The newest Trump card: just another grift, or another step down the road to fascism?

 As impeachment proceedings continue, #NotMyPresident aka #Dolt45 Donald J. Trump continues to go on the defensive and the offensive (mostly offensive). One of his latest gimmicks, launched earlier this month, is, in the view of some, both defensive and offensive. It's a personalized "Impeachment Defense Membership Card," which can be yours -- with your own name on it and everything! -- for the low, low price of only $35.

From Reuters, November 13, 2019:

The contrast between the president and the Democratic field is a sign that Trump is betting the Democratic-led congressional impeachment inquiry, which entered a new phase on Wednesday with public hearings, could help him win the November 2020 election. Public opinion polls show support for impeachment is concentrated among Democrats. [Duh]

Last Friday alone, the president sent out more than 400 Facebook ads asking for donations that would be rewarded with a personalized “Impeachment Defense Membership Card.”

Chauncey DeVega, a politics staff writer at Salon.com, sounded the alarm about the card in a November 14 essay. The teaser blurb declared that while Trump's "Impeachment Defense" team is a joke, Trump's true goal -- the dismantling of American democracy -- is no joke at all.

DeVega begins his essay by making note of some of Trump's smaller scams...

For example, Donald Trump continues to run contests where in exchange for an online donation he promises supporters that they can “win” an exclusive meal with him. Apparently, no one has ever received this prize.

Then he mentions the larger scams, such as Trump University and the Trump Foundation, two scams that ended up costing Trump many millions of dollars in settlements and punitive fines.

But one of Trump's most lucrative and ongoing cons, DeVega adds, is the "issuing of membership cards in exchange for campaign donations from his cult-like followers." In addition to the Facebook ads, the Impeachment Defense Membership Cards were announced in a dramatic campaign email sent the same week:

Friend,

Did you see the President’s email?

He’s calling on his fiercest, most loyal defenders to come together and stand firm against these nasty WITCH HUNTS from the Left and the Lamestream media.

As one of his strongest supporters, he was disappointed to see you hadn’t already activated your status as a Charter Member and ordered your Official Impeachment Defense Membership card.

We haven’t shipped out the first round of membership cards yet because we wanted to give you ONE MORE CHANCE to become a CHARTER MEMBER and to get on the FIRST list that we send President Trump.

We are in the fight of our lives right now, and the President is counting on YOU to be there with him on the front lines of this nasty impeachment battle.

Remember, your card will be PERSONALIZED with your information on it so that you can proudly display it and show America that you stand with President Trump against the baseless Impeachment Scam!

The deadline to become a Charter Member is 11:59 PM TONIGHT, so you need to act NOW!

Please contribute $35 TODAY to get your Official Impeachment Defense Membership Card which will be PERSONALIZED with your name and Defense Member ID number.

DeVega continues:

Is this a grift? Absolutely. But it is also something much worse and far more dangerous. Trump is a lawless president who imagines himself to be a king or emperor who is above the law. In TrumpWorld, he is the state and nation. He is the law...

...Donald Trump’s “Official Impeachment Defense Membership Cards” are a loyalty oath, sworn by those who stand with Donald Trump against the rule of law, democracy, and the U.S. Constitution. By implication, Trump’s membership cards signify membership in a quasi-secret organization that deems itself superior to outsiders.

There's a lot more to the essay than that, and I think it's worth a read.

Unpresidential gimmick is not unprecedented
As DeVega insinuated in the piece cited above, this is not the first time that the Trump campaign has offered exclusive "membership cards" to people gullible enough to send him money. It's been done before.

Many of you may remember the Trump Gold Card, issued during the 2016 presidential campaign. Here's Ian Lang, writing in an August 17, 2016 post on the askmen.com site:

When you think of Donald Trump, one word comes to mind: Deal. He opposes trade deals. He's gonna make deals. He wrote The Art of the Deal. But lest you think those are the extent of Trump's deal prowess, think again — he's also keen to offer fabulous deals to his friends and supporters.

Thanks to the Trump campaign text messages I signed up for that have never ceased to be a source of unintentional comedy, I was recently notified that for the low, low price of $49 (a discount of over 75%!!), I could become a gold-card-carrying official member of Trump's campaign.

That link in the second paragraph of the snippet above no longer works. Fortunately Lang preserved the basic info for posterity, not only posting a screen grab from the Trump promo page, but also quoting the text in full:

Please know that not just anyone is eligible for Executive Membership. It’s a power, duty, and responsibility reserved only for those supporters who have displayed a steadfast commitment to our movement.

They will be the reason we WIN. And I want YOU to join them.

Contribute $200 $49 to become an Executive Member of the Donald J. Trump for President campaign.

Lang mulled the meaning of it all.

It's not clear what perks... come with being an Executive Member of Trump's campaign, nor are the restrictions for membership beyond "having $49" and knowing a bargain when you see one.

What is clear, however, is that the Trump campaign shamelessly used a ploy well-loved by hucksters everywhere: the fake discount, which arbitrarily listed a struck-through "regular price," followed by a "discount price." There was also the blatant appeal to a (profoundly misguided) sense of elitism and exclusivity, i.e., an attempt to convince potential donors that they were Very Special People. (Imprisoned serial scammer Kevin Trudeau, to cite just one example, took this popular scammer strategy to new lows a few years back with his massive Global Information Network (GIN) scheme, which he promoted as an exclusive club offering seekrit knowledge previously available only to the world's elite.) But that should come as no surprise to anyone who has been following Donald Trump's own Scamworld career, which has been documented by numerous journalists in recent years, but was first seriously lambasted by my pal Jason "Salty Droid" Jones.

Even the Trump U playbook drew on Scamworld traditions, as I mentioned in a May 2016 Whirled post. The surprise would have been if Trump and his minions had run his political campaign in a non-scammy way.

