, there have been reports of swastika flags, desecration of a war memorial, and threats of violence.

Unsurprisingly, #NeverWasMyPresident Donald John Trump, in Texas during the same weekend for a couple of fascist rallies, praised the Ottawa protesters, claiming that they were "doing more to defend American freedom than our own leaders by far." Trump's coked-up elderspawn, Donald J Trump Jr., also endorsed the protest, describing one of the truckers as a heroic fighter against "medical tyranny."

Also unsurprisingly, Canada's Conservative Party supported the protestors, who aimed much of their anger directly at Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. (Trudeau and his family felt compelled to leave their home in Ottawa that weekend, due to security concerns.)

Notwithstanding the hoopla, vaccination is actually pretty popular among Canadian truckers and the Canadian population in general, according to Forbes.

Despite the large turnout, 90% of Canada’s cross-border truckers are fully vaccinated against Covid-19, along with 79% of the population overall.

So there's that. It's also noteworthy that the Canadian Trucking Alliance opposed the protest, saying this is "not how disagreement with government policies should be expressed."

Now, I get that many insist that it's not vaccines that are the problem; it's the mandates. People hate being told what to do (though curiously enough, many of the anti-vaxxers have no problem with authoritarianism in general, as long as it's right-wing authoritarianism). For many others, however, it's the vaccines themselves that are the problem. In any case, if a significant number of people still refuse to get vaccinated because of their own misguided beliefs, COVID will continue to win. Indeed, Canada is currently in the middle of a spike in Omicron variant cases, and its hospitals and over-burdened healthcare workers are strained to the max.

But the anti-mitigation maniacs on both sides of the Canadian-American border, and both sides of the Atlantic, for that matter, have shown time and time again that they don't care about little things like that. For them, it's all about fighting for their own "freedom" to go vax-less and mask-less -- never mind how many people, including themselves, they may be endangering.

And unfortunately, they have been immeasurably emboldened by the far right, even as they continue to throw their support behind the craziest and/or most fascistic right wing politicians. It truly is a marriage made in hell; too bad that the rest of us have to suffer as a result.

Kevin Trudeau: poised for release, still hustling, and possibly shadow-running GIN

 

A brand new year is upon us, and although many folks may be viewing the coming year with trepidation, given all of what's gone down in the past two years (and with 2021 taking Betty White from us!), I imagine one person who is super excited about the year to come is imprisoned serial scammer Kevin Trudeau (aka KT, aka Katie on this Whirled), who is scheduled to be released on May 9, 2022. There are increasing signs that he is busily laying the groundwork for taking up where he left off, scamwise.

As reported on this blog in January of last year, in early 2021 Trudeau entered a Chicago-area Residential Reentry Management (RRM) program overseen by the Bureau of Prisons. He's not in a "halfway house" facility per se, contrary to what some of his fans seem to think, but instead is on "home release" in a Chicago suburb as he serves out the remainder of his ten-year prison sentence for criminal contempt. And he seems more than ready to hit the ground huckstering the moment his sentence is completed, perhaps through the Global Information Network (GIN), the "success club" that he founded in 2009 but no longer "officially" owns, or perhaps he intends to form a new club, and/or come up with new schemes to further broaden his scampire.

Of course, if you've been following this blog for the past eight or nine years, you know quite well that Kevin Trudeau has never really stopped being a huckster. Pre-trial confinement in Chicago's grim Metropolitan Correctional Center (MCC), and subsequent incarceration in a relatively cushy federal prison camp (FPC Montgomery AL) didn't thwart his ambitions at all; throughout this time he never stopped begging for money and pushing various products and "trainings," while building on yet another marketing hook by presenting himself as a witness to miracles and a wise spiritual leader. (And the rubes have actually bought that crap.) He used proxies as necessary to get his messages to social media and websites, but it was clear that he was always controlling the messaging, with the ultimate goal being to line his own pockets. I've written about this topic many times on this blog, this January 3. 2015 post being but one example.

I'm far from the only writer to point out that Trudeau never stopped hustling despite being a federal prison inmate. On January 3, 2017, the Chicago Tribune published a short piece with the headline, "After 18 years, TV fraudster Kevin Trudeau's case is over, 'we hope,' judges rule." (Here's a link to the digital edition version in case you can't get past the Tribune's paywall.) The article explained why the appeals court judges could only express their hope, but not a solid promise, that the Katie court saga was over.