One of the marks who fell for the Gold Card scheme ahead of the 2016 election was fake doctor/cancer quack/conspiracy fan/neo-Nazi/hopelessly devoted Trumpanzee Leonard Coldwell. I made a brief graphic reference to Lenny's Gold Card purchase in an October 2016 post, but if you want more substantial proof than a composite photo-illustration created by someone who is clearly neither a Trump nor a Coldwell fan (which of course is putting it mildly), Lenny provided the proof himself. He boasted about his acquisition of this exclusive gem, and shared a picture of it, in a brief blog post on August 19, 2016, evidence of which you'll quickly see if you Google "dr. leonard coldwell gold trump card." Alas, if you follow the actual link, you will be met with the disappointing message:

No Results Found

The page you requested could not be found. Try refining your search, or use the navigation above to locate the post.

But Google Image results still display the card with LoonyC's name on it.

If you know anything about exclusive and elite people, however, you know that they are never satisfied and are always in search of something better. That's what makes them so elite, unlike all the rest of us loser sheeple. Accordingly, the Trump campaign came up with an even eliter and more exclusive card than the Gold Card in October 2016, as the campaign was coming down to the wire: the Limited Edition Trump Black Card. (And Trump has been lamely trying to play the black card ever since. But I digress.)

The Trump Black Card was more than likely a play on the American Express black card, the Centurion Card, for which, at the time the AdAge article linked to above was posted in October 2016, one had to pay a $7,500 initiation fee and a $2,500 annual fee. But an exclusively elite Trump supporter could obtain a Trump Black Card for a one-time donation of only $35.00 or more. The "more" part was definitely encouraged, and donors were also given the option to make it a monthly donation. The ad copy centered, not surprisingly, around attacks on Trump's opponent in the 2016 race.

Mr. Trump also uses indelicate language to suggest that the card signifies membership in a group that will menace Hillary Clinton: "You'll be on a team that will be sending a message to Crooked Hillary to watch out, that we're coming for her," Mr. Trump continues.

What the Black Card was at its core, though, was an indication of desperation as the campaign ran low on funds. On November 1, 2016, a week before the disastrous election that paved the way to the living-nightmare "reality" show in which we're now participating, the Vice.com site posted a piece by Harmon Leon, looking at Trump's increasingly unhinged fundraising emails. It traces the arc of Trump's campaign messages, from essentially optimistic and rah-rah to "apocalyptic."

Early in the campaign, as you may recall, Trump continually boasted about his wealth and the fact that since he was a gazillionaire, he was self-funding his campaign and couldn't be bought by special-interest groups and donors. Those of us who'd been paying attention knew he was full of it even then, but as the months went by, the money ran low, and the begging began. Harmon Leon wrote:

By the end of June [2016]... the press was reporting that the Trump campaign was dangerously low on cash. All of a sudden, the Trump of the emails went from being a man on an amazing journey to being a man on an amazing journey who wanted you to pay for it...

...Soon, the whole self-funding thing was forgotten. Trump is first and foremost a salesman, and soon his fundraising efforts—the MOST SUCCESSFUL fundraising in HISTORY, he reminded me—had baroque bells and whistles attached. In early August, I was being asked to become an Executive Member of his campaign with a Trump campaign Gold Card, which could be mine for a one-time induction fee of $100. Trump didn't really specify what perks you'd get with a Trump Gold Card—but I assume the card would confirm I hated ISIS and Hillary Clinton...

By August, Leon noted, Gold Cards were cheaper; you could now get one for only $35, down from $100.00. And, I might add, down from even the $49 price that was supposedly a discount from the original $200 price. I'm a little confused about what the "original" price was really supposed to be, but I guess it doesn't really matter, since more than likely those prices were made-up numbers anyway. I'm pretty sure that Loony Coldwell got his Gold Card at a fake discount, since it was fake-discounted in August, and that's when he posted about it.

Leon continued, noting that the Gold Card was replaced by the Black Card in October.

(...Trump didn't explain what the difference was between the Trump Gold Card and the Trump Black Card—but he implied that the Trump Black Card was of a higher status than the Trump Gold Card, which would make me really angry if I already invested in a goddamn Trump Gold Card...)

Oh, and I was also offered the chance to win a coffee with Ivanka Trump at Trump Tower, or lunch with Eric Trump. This is the sort of literal selling of access that is OK to do, I guess...

There's more, and I urge you to read the entire piece. In hindsight, though, and despite the implication at the end of Leon's article that Trump would lose the election, the unhinged fundraising campaigns did help push him to victory.

My point is that there's a definite precedent for the Impeachment Defense Membership Card gimmick. This is not the first time Trump supporters have been offered an "exclusive" card in exchange for forking over some of their hard-earned bucks.

So what's different now? Isn't this just another routine Trump grift?
Those are reasonable questions, as is the question of how the Impeachment Defense Card, as silly as it might be, differs from any campaign merch -- like a MAGA hat, a T-shirt, or, for that matter, Elizabeth Warren's Billionaire Tears coffee mug.

As much of a fan as I am of Chauncey DeVega's writing, I think he sometimes errs a bit on the side of drama, to the point of alarmism. Even so, I think that, given the entire context of Trumpism, he's right to be a bit alarmed by this latest "membership card" scheme. I was pretty disturbed about it myself, which is why I'm writing this post.

Back in April of this year, when the Trump campaign was apparently reviving the Black Card, rebranding it as the Official 2019 Trump Executive Membership Card, DeVega wrote another alarm post for Salon.com, "Echoes of history: Trump's 'movement' now has a uniform and membership cards." Granted, the "uniform" to which he alluded is at best an unofficial one: MAGA caps and the infamous tan khaki pants worn by so many of the "white supremacist hooligans in Charlottesville and elsewhere." DeVega said then, as he's saying now about the most recent Trump card, that these cards function "both as a loyalty oath and marker of belonging."

As per usual, the Trump campaign had promoted those "new" Executive Membership Cards with an email blast vilifying the liberals, the "witch hunt," and so forth, and employing the usual inflammatory language. DeVega put it in context:

When viewed in isolation Trump's messaging is dangerous enough: these are clear threats to America's democratic norms, an encouragement to political violence against liberals, nonwhites, LGBT people and other "enemies," and reinforcing a cult of personality led by a man who has contempt for American democracy and the Constitution, is clearly a pathological liar and is likely a malignant narcissist who is unmoored from reality.

When viewed in total, however, this fundraising email is something far worse. Trump is promising an authoritarian "national renewal" to his white supporters through a fake populism that nurtures feelings of grievance and victimhood -- feelings that can only be remedied through loyalty to the Great Leader and Dear Father...

And DeVega emphasized that this focus on "movement" above party was used by the Nazis and the Third Reich "to mobilize their base and its destructive energies."

This is not a mere foray into Godwin's law territory. (For that matter, even Mike Godwin himself said that not every Nazi comparison breaks his famous rule. His declaration was a response to the 2017 Charlottesville awfulness. And even before that, back in 2015, he didn't categorically dismiss the Trump/Hitler comparisons. Not that Trump was particularly bothered, at least in 2015, to those Hitler analogies .)

In any case, DeVega, whose April essay I also urge you to read, is far from the only person who has compared Trump and America under GOP leadership with Hitler and Nazi Germany. In October 2018, Christopher Browning, a respected historian specializing in the Holocaust and Nazi Germany, penned an essay for The New York Review of Books, noting "several troubling similarities and and one important but equally troubling difference" between then and now. Trump isn't the only culpable one in Browning's essay; Browning describes Mitch McConnell as "the gravedigger of American democracy." Browning is clearly worried about the legacy of Trumpism.

No matter how and when the Trump presidency ends, the specter of illiberalism will continue to haunt American politics. A highly politicized judiciary will remain, in which close Supreme Court decisions will be viewed by many as of dubious legitimacy, and future judicial appointments will be fiercely contested. The racial division, cultural conflict, and political polarization Trump has encouraged and intensified will be difficult to heal. Gerrymandering, voter suppression, and uncontrolled campaign spending will continue to result in elections skewed in an unrepresentative and undemocratic direction. Growing income disparity will be extremely difficult to halt, much less reverse.

It's another essay that's well worth reading.

For those who defend Trump by saying that his fascist/authoritarian talk is "just rhetoric"... well, words can and do hurt, as Jonathan Chait pointed out in a June 2019 essay in New York's Intelligencer section. Chait concludes his short piece with a swipe at right-wing double standards.

What is interesting is the way conservatives have used the largely rhetorical nature of Trump’s fascistic politics a defense. Trump can call the media “enemies of the people” all day long, and we should shrug because it’s just words. Fascist rhetoric is meaningless, but anti-fascist rhetoric is an outrageous slander. What reasonable case is there to hold the president of the United States to the lowest standard of any public official?

While left-leaning hyper-partisans often tend to err on the side of histrionics when it comes to anything involving Trump, and while I think that's a mistake, I also think that it's an even graver mistake to err on the side of accepting all of the disruption and destruction as "the new normal." Granted, politics has become ever more about tribalism in the past couple of decades, and more and more folks are donning partisan blinders and refusing to take them off. Trump didn't start that. But he has undoubtedly amplified and accelerated the process. Some insist that even political tribalism may have its limits, and that there still might be hope if people are willing to emerge from their social media echo chambers. Maybe so, but the problem is pretty complex, and is intertwined with cultural and religious as well as economic issues. That's a bit beyond the scope of this blog, or at least beyond the scope of a single post. 

As things stand now, I think that Chauncey DeVega and others who are sounding alarms are nailing it. Donald Trump's latest "membership cards" awarded to his "impeachment defense Army" may be just another gimmick, a Trumpian grift modeled on so many other Scamworld schemes. That's actually bad enough, or at least it's bad if you don't care for scams. But there's a larger and more disturbing context as well, and it goes far beyond the endless hawking of political merch, which is common enough these days and mostly harmless -- although, I should add, there's a valid case to be made that those infamous Trump MAGA caps aren't just campaign swag but are also symbols of hate and divisiveness. I hope I never reach the point where I accept the train wreck that is Trumpism as "normal."

Related on this Whirled:

• October 2018: A proposed new national anthem
• June 2018: The redcaps are now the Trump Super Elite

 

* * * * *

Unlike Trump, I'm not a shillionaire.
Now more than ever, your donation is needed
to help keep this Whirled spinning.
Click here to donate via PayPal or debit/credit card.
If that link doesn't work, send PayPal payment directly to
scrivener66@hotmail.com
or to cosmic.connie@juno.com
If PayPal, be sure to specify that your contribution is a gift. Thank you!

The Williamson Institute: not quite Trump U, but still crapitalism

Though she is for all practical purposes currently on the sidelines of the 2020 presidential race -- or at least that's how it appears at the moment -- don't count McSpirituality guru Marianne Williamson out of the larger game. You can't keep a good New-Wage crapitalist down.

On November 5, 2019, the Rolling Stone site ran a feature by Tessa Stuart, "That Marianne Mind$et: Obeying the Law of Divine Compensation." Stuart opens with a mention of an early August 2019 email blast directed to those who had signed up for Williamson's campaign mailing list earlier in the year. The message featured a "soft-focus portrait of the presidential candidate gazing placidly at the pages of a hardcover tome beside a golden Buddha and an orchid."

That's so Marianne.

The email came from something called the Williamson Institute, and the subject was, "Summer Sale Now On!"

“For one week only, indulge in any of our on-demand courses and seminars for 45% off!” the email read. “Whether you want to invoke the romantic mysteries, create a career that matters, divinely align your body and soul, or focus on another area of your life in a miraculous way, now is the time to treat yourself. As always, we hope this offering will enrich your life and nourish your soul.” Interested parties were advised to use the code “SummerSale.” 

There was one teeny-tiny little problem, though. At the time the email was sent out, the Williamson Institute did not yet technically exist, though a note on Williamson's personal web site said that it would be launching "soon." But skilled hucksters never let the unicorn status of anything stop them from promoting that thing.