On Facebook last week, Trudeau's backers continued to solicit donations to his legal defense fund from his 29,000 followers, promising them they could “DOUBLE YOUR MONEY.”

And in a pre-Christmas message presumably relayed through supporters from his cell at the Montgomery, Ala., federal prison camp, Trudeau told his fans he would “share 2 secrets that will give you success in every area of your life.”

If they followed his advice, the convicted fraudster, formerly of Oak Brook, wrote, they would “vibrate frequencies that will allow you to create the life you want.”

We've heard all of that before, for sure.

But what about today? What's up with "GuruKev" as he prepares to be a free(ish) man?

Reduced circumstances, but still better than federal
sleepaway camp
It appears that Trudeau is currently residing in the home of one of his long-time toadies, David Krueger, in a near-northwest suburb of Chicago. (If I'm wrong about this, and you want me to write about it, feel free to send in corrections and I'll publish them.) Before this, Katie was reportedly staying with another Chicago-area fan and GIN member in a one-bedroom apartment, and my guess is that he drove that poor GIN member crazy. And no doubt Katie was going a little crazy too, because a one-bedroom apartment, no matter how nice it might be, simply isn't the same as a gaudy McMansion in Ojai, Cali or a fake castle in a swanky Chicago area neighborhood. Reportedly, however, the authorities overseeing Kevin's home confinement/parole are compelling him to live in relatively humble circumstances for the time being, which must truly be agony for him. Break out the violins.

At least Katie is now in more comfortable digs, though, even if his current situation is still far from the opulent lifestyle to which he had become accustomed before his conviction and sentencing, and to which he almost certainly plans to return as soon as he possibly can. For the time being David Krueger seems to be providing Kevin with a safe haven until the great KT can be restored to his full power, though when I think of this pairing I can't help but be reminded of the arrangement between Professor Quirrell and Voldemort (except without the turban), and I wonder how long it will be before Dave and Kev drive each other nuts, assuming it hasn't happened already.

But I digress. Lately Trudeau has been stepping up his efforts to beg people to give him money to support his mission to rebuild his lavish lifestyle, though he pretends that a third party is doing the begging on his behalf, since he is too busy Humbly Serving Humanity to beg for money for himself. Read about it here, especially if you're even marginally tempted to send money to this guy.

You've met David Krueger on this blog previously: initially back in 2012, when I reported that David was all excited about getting to ride on the same airplane as Kevin -- in first class, no less! -- and was absolutely over the moon because Kevin bought drinks for everyone on the plane, not just the first class passengers but the peons too. And David's mama had won a BMW Series 500 through GIN. (Later on, unfortunately, after Kevin's legal troubles began to seriously accelerate and GIN was taken down a notch or two, the authorities took the BMW away from Mommy, but apparently that didn't faze her son in the long run, since to this day he remains a KT loyalist.)

I also mentioned David in passing on this May 2020 post, following a remark that he had made on the Facebook KT fan page, claiming that Facebook and YouTube were censoring the real "truth" about COVID-19.

A dream come true for three lucky rubes

Infomercial Kings-in-Training?
Left to right: David Krueger, Rube, Kevin Trudeau, Rube, Rube

On December 30, 2021, David Krueger was featured again, not on this blog but on the Kevin Trudeau Fan Club page on Facebook. Apparently a trio of young hucksters-in-training got to spend some quality time with both David and Kevin earlier that month, and they took full advantage of the visit to push the MLM (overpriced cookware) in which they're involved:

Spectacular weekend with Kevin Trudeau and David Krueger, read about the Mushyakov brothers’ experience here: https://kevintrudeaufanclub.com/spectacular-weekend-with...

Here's a direct link to the post about that "spectacular weekend," in case the one above doesn't work. In breathless, starstruck prose the author(s), who claim to all be high level members in GIN, describe a personal meeting and sleepover with Kevin and David on the weekend of December 10, 2021. It's not a very long post, but it mentions a specific brand of pricey cookware no less than nine times, which is about par for the course for insufferable MLM-ers who just can't shut up about whatever it is they're hawking. Here are a few snippets.

...What a wonderful weekend we have spent with Kevin, David and of course my amazing brothers Nathan and Ruben. Words cannot describe the feelings and energy I felt. I know you will feel the energy in my words and immense gratitude with your hearts and souls.

First, I would like to thank Kevin and David for your generous hospitality by allowing us to spend the weekend with you...