The email linked instead to Marianne.com, where for a cool $249 one might enroll in a four-part online course on “aging miraculously” or a five-parter on “miraculous relationships.” The four-part weight-loss seminar, five-parter on making money (or, rather, obeying “the law of divine compensation”), and a three-part “Aphrodite Training” were each comparative steals at $149 a piece.

Heck of a bargain, right? Can you say, "New-Wage sales funnel," boys and girls?

Stuart continues:

Williamson’s campaign blamed the email on a “vendor error” and, perhaps because Williamson isn’t a top-tier candidate, the use of a public campaign for private profit barely registered as news.

Or maybe it didn’t register because, at this point, it’s basically accepted that many (if not most) people who run for president are ultimately running one grift or another. Herman Cain used the email list he amassed during a failed bid for the Republican nomination in 2012 to hawk dozens of get-rich-quick schemes and dubious cures, including an erectile dysfunction drug called “TestoMax 200.” Rick Perry parlayed his aborted campaign into a turn on Dancing With the Stars. Mike Huckabee’s failed White House run transformed him into a one-man media empire, complete with a terrestrial radio time slot opposite Rush Limbaugh and a hosting gig on Fox News. (Alas, the long-promised Huckabee Post never materialized.)

Yep.

Of course no review of presidential candidate hucksterism would be complete without a mention of one candidate who actually won the presidency, and is without a doubt the biggest huckster of them all, Donald J. Trump, Scammer in Chief, whose arguably most infamous contribution to Scamworld was the totally bogus "Trump University." Trump U actually did exist, for a few years, but it wasn't a real university, and Trump, who was known for boasting that he "never settles" in a lawsuit, ultimately agreed to pay $25 million to settle three of the suits against his ersatz education endeavor.

Stuart doesn't mention Trump U in the Rolling Stone piece, but she does remind us of a few other points.

Donald Trump — despite having boasted in 2000 he could possibly be “the first presidential candidate to run and make money on it” — lost money on his run for president, but he has since turned his presidency into a four-year-long paid advertisement for his hotel chain. (He also, apparently, had a contingency plan: By election night 2016, when most everyone was predicting him losing, the candidate and his family had compiled a list of ideas to capitalize on his newfound cachet, including a budget line of Trump hotels and a TV network to rival Fox News.)

Not to mention the apparently well-founded rumors that Trump has been talking, at least casually, with Apprentice creator Mark Burnett about another future "reality" show, a "White House" edition of The Apprentice. Trump denied it, of course. But his lips were moving, so that should give you an idea of how credible his denial is. In any case, there's a very good case to be made that Trump has been running his entire presidency like a reality show. Unfortunately, as Sean Illing, the author of the Vox piece linked to in the previous sentence, noted, it's "the show we can't turn off, the car crash we can't look away from the news cycle we can't escape."

But we were discussing Marianne Williamson, right? Not that revisiting Trump's various scams and hustles is irrelevant -- not at all. After all, as some observers have noted, Trump and Williamson are in several significant ways just two sides of the same (narcissistic, celebrity-culture) coin. (Williamson has even been called a left-wing version of Trump.) And Williamson herself has famously declared on several occasions that she is the most qualified of all of the Democratic candidates to meet Trump on the battlefield that really matters: the one where the battle for the heart and soul of America is being fought (this being one of her more recent declarations).

And what about the Williamson Institute? I still can't seem to find a separate web site for the thing. There is a Facebook page, plugging a ten-part online "course" called "The New You: A Total Life Makeover," and currently Williamson's main web site leads with basically that same plug, and follows with an announcement that the Williamson Institute will be "launching soon." Of course the site contains various other links to ways you can fork over your hard-earned lucre to Williamson.

Williamson insists she is not driven by the profit motive, though. From Tessa Stuart's Rolling Stone piece again:

But ask Marianne Williamson if her campaign has a profit motive, and a beatific expression will shimmer across her face. “It’s quite the opposite,” Williamson tells me, sitting at a sun-drenched rooftop bar a few blocks from Manhattan’s Bryant Park in early fall. “I’m not doing the things right now that you do in my career to make a living — speaking fees, etc. I’m not off giving seminars. A senator running for president is still getting a Senate salary, right? This is the opposite of a lucrative thing to do.”

Williamson continues, plugging her most recently released book by name, “If you look at my Politics of Love that came out, it is not a bestseller. It is way down on Amazon.” (It was, at press time, ranked Number 25 in “Religious Studies: Church & State,” Number 74 in “Spiritual Healing,” and Number 79 in “History of Religion & Politics.”) She fixes me with a bemused look. “If I want to, I kind of know how to sell a book. It’s called a book tour.”

Condescension duly noted, Marianne. (By the way, considering the many millions of new books that are constantly being published, and zillions of older ones still actively on the market, those press-time Amazon numbers aren't really all that bad.)

Tessa Stuart writes that Williamson's campaign denies that she planned from the beginning to capitalize on the exposure she'd get from a presidential run with money-making schemes like the Williamson Institute. In fact Williamson's campaign manager, Patricia Ewing, expressed surprise that Stuart would even ask such a question, and suggested that perhaps there was a bit of sexism behind the inquiry. "Is the same question being asked of businessmen in the race?" Ewing asked, adding that no one seemed to be questioning the motives of Tom Steyer, Andrew Yang et al. when their respective businesses continued to "innovate" while they were on the campaign trail.

But the difference, Stuart points out in her article, is that neither Steyer nor Yang is launching a new business predicated on asking fans or supporters "to pay for the privilege of hearing what they have to say."

Exactly. Furthermore, there has been plenty of criticism about Donald Trump continuing to profit from his own businesses while in office. So it isn't just a matter of giving "businessmen" a pass while the poor put-upon "businesswoman" catches all of the flak. This is not to deny that sexism and double standards riddle our political landscape. They most certainly do. But this is not that.