...My family and I are forever grateful for the exposure to GIN and this new found wisdom it has provided us. The energy we felt during this weekend was mind blowing. It was very surreal. The smiles on our faces and the emotions we experienced were just simply spectacular.

Spending one on one time with Kevin was a dream come true. This seed was planted as soon as I started listening to “Your Wish is Your Command”. It has been watered and nurtured for some time now. This weekend the fruit has been harvested with many tasteful meals and conversations with Kevin and David. Many other seeds were planted along the way and I’m excited to see them come to fruition.

The energy among us was powerful. It has enlightened me to become a better person, a better husband and father, a better friend, a better brother to my family and to all the GIN brothers and sisters...

...When I woke up in the morning in Kevin’s house I felt like I was in a movie. With a fresh cup of coffee in hand, I sat across from Kevin on the couch and had an intellectual conversation. I was able to ask anything that came to mind without any sensation of being rushed.

Every morning Kevin would lead us in an hour exercise which was incredible. Even with muscles getting sore, I continued to push through because of Kevin’s leadership. We are all half Kevin’s age, yet we were not able to keep up with his stamina.

After the exercise we had the pleasure of using TEETER inversion table and other favorite gadgets of Kevin’s like the Kloud. All my aches and pains were gone, aside from the muscle soreness that felt great.

After all the morning activities, I felt amazing and energized...

...After dinner, cigars in hand, the conversations continued as we couldn’t get enough of Kevin’s life experiences and wisdom. Thank you again for this spectacular and unforgettable weekend. It will be remembered for the rest of my life!...

The post reads as if the writer(s) had been coached by Kevin himself, but at the very least, they were clearly inspired by Kevin's nearly lifelong devotion to aggressive selling, often via MLMs. (GIN itself was a very scammy MLM back in the day; the "product" being sold was a Level One membership to the seekrit club.) Reading about this "spectacular weekend" left me with the sense that the weekend was much more about training or rehearsal for producing an infomercial than about deepening the bonds of friendship and brotherhood. (Which wouldn't be at all surprising, come to think of it, since while he was in prison Kevin was marketing an infomercial training course for the low, low price of only $997.) Woven throughout the near-worshipful words about excitement and energy and intellectual conversations and life-changing, life-saving wisdom, there is persistent promotion: the nonstop selling, selling, selling of stuff.

Which is exactly what Kevin does. Turds of a feather....

Naturally, the readers of the post on the Kevin Trudeau Facebook fan page were excited about it, and gushing words of praise in several languages followed in the comments section. One person, however, had a question:

Matthew Manahan Does he have the ankle bracelet on under the table ?

To which I responded:

Connie Schmidt Matthew Manahan If the terms of his home confinement are typical, he has to wear an ankle bracelet, plus he has to answer random calls from a land line to make sure he hasn't wandered off of the premises (in this case, apparently, David Krueger's house -- perhaps a stopgap until he can move into a McMansion again. Big dreams!). So unless he has a way of forwarding that land line number to his cell phone, he has to stay put.

Of course, it totally is possible to forward your land line number to your cell phone. And Kevin reportedly is allowed both a cell phone and a laptop in his home-confinement setup. But presumably he is being properly supervised to ensure compliance with the terms of his home release. I don't know if this includes monitoring of all of his communications, including his activity on Telegram, the popular messaging app for all manner of hucksters, conspiranoids, and far-right wingnuts. (They probably can't monitor his email account, however, since his provider, ProtonMail, is a Swiss company that stores all data on servers in data centers in Switzerland, and is not subject to US or EU laws.)

Above: David Krueger's excited March 2021 announcement on Facebook
that Kevin Trudeau is "back" and is communicating via Telegram.

What's really going on behind the scenes?
Your guess may be as good as mine. But it seems that David Krueger rose in the ranks of GIN in early 2021 -- and I'm guessing that this was due to the influence of Kevin, who perhaps felt that David should be rewarded for being such a good and faithful manservant. Apparently David was even doing the weekly "GIN updates" for a while, which in recent times were normally perpetrated by one of the GIN owners. Rumor also has it that the few remaining members of the loyal GIN office staff, the folks who had been keeping the whole thing running for years and years through thick and thin, were fired around the time David rose to prominence, and I'm thinking that this was also at Kevin's behest.