Marianne Williamson has said that the only way we can defeat the "outrageous lies" of Trumpism is by telling "outrageous truth." She is clearly branding herself as the standard-bearer of this truth, but anyone who truly believes this is as misinformed or deluded in his or her own way as any of the MAGA-cap wearing Trump devotees who cheer at his fascist rallies. And while I am emphatically not suggesting that Williamson's fans are hate-filled bigots like so many (not all, but so many) of Trump's fans, nor am I insinuating that Williamson's crapitalism is on a scale with Trump's, or that her narcissism is even remotely as dangerous at this point as Trump's, the devotion of her base is not necessarily a harmless thing.

Lest you accuse me of Williamson-bashing, I am not categorically declaring Marianne Williamson to be devoid of truth. As I've noted here in previous posts about her -- and as was noted in this excellent August 2019 piece in The Intercept -- there is validity in some of her core messages, despite the wackadoodle new-agey veneer in which so many of them are wrapped. But it's gonna take a whole lot more than abstract declarations of moral and spiritual truths to defeat the orange blob and fix our egregiously broken system, which was broken for many years before Trump but has been immeasurably damaged even more since he's been in power. Marianne Williamson is simply not the person to accomplish this. And I am pretty sure that at some level, she knows it.

But don't cry for her, because one way or the other, with or without the "Williamson Institute," she'll be laughing -- beatifically, of course, and with a shimmering expression of thinly veiled condescension on her lovely face -- all the way to the bank.

Related on this Whirled:

• 10 January, 2011: Snippets for a Monday afternoon (under "What's wrong with this (big) picture?") -- Marianne's weight loss book and the totally contrived marketing backstory that she cooked up with Oprah.
• 5 July 2019: So wrong, Marianne -- Musings on Williamson's first debate performance in late June, on her history as a New-Wage icon, on the new-agey "love and light" mindset, and on why Marianne is the wrong choice to go up against Trump.
• 31 July 2019: Marianne Williamson: still so wrong -- Williamson got to talk more during her second performance at the Democrats' "debate," and some of what she said made sense, but as the title of the post noted... still so wrong.

Wead it and reap: selfish-help author/Christian fundie/right-wing political hack pens new book that kisses some yuuuuge orange butt

It isn't every day that politix, Scamworld, and the modern-day theocracy converge on this Whirled. This is one of those daze.

The convergence comes in the form of some very good news for Donald John Trump devotees who are disgusted by the spate of anti-Trump books that have been published since their Mad King ascended the throne. Selfish-help author Doug Wead, who has deep ties to both Amway and hypoChristian fundamentalism (more on that below), as well as to right-wing politix, is set to release a new sure-to-be-a-bestseller book on November 26 titled, Inside Trump's White House: The Real Story of His Presidency.

Apparently this is one of the boldest political books ever written, or at least the boldest book ever written about Trump, because it doesn't rely on "anonymous sources." From the promo blurb on the book's Amazon page:

After dozens of books and articles by anonymous sources, here is finally a history of the Trump White House with the President and his staff talking openly, on the record.

In Inside Trump's White House, Doug Wead offers a sweeping, eloquent history of President Donald J. Trump's first years in office, covering everything from election night to the news of today. The book will include never-before-reported stories and scoops, including how President Trump turned around the American economy, how he "never complains and never explains," and how his actions sometimes lead to misunderstandings with the media and the public. It also includes exclusive interviews with the Trump family about the Mueller report, and narrates their reactions when the report was finally released.

Contains Interviews with the President in the Oval Office, chief of staff, Mick Mulvaney, Jared and Ivanka Kushner, Donald Trump, Jr., Eric and Lara Trump, and White House insiders.

Color me impressed! The Trump family and Trump's most loyal minions are willing to go on the record about how wonderful Trump is and how much he has accomplished and how wrong all of the critics are about this deeply misunderstood man. What bold risks they are taking to get the true story out to the public, as opposed to those off-the-record cowards and anon sources who had nothing more to worry about than having their careers wrecked, their lives ruined, and their physical safety threatened by vengeful Trumps or egregiously offended Trumpanzees.

But let's look more closely at that claim, quoted in the promo blurb above, that Donald Trump "never complains and never explains." Never complains, huh? Hey, Doug, have you forgotten that Trump is constantly ranting and raving at his fascist rallies, or rage-tweeting, or angrily shouting about something or other during those impromptu press ops just before he boards a helicopter? Even before he was elected he'd become notorious for griping about being treated unfairly.

And Donald Trump "never explains?" More than any other president in recent memory, he spends more time "explaining," in the form of rationalizing and defending, his goofy words and reckless or ill-advised actions, and of course defending himself from his many critics. He even defended the size of his penis on national TV, back during the 2016 campaign.
 
Among other revelations in Doug Wead's new book, as reported today in Axios, is that murderous North Korean despot Kim Jong-Un actually views Trump as a father figure. Apparently Wead got that particular tidbit from noted psychology expert Jared Kushner, who reportedly told Wead: "It's a father thing... You can see from these letters that Kim wants to be friends with Trump, but his father told him never to give up the weapons. That's his only security. Trump is like a new father figure. So, it is not an easy transition."

All righty, then!

Wead was apparently allowed to read several of the letters exchanged between Kim and Donnie, and in one of them Kim addressed Trump as, "Your Excellency." My first thought was that this is just Kim trolling, and being passive-aggressive, but Wead seems to believe otherwise.

Ahead of his latest book's release, the author himself weighed in on Fox News.

What I discovered inside the Trump bubble was quite different from what had been reported. No, Melania and Donald were not estranged, they were tender lovers, who playfully teased each other. On almost any subject -- North Korea, China, Mueller -- the president brought up her name.

Publicly, the whole family talks about what a privilege it is to serve the country, but privately they have no illusions about the horror they are going through. The president sometimes eases the tension by teasing the first lady, saying, sarcastically, with puffed up importance, “Melania, honey, look at this incredible journey I have brought you on.”

“It’s like a joke between them,” Lara Trump told me. “Everyone is attacking all of us and she’s smeared for no reason other than pure jealousy and he says, ‘Hon, isn’t this amazing?’

“And she’s like, ‘Oh yeah, thank you so much.’ “It’s hilarious. I love it.”

In other words, "I REALLY DON'T CARE. DO U?"