Dr. Tom and the Chosen One (for now, anyway)
at a GIN event, summer 2021

You may be wondering how Kevin could possibly be dictating what goes on in GIN, since he hasn't officially owned the company since 2014, but... oh, who are we fooling? Kevin has always been the big draw in GIN, before, during, and after his criminal trial and sentencing, and the current owners, who are three of his very long-time buddies and scam partners, know this very well. (If you need to catch up on that, you can read about it here and here.)

It's very possible that the GIN owners -- chiropractors Tom and Ted Morter and inveterate MLM hustler Blaine Athorn -- are actually a bit intimidated by Kevin, and are nervous about the probability that if they don't do his bidding he'll take his mailing lists and his fan base, and form another seekrit exclusive club. With a big ship and everything.

In fact, if I were to hazard a guess, I'd say that Kevin Trudeau is for all practical purposes shadow-running GIN, quite possibly in violation of the terms of his home release/parole, and that he might even be raking in significant bucks, most likely tax-free, through direct donations to the current Katie fund being run by his fan club. (And his loyal minions do so love to promote that fund. A previous donation fund that was set up for him was supposedly for the purpose of paying off his lawyers, but I'm guessing that those guys have since given up on ever being paid. Shades of Trump, eh?)

Given the way hucksters like this work, and having some idea of the fealty that GIN's owners have to Kevin, I think it is possible that he might even be getting a slice of the GIN pie, safely funneled through the donation fund, perhaps as another attempt by Ted and Tom and Blaine to placate their prima donna and meal ticket.

I'm just speculating about much of the above, and accordingly do not have links to source material to back up my speculation. Again, if you have different or additional information and would like me to share it here, or even if you just want to tell me that I'm full of crap, my contact info is on this blog, or you can send in a comment. Comments are moderated to filter out spam, so yours may not show up right away, but I welcome your input.

In any case if I were Judge Ronald Guzman, who declared Trudeau "deceitful to the core" back in 2014 as he sentenced him to ten years, I'd probably want to look into these issues. For that matter, Judge Robert Gettleman, who presided over Katie's civil case -- and to whom Katie wrote a letter back in January of 2020 asking for post-prison scam guidance -- might also be interested, just in case Kevin still owes money on that nearly 40 million dollar FTC fine, which he claimed for years that he couldn't pay because he had no money.

Did prison change Kevin Trudeau?
As you may also know if you've been following this blog for a few years, I generally do not believe in prison sentences for nonviolent criminals, not even incorrigible con artists like Kevin Trudeau. I have mentioned that point several times on this blog and on other forums, and it's a stance that has put me at odds with several of my friends and long-time allies, some of whom have asked, "So how are you going to keep a convicted fraudster from continuing to scam?" But being imprisoned certainly didn't stop Kevin from scamming. Prison, on the contrary, is an incubator for scams; it certainly has been for Trudeau, both during the time he served on felony charges in the early 1990s and throughout his most recent stint in the clink.

Other defenders of lock-em-up policies say that even if being incarcerated doesn't completely prevent a scammer from scamming, there's a mitigation factor because jailed offenders are at least temporarily restricted from committing fraud on the scale to which they've been accustomed. Point taken... but see the paragraph above.

There's also the school of thought that confinement provides at least a small measure of punishment (or poetic justice, perhaps), because even the most cushy min-security facilities are still... well...prisons, as opposed to the ill-gained luxury accoutrements that many fraudsters had previously enjoyed. Surely the contrast between prison life and his mythic lifestyle as a free-range flim-flammer had to have bothered Kevin on some fundamental level.

A chronicle on the Kevin Trudeau Fan Club site, written by one of Kevin's prison mates at FPC Montgomery, Charles Wilson, may provide some insight. This is from Part 8 -- Covid," in which Wilson describes the experiences at the prison camp as COVID-19 was wreaking havoc throughout the facility.

I logged in my journal February 3, as a special day of sickness and noise in our wing. Big Jim had a 4-step process of cough, choke, snorting, and throat clearing. This would go on for hours at a time with no change. Kenny would yell at him or combat with a symphony of sewer farts. John was nonstop cleaning shoes, coughing, and yelling to “Little Man” about laundry and side hustles. Loui, right behind Kevin, was coughing, hacking, and spitting repeatedly. Dr. Mark was in the corner eating dozens of cough drops per hour, with intermittent coughing and throat clearing. “Papi” was blasting his ears out to American 80’s jams and singing at the top of his Puerto Rican lungs in broken English. KT was in the corner shuffling a deck of cards and practicing his Italian. My throat had just gotten sore, and I sat at my desk trying to enjoy the unique chaos of human survival in prison... 

Wow, not quite the ritzy and elegant surroundings to which Katie was accustomed, and that he used as a marketing hook for GIN in order to get people to fork over thousands and thousands of dollars to "upgrade," with the promise that they, too, could (eventually) enjoy the same enviable lifestyle. "See you on the beaches of the world!"

In fairness I must point out that all of these prison chronicles center around what a great man Kevin Trudeau is, and how he manages to remain unruffled and to inspire people even in the grimmest of circumstances. Consider the scene described above: even amidst the coughing and snorting and hacking and spitting and sewer-farting, there was Kevin, sitting in a corner shuffling cards and practicing his Italian. Congruent with this narrative, he (naturally!) managed to avoid getting COVID, at least according to Wilson, although I have heard from other sources that at one point Kevin did test positive for the virus.

However, notwithstanding the near-mythical image perpetrated by his admirers, and by the great man himself, who often described his prison daze as an experience of perfect bliss, it has always been clear that Kevin Trudeau did not actually enjoy being in prison. At all. In fact I think it would be fair to say that he hated it. And over the years, in numerous failed efforts, at times enhanced by tears, to get the courts to grant him leniency, he and some of his defenders have claimed that incarceration has changed him for the better, making him more humble and truly "reformed."

It's true that prison does change people, but rarely for the better, and I have a feeling that if it has changed Kevin, it has only made him more cynical and greedy. I've heard credible rumors that former friends and loyalists have been taken aback by the ego and greed and even the occasional abusive behavior that he has displayed since being semi-released in early 2021 -- in stark contrast to the humble-and-enlightened-servant-of-humanity image that his minions, almost certainly under his direction, have been trying so hard to push. Rumor has it that even his longtime generous supporter and sycophantic enabler, former Congressman Ed Foreman, is appalled by this new behavior.

To which I can only respond that there's nothing at all new about that behavior. His pals are just now noticing he's egotistical and greedy? Even many folks who have never even met him (including me) noticed it years ago. And I'm guessing that more than one of his ex-wives could vouch for his tendency to be emotionally abusive; consider ex-spouse Kristine Dorow's story in Aaron Gell's January 20, 2015 article for Business Insider (under the sub-head, "Up Close And Personal"). From what I've heard, his most recent wife, Nataliya/Natasha Babenko, had a pretty rough time of it too.

Despite his lofty spiritual rhetoric about leaving the ego behind, Kevin's own ego is large enough to have its own zip code. One of his goals appears to be to eventually live in a huge house again, but this time with lots of servants... er... volunteers/students/acolytes... to cater to his every whim, while he fools them, or allows them to fool themselves, into thinking that they are the ones who are really benefiting, just by being in his presence. I don't think it's much of an exaggeration to speculate that Kevin, a longtime dabbler in Scientology, wants to be the next L. Ron Hubbard. In fact I wrote about that last year.

Does/did Kevin Trudeau really belong in prison, though? That's not up to me to decide, of course. I do think it's a bit of a pity that his ten-year(ish) sentence was for his deceptive infomercials about a deceptive diet book, and not for the millions of dollars he pilfered from thousands of gullible GIN members, some of whose lives were reportedly decimated by the mega-scam.

Many if not most of those who were bamboozled have no doubt moved on, some with great difficulty, while others just slid on to the next flopportunity/flim-flammer, because some people never learn. (In several cases, disillusioned/angry GIN members or KT buddies or staff formed their own GIN ripoffs, such as the IBMS Masters Society and the World Information Network (WIN). The WIN founders initially tried to take over GIN and keep the MLM going, but the government said no.)

And there's at least one former GIN member, Abe Husein, who once made a lot of noise on the national news media about having been cheated out of big bucks by GIN and KT, but apparently has now forgiven him and has even expressed "mad respect" for Trudeau. See this January 2021 Whirled post, under the first subhead, "Ex-GIN 'whistleblower' still has a crush on Kevin Trudeau after all."

But the fact remains that the GIN MLM was a huge scam, and was launched chiefly as a private piggy bank for Kevin (as revealed in numerous court documents, this one being just one example), and lots of people lost lots of money. And while Judge Guzman may very well have taken some of these facts into consideration when handing down Trudeau's sentence, GIN was not the reason for the criminal charges or the prison sentence.