And later in Wead's Fox op-ed, there's this...

Donald Trump is the sixth president I have interviewed and I came away impressed. Some will say that he is only lucky. He was lucky to win the nomination and the election. He was lucky to see what every great economist in the world had missed about the GDP, lucky at finding jobs that no one else could find, lucky at bringing back hostages that other presidents had left languishing in foreign prisons, lucky at achieving energy independence, lucky at defeating ISIS so easily.

Trump is, arguably, the first president in 40 years to avoid starting a hot war. You can say he is lucky. I say he is great.

Oh, yes. Herr Twitler did indeed win the election... and he bested the world's greatest economists in figuring out how to grow the GDP... and he created jobs "that no one else could find" (and here's another link about that)... and he is absolutely the greatest hostage negotiator ever, in contrast to Obama, who was a total do-nothing... and he almost single-handedly achieved US energy independence... and of course we all know that his defeat of ISIS was easy-peasy.

And good for Trump for being "arguably the first president in 40 years to avoid starting a hot war," unlike that warmonger Obama, who almost got us into a hot war with North Korea. (Trump prefers trade wars, which he has assured us are easily winnable. Not to mention his love of dick wars, which of course bolsters America's standing in the eyes of the rest of the world. Not that the rest of the world's opinion matters, of course!)

But seriously now. Wead hasn't merely kissed the Mad King's ass; he has opened wide and swallowed it whole.

* * * * *

Long-time Whirled visitors with especially long memories may recall that we met Doug Wead briefly on this blog eleven years ago, when I opened one of my posts about Scamworld elder statesman Bob Proctor with a quotation from Wead, praising Proctor as a "master thinker."

“Zig Ziglar may be the master motivator, Mark Victor Hansen and Jack Canfield of Chicken Soup for the Soul, the master story tellers; Anthony Robbins may be the guru of personal development, but Bob Proctor is the master thinker. When it comes to systemizing life, no one can touch him.”
~ Attributed (by Bob Proctor) to Doug Wead, former Special Assistant to the President of the United States


I've known for a long time that Scientist Bob Proctor is a deep thinker, but reading the above quotation from author, philanthropist and former Diamond-level Amway salesman Doug Wead just confirms it. "Well, gee, Cosmic Connie, is Wead really a reliable source?" you may be asking. To which I can only respond, "If you can't trust a person who betrayed the trust of a future President of the US by secretly recording conversations and then publishing them, whom can you trust?"

And that last sentence may bring up some older memories still, of the time when Doug Wead secretly taped then-Texas governor George W. Bush for three years without Bush's knowledge or permission. Previously Wead had taped the Bush family with their knowledge and permission, in the service of writing a very flattering book about the Bushes, which was based largely on these taped conversations and was published in 1988. But the seekrit taping took place later, between 1997 and 2000. From Wikipedia:

The release prompted some hostility from members of Bush's inner circle: Bush's wife, Laura Bush, said in an interview, "I don't know if I'd use the word 'betrayed,' but I think it's a little bit awkward for sure"; while Bush evangelical ally James Dobson said he was "shocked by [Wead's] breach of trust". Bush himself did not comment.^[16] The tapes' release also provoked negative reaction from some commentators, such as Bill Press, who called Wead "scum", and Bill O'Reilly, who called Wead "the lowest form of debris in the country."^[17]

You might think that when a theocrat like James Dobson accuses someone of engaging in a "breach of trust," and a right-wing darling such as Bill O'Reilly calls him "the lowest form of debris," that person's career as a sycophant of right-wing royalty would be doomed. You might assume he would at least be tempted to hang his head in shame and just go away quietly.

But Wead is from Scamworld, and "shame" simply isn't in the Scamworld purview. Wead continued cranking out books, including a political hack job called, Game of Thorns: The Inside Story of Hillary Clinton's Failed Campaign and Donald Trump's Winning Strategy, which purported to be the never-before-told inside story of what really happened in the 2016 US presidential election. On Amazon the book seems to have received overwhelmingly positive reviews, but as is often the case, it is the negative ones that are the most revealing, such as this one:

Cornelius C. Walsh
1.0 out of 5 stars
If you hate Hillary, You'll Love ThisJuly 24, 2017
Format: Kindle Edition Verified Purchase
Same old, same old. Didn't get more than 20 pages in as the background focused on old, old anti-Clinton issues and very little on events/issues related to contemporary and election related issues. Great for Clinton haters but really not what I was looking for.

But clearly, it was what the Trump devotees, who almost without exception are Clinton haters as well, were looking for.

If you want additional background on Doug Wead's evange-a-scam creds, as well as his past forays into politix, you'll find plenty in this February 2005 piece from the (sadly now-defunct) Village Voice. From that piece:

Unless you were an Amwayer, you wouldn’t know that Lennon Ledbetter, a tall young man in a dark suit who served as the emcee of Wead’s campaign kickoff rally, was one of Wead’s Amway business associates in Arizona. Or that Wead campaign aide Billy Childers, who introduced Ledbetter, is the son of a prominent Amway friend of Wead’s who lives in North Carolina.

More important, you wouldn’t know that John Godzich, who runs an Amway-like organization in France and also builds American-style houses there, is someone Doug Wead met years ago through Amway, and that Godzich, himself a newcomer to Arizona, is a major source of money for Doug Wead’s political ventures—much to the ire of some Arizona Republicans. You wouldn’t know that Godzich is the older brother of Pastor Leo Godzich, the leader of the drive against Phoenix’s proposed gay-rights ordinance and associate pastor at one of America’s largest churches, Phoenix First Assembly of God, whose pastor is Tommy Barnett. This business of clues has been used by Doug Wead before. During the 1980 presidential campaign, he wrote a quickie book entitled Reagan in Pursuit of the Presidency. Timed for publication just before the GOP National Convention, it was a campaign-trail journal capped by a Reagan campaign speech before a wildly cheering crowd in Charlotte, North Carolina. Doug Wead himself introduced Reagan to the crowd. There were countless standing ovations. At one point during Reagan’s speech, the assembled masses erupted into “God Bless America.” Must have been quite a speech, right? Not necessarily. If you were an Amwayer reading the book, however, you knew exactly what was going on. Reagan was at an Amway rally, where practically everybody gets standing ovations.