Why this still matters, after all these years
Over the years I've been asked why my blog posts so frequently focus on scammers such as Kevin Trudeau, when there are so many more important issues and world problems (and problematic people) to worry about. I've addressed this question numerous times previously on this forum, but for the sake of review (and at the risk of annoying some readers with my redundancy as well as my tendency to write too-long blog posts), I think it's important for me to go over this once again.

Actually, in July of last year an anonymous commenter, clearly a Trump supporter/right wingnut/anti-vaxxer, harrumphed that I should just stick to writing about Kevin Trudeau and similar scammers, and stay out of politics and world issues altogether, because clearly I'm a dunderhead who is "blinded by Liberal rhetoric." If you'll pardon me for quoting myself at length, here is one of my responses:

For years...[p]eople who were supporters/defenders of various scammers such as Kevin Trudeau, Joe Vitale, and a host of minor Scamworld gurus helpfully offered suggestions, some with more than a tinge of hostility, that my focus on these people was a waste of time and my talent. They said that I should be focusing instead on larger, more important issues such as government corruption, corporate malfeasance, politics, etc. For instance, when I was frenemies with Peter Wink (former shill for Joe Vitale, then for Kevin Trudeau, then for Leonard Coldwell, but now apparently retired from the shilling-for-scammers biz), Peter suggested to me more than once that I really needed to turn my attention away from KT and on to larger and more relevant topics. Not surprisingly, this was when Peter was working for Trudeau; later he very publicly turned against his former boss, and even helped various government agencies with their criminal and civil investigations of KT.

To all of those who advised me to focus on important matters, I would respond with some variation of my opinion that in blogging as in life, you have to pick your battles. And in the case of blogging, it's a good idea to narrow your beat. For years I mostly resisted political posts, because there were (and are) already so many political blogs and other forums online. And from 2009 on, Kevin Trudeau was certainly one of my favored targets (I had known for years that he was/is a scammer, but 2009 saw the launching of GIN and the alliance of Trudeau with some of my other favored targets, e.g., Joe Vitale).

Then Trump waddled his way to the front lines of American politix... and for me it finally sank in that Trump was like the worst of the Scamworld scum, writ large. One of my initial posts about that topic was this one, from March 2016:
https://cosmicconnie.blogspot.com/2016/03/the-devils-at-crossroads-of-politix-and.html

That was far from the first time I'd written about Trump, but that was the first post to really focus on the unholy marriage between American politix and Scamworld.

The point is that it looks like I've come full circle, and am now being advised by people who defend Trump and far-right-wing ideologies to abandon political subjects and focus on the likes of Kevin Trudeau. But I'll continue to blog about the matters that interest me and that I think are important.

And one major reason that I think Kevin Trudeau is still important, apart from my concern that he has spent decades cheating people out of their hard-earned money, is that he is flagrantly symptomatic of a nearly out-of-control trend of misinformation/conspiranoia crapitalism.

Of course Trudeau was in many respects far ahead of the curve, since he has been trading in "information that 'They' don't want you to know" for decades. Most of that "information" has consisted of misinformation, distortions, exaggerations, lies, repackaged selfish-help/McSpirituality content, or, in some cases, cherry-picked data about issues that have been addressed by far more responsible consumer advocates, whistleblowers, and muckrakers. But the nebulously evil "They" were the perfect scapegoat for Trudeau's marketing strategies.

Shortly after Trudeau was convicted and sentenced back in 2014, Salon.com published a piece by Mary Elizabeth Williams, which I've cited on this blog before, but here it is again. The headline reads, "Kevin Trudeau's empire of 'they' collapses," and the tag line said, "The TV pitchman goes to prison -- but his conspiracy shtick lives on." The piece was spot-on in many ways, but the truth is that Trudeau's own scampire never did completely collapse. As noted, he continued to run it throughout his confinement

And unfortunately, the Error of Trump mainstreamed the conspiranoid, "alternative-facts" mindset that has been the foundation of KT's hugely successful marketing efforts for years, and that has attracted so many gullible people to his "teachings" and schemes. Kevin and his most devoted fans and enablers are emphatically part of the problem, but the problem is so much bigger than they. It's bigger than Alex Jones and Mike Adams and the other conspiracy-porn peddlers I've written about on this blog. It's even bigger than Donald Trump.