For that matter, in an April 2013 Whirled post about serial scammer and ex-Amway star Kevin Trudeau's bankruptcy, I cited a 2004 opinion piece linking Amway, Republicans and That Old Time Religion. Under the sub-head, "The Bush Family & Religious Heathens," the author wrote:

Several members of the media have looked into the relationship between the two Bush Presidencies and members of the extreme Religious Right Wing. After reading up on that gang, the only thing I know for sure, is that there is not a single honest person in the whole bunch.

First off, let's take a look at evangelist Doug Wead, a divorced Baptist Minister, and former Diamond distributor, who is still a regular speaker at Amway conventions

Wead was the first President Bush's liaison to the Christian Right and he later served as Special Assistant to the President in the first Bush White House. Time magazine referred to him as "the man who coined the phrase the compassionate conservative." ...

...At one time, Wead and his ex-wife Gloria, were both Diamond distributors, sponsored by Dexter and Birdie Yager. Wead earned large sums of money by speaking at Amway functions throughout the Yager organization.

Wead and another kingpin, Jean Godzich, eventually branched out and set up an Amway in France. In 1986, the French government began investigating it and decided the company was a dangerous mind-control cult, and a fraudulent business. Amway France terminated the distributorship of Godzich, from whose group most of the complaints had originated.

So what do Wead and Godzich do next? They set up a new MLM in France, called Groupement or GEPM. Its product line consisted of Amway products, its business structure was identical to Amway France, and its cultic activities were just as blatant as they were in the first operation.

After receiving numerous complaints about GEPM, French authorities moved in to shut it down, but this time it issued criminal arrest warrants, 13 for the company’s distributors, and 2 for Godzich and Wead. Godzich took all the cash and fled the country and Wead never returned to France.

This man is the same Doug Wead, who 2 years later, would become a White House Aide to the first President Bush, and spiritual adviser to the second. God help us!!!

God-if-there-is-one help us indeed. All I'm really trying to say here is, if you insist on reading Doug Wead's Trump book, go ahead. Let me know what you think about it, positive or negative; my blog is always open to comments. But even if you're a Trump fan, you might consider the possibility that Wead, like the principal subject of his book, is not exactly what the journalists would call, if you'll pardon the word, an unimpeachable source.

Related on this Whirled:

• November 2016 -- More about Scamworld, Amway, and Trump: Politix and Scamworld on an extended honeymoon
• May 2016 -- When it comes to serial scamming, Wead and Trump are turds of a feather: Donald Trump's Scamworld playbook isn't unique
• December 2013: More about the destructive and cultic aspects of multi-level marketing (MLM) schemes: from December 2013 -- Tin Promises: How MLMs Can Tear Lives Apart, Part 1 of 2 (link to Part 2 is included)

* * * * *

Now more than ever, your donation is needed
to help keep this Whirled spinning.
Click here to donate via PayPal or debit/credit card.
If that link doesn't work, send PayPal payment directly to
scrivener66@hotmail.com
or to cosmic.connie@juno.com
If PayPal, be sure to specify that your contribution is a gift. Thank you!

Don't Mentz words: Magus Incognito brings Illuminutty angle to politix/Scamworld merger

There's a devil lurking at the crossroads of politix and Scamworld, a phenomenon that I first made note of back in early 2016 in a post about #NotMyPresident Donald John Trump and imprisoned serial scammer Kevin Trudeau (aka KT, aka Katie). Since Trump took office, the politix/Scamworld connection has only intensified, the latest case in point being Trump's nomination of one George Mentz, JD, MBA, BSA*, a lawyer/"educator"/selfish-help author, to the Commission on Presidential Scholars. It's one of those nominations for which Senate confirmation is not required.

And this, as you might have guessed, is Whirled-class blog fodder because Mentz happens to have penned a number of selfish-help and financial books using "the Illuminati" and other popular McSpirituality/esoterica concepts as a hook, e.g., The Illuminati Secret Laws of Money -- The Wealth Mindset Manifesto: The Life Changing Magic and Habits of Spiritual Mastery. Then there are these gems. Why, there's even a book about "Quantum Bliss!" As you may recall, "quantum" this and "quantum" that were all the rage back in the heyday of the Universe's most successful New-Wage moviemercial, The Secret. Mentz's book was about eight or nine years behind the trend, but one should never leave a good exploitation stone unturned.

Mentz's Illuminati shtick kind of reminds me of the ways Kevin Trudeau used his own Illuminati-like "Brotherhood" as a hook for his massive GIN scam. In a recent interview with The Denver Post, however, Mentz laughed away the Illuminati angle, saying that it's just a marketing thing -- but seeing as how he has also penned several McSpirituality works under the pen name Magus Incognito, I'm thinking that he's just a big ol' liar.

According to their web site description, the Commission on Presidential Scholars is "a group of eminent private citizens appointed by the President to select and honor the Presidential Scholars." The Scholars, of whom 161 are chosen each year from a pool of high school seniors across the US, "demonstrate exceptional accomplishments in academics, the arts, career and technical education and an outstanding commitment to public service." Sounds pretty impressive.

Given all of the above, you may be asking, "What actually qualifies someone like George Mentz to be appointed to such a prestigious education board?" Well, first of all -- and I don't mean to be overly critical if you're asking an honest question, but... since when did genuine qualifications and credentials have anything to do with a Trump appointment or nomination for any position, particularly where important areas like education are concerned? I mean, come on... Betsy DeVos, anyone?

But since you may have asked, I'll answer. George Mentz's main qualification, besides his apparent ability to fudge the facts about his own nuttiness (and/or cynical New-Wage crapitalism), is almost certainly his utter loyalty to Herr Twitler. From The Denver Post, which first reported the nomination on October 16:

In 2015, Mentz wrote a blog post predicting Trump would win the 2016 election. The next year, he became a member of the Trump campaign’s economic coalition. On his website, Mentz says an unnamed publisher has bought the rights to a “blockbuster book” about Trump’s “success principles.” In an interview, Mentz said he did the research and expects the book will be written by someone else next year.