What is happening now goes beyond the fact that conspiracy theories have become a booming business. America (and to a large extent much of the developed world) have entered a "post-truth" era in which we're all susceptible, some of us more than others, to conspiracy theories, science denial and extremism. In the May 2021 edition of Scientific American, Andy Norman wrote that we are all being played by liars, and that those lies not only further divide us but also manipulate our brains in a way that we lose the capacity for reasoned reflection.

The deep culprit here is not a shadowy government insider. It’s not an aspiring demagogue or a corrupt political party. Trace the problem to its roots and you find a compromised cultural immune system. Astonishingly irrational ideas proliferate because they’re playing us.

This goes for "liberals" too, wrote Norman.

When we fixate on the wingnut outrage of the day, and nurse our own grievances, we suppress our own higher brain function...Right-wing provocateurs love to "own the libs" and too often, we liberals play along. When we do, we play ourselves.

I feel that there's a bit of a false equivalency here, since in contemporary America, right-wingers/conservatives are considerably more likely than left-wingers/liberals to fall for conspiracy theories and worldviews, anti-science dogma, and even political extremism. In fact, it is the right’s stubbornly persistent embrace of the big lie about the “stolen” 2020 US presidential election that led to the violent and deadly insurrection last year and that continues to seriously imperil American democracy. It may be my own "liberal bias" at work, but I think that overall the right is significantly more reality-impaired than the left, and at this point far more of a threat.

The deeper issues touched on in Norman's opinion piece are quite beyond the scope of this blog, but the point I wish to make is that this "post-truth" problem is a serious one. Bringing it back to our original topic, Kevin Trudeau has made money for decades not only on peddling questionable products for which he has made outrageous and in some cases fraudulent claims, but also, and more importantly, on pushing conspiracy narratives and misinformation that he always frames as exclusive info that "They" are trying to keep from you, but which can be all yours -- for a price.

And Trudeau has never missed an opportunity to crapitalize on the fears and concerns of the masses, while placing himself firmly front and center as the only source to be trusted for vital information. He has long played on and nurtured people's growing distrust of government and mainstream media. It's hardly surprising that for a while in 2020 he was exploiting the COVID-19 pandemic by posting "updates" that were little more than a repackaging of the most out-there narratives from the alt-health and right wingnut fever swamps, all framed around promoting GIN membership or other outlets for Kevin's "teachings," and in some cases, promoting health frauducts.

I wrote about these COVID "updates" here and here, and in the body of my posts I provided summaries of and links to individual "updates," though the links no longer seem to be valid. For the benefit of those who don't feel like following those links or trying to find Trudeau's original COVID posts, some of the main takeaways were that, according to Kevin...
(1) COVID is no big deal
(2) the government is lying to us and seriously exaggerating the seriousness of COVID, just like they exaggerated the seriousness of AIDS for years (at least according to Kevin and numerous other conspiracy peddlers, not to mention some ignorant right-wing politicians -- even though that declaration is bull-crap; millions and millions of people have died of AIDS over the decades)
(3) COVID is mainly a hoax arising from a conspiracy by the mainstream media and the evil elite "They" to ruin the US economy, thus making Donald Trump look bad and ruining his chances for re-election
(4) the shutdowns and lockdowns are seriously hurting the economy and while that really sucks, hey, don't worry: a few enterprising folks will find a way to make tons of money even during the worst of the shutdowns and especially when all of this is over [with the clear implication being that if ya stick with Kev, he'll show you how to rake it in]
(5) there's so much more that Kevin really wants to share with you about COVID, and it is information that you can't get anywhere else because he's getting it from a select seekrit group of elite international experts (as well as, apparently, from other dimensions or planes of existence), and even though he's doing as much as he can for you by providing these updates, if you want to really get the inside scoop you need to join GIN and/or get on Kevin's mailing list and/or or give him money, and/or... well, you get the drift.

However, Trudeau seems to have been silent about COVID since he has been on "home release," though for all I know he has continued to spread misinfo via private forums such as his Telegram channels and his ProtonMail account. But the main point is that he continues to spread misinformation not only in the service of selling products, but also to maintain his brand as a source of forbidden secrets and indispensable wisdom.

From what I've been observing for many years now, Kevin Trudeau is the quintessential personification of the adage about leopards and spots. I know I'm repeating myself, but it can't be stated emphatically enough that he is all prepped to hit the ground scamming, full force, just as soon as he possibly can.

Caveat emptor.