Mentz said his support of Trump dates back three decades, to when he met Trump at the Superdome in New Orleans, where Mentz is from. Trump was kind and gracious with his time, Mentz said, and he has been a fan ever since. He has donated thousands of dollars to Trump’s campaign and political action committee.

Mentz has also donated substantial sums to other Republican candidates and causes (see link in the second paragraph of the above excerpt). And he writes finance columns for the conservative website Newsmax.

In all fairness, however, Mentz does have an "education" hook as well. In the real(ish) world, he is, as I mentioned, a lawyer, and he's also a professor of a couple of online courses on wealth management at the Texas A&M University School of Law (see page 8 of this document).

But wait, there's more! Much like Scammer in Chief Trump with his defunct Trump University scam, Mentz has a bit of an edumucation scheme of his own. He currently owns something called the Global Academy of Finance and Management (GAFM), which is registered in Colorado Springs, Colorado. And he was previously CEO of a similar Colorado Springs company called the American Academy of Financial Management (AAFM). From the Denver Post article cited above:

Both companies award certifications, allowing applicants to add an alphabet soup of titles after their names. For a fee, you can become an accredited life coach, a certified political scientist, a master Islamic financial specialist or more than a hundred other titles. Having such a certification “makes you one of the next generation of global leaders,” according to a message from Mentz on the GAFM website.

The Huffington Post piece I linked to in the first paragraph of this post (here's that link again) elaborates:

For $378, the company awards certifications to individuals who can then list official-sounding titles and acronyms after their names. (The certifications are “valid” for two years and then “members” must renew them annually.) At least 118 such titles are listed on the GAFM website, including “Certified Chartered FinTech Professional (ChFP),” “Master Business Analyst (MBA)” and “Registered Islamic Financial Specialist (RIFS).”

The Denver Post piece continues:

A Wall Street Journal article in 2004 found AAFM awarded certifications to applicants who had never taken a course and, in some cases, had not taken a test to prove they knew the topic at hand. In 2010, another Wall Street Journal article found several people listed on AAFM’s board of advisers had never advised the company and were unaware the company was claiming them as an adviser.

Mentz defended his certification processes in the interview Friday. He says his companies have rightly used college degrees as a “pathway” to certifications.

“Our standards are pretty basic,” Mentz said, using a journalist as an example. “If you took 135 hours of college education to get your degree from a particular university and satisfied a major in journalism, then you’re qualified for certification in that area if you had a GPA or 3.0 or higher. So, instead of having someone go to Sylvan Learning and take a quiz to be certified, we would allow somebody like you to apply directly for a certification.”

So... maybe not exactly like the faux-degree industry I used to snark so much about back in the day, but definitely not exactly unlike it, either.

"Oh, Cosmic Connie, you're just jealous of accomplished individuals," you might be saying, as so many others have over the years, in response to something they read here. To validate your point you might direct me to Mentz's page on the site of the American Academy of Financial Management -- the company of which he was formerly CEO -- which expounds on his impressive credentials. (Try to ignore the typos and other glitches, such as the fact that in the third-person blurb that was fake-written by someone else but clearly written by Mentz himself, he forgot to use the third person consistently throughout.)

Counselor Mentz  ( 乔治·孟子 ) and his companies have contributed assistance and services to thousands of professionals around the world, to Fortune 1000 companies, and privately held corporations an individuals  in over 155  nations.  Over 10,000 people have been trained with “professional development programs” and certified under the unsurpassed standards of his pioneering  global educational programs along with hundreds of others receiving benefits of the Mentz Scholarship Program.  Having personally taught over 250 law, MBA and college courses to thousands of students worldwide, my insights and experience with global education and e-learning are cutting edge in the world of education and consulting.  Mentz has consulted with the US government, UN Education Officials, US Dept of Labor, Top Universities, and some of the biggest companies in the world. Presently, the Mentz companies are delivering executive education to professionals in Africa, Arabia, the US, India, China, Caribbean, Latin America, and Asia.

George S. Mentz is the first person in the United States to be multi credentialed as a Lawyer, MBA, Qualified Financial Planner, Certified Financial Consultant, Chartered Management Consultant, and Registered/Licensed Financial Planner. Mentz is the first author in the USA to have bestselling books and publications  in the following categories in 2013-19: Money and Monetary Policy, Management Science, Organizational Behavior, Wealth Management, Mysticism, Religion, Spirituality, Psychology,  History, Theosophy, Greek & Roman Philosophy, Personal Growth Men & Women,  Politics & Social Sciences -Consciousness & Thought, and even in Celtic Studies.  Prof. Mentz has held faculty and professional positions with major business schools, top law schools,  and top Wall Street Firms.

Oh, goodness, a true Renaissance Man. I stand humbled.

Anyway, I've been thinking that in light of Mentz's Illuminutty leanings, there really is a place for poor caged Katie -- that would be Kevin Trudeau, of course -- somewhere in or around the Trump administration. Granted, Katie hasn't been able to actually give Trump money, at least that I know of, but he has been relentlessly rooting around in Trump's aperture for several years -- and the two have so much in common! -- so surely that should count for something. Now if only he and his persistent minions could persuade Trump to commute Katie's sentence and pardon him, a goal they've been pursuing for years... Unfortunately, Drumpf seems to have other things to occupy his mind besides uncaging Katie, such as avoiding the cage himself.

But as long as the devil is still sitting there grinning at that crossroads, anything could happen. 

* Bull Sh-t Artist, of course

* * * * *

Now more than ever, your donation is needed
to help keep this Whirled spinning.
Click here to donate via PayPal or debit/credit card.
If that link doesn't work, send PayPal payment directly to
scrivener66@hotmail.com
or to cosmic.connie@juno.com
If PayPal, be sure to specify that your contribution is a gift. Thank you!