If you look back at old photos and videos of Trump, you are likely to see one of two scenarios. Either Trump with a beautiful babe on his arm, entering a restaurant or nightclub, or Trump selling something to the naive, whether it’s his “university” (where you will learn Trump’s secrets to getting rich), his wines, his steaks, or now his gold sneakers or his Trump-branded USA Bible. It must have been Trump-lovers who rushed to invest in the new DJT stock, because no one understands how a company could be valued at $8 billion when it reported $3.3 million in revenue in the first nine months of 2023 and a loss of $49 million. The stock opened at $70.90 a share, rose to $79.38, and settled two days later at $61.96. USA Today quoted a stock observer who predicted that the vanity stock might sink to $2 a share or less.
Michael Tomasky of The New Republic is betting that the people who buy Trump schlock are wising up to the con and realizing that they have been conned and should stop sending money to help a billionaire.
Tomasky writes:
The standard commentary on Donald Trump’s “God Bless the USA Bible” is that while of course it’s cynical and twisted and borderline sacrilegious, there’s also no doubt that his people are going to buy it by the carload, because these people would buy a bag of Trump Dogshit from the guy (“from the bowels of the best dogs, everybody says so”). Some people are just that, well, let us say easily taken in.
Trump’s dark penchant for hucksterism is endless, and P.T. Barnum’s dictum is as true today as it was when he said it.* You could take slips of paper on which you write the names of 25 things these Americans like, pull out three or four, conjure up some physical manifestation of it, and Trump would sell it: NASCAR-Branson’s Famous Baldknobbers Beer, in limited-edition cans that show Trump as Rambo.
It’s endless. Or is it? Trump’s fundraising has taken a nosedive. His small-donor numbers are below where they once were. NBC News recently reported that donations to Trump of $200 or less are down 62.5 percent against 2019. He’s still raised a lot; I don’t want to mislead you here. The New York Times recently reported that Trump has more small donors than Joe Biden in some key swing states. But Biden has raised more from small donors overall, according to OpenSecrets. And in the most recent Federal Election Commission filings, Trump had $33.5 million cash on hand and Biden reported having $71 million. That was March 20, before Thursday night’s Radio City Music Hall event with Barack Obama and Bill Clinton, where Biden raked in $26 million.
All this is a shock to no one because, as we all know, Trump is spending a good chunk of his donations on his legal bills. The Times ran an amazing report about this on Wednesday. Of nearly $85 million in donations, almost a third, $27 million, has gone to legal bills. Hey, at least this time around, he’s apparently actually paying them.
Trump will have money. There’s no use pretending he won’t. But $400 sneakers and $60 Bibles are not signs of strength. They’re signs of weakness. Panic. Desperation. A guy who’ll sell anything that isn’t nailed to the floor.
And: He damn well should be panicked. Liberals and Democrats always impute to Republicans and right-wingers a strength they neither have nor deserve. Just because Trump tries to act like a tough guy and appeals to tough guys, liberals tend to concede he’s a tough guy. Nonsense. He’s a very weak and insecure man, as Mary Trump is always pointing out.
Physically, he’s horribly out of shape: probably couldn’t climb a 20-step flight of stairs without stopping halfway up and, Rambo iconography notwithstanding, couldn’t throw a punch that would crush a grape. A few months ago, I saw a photo of Biden biking around Rehoboth Beach, and it struck me: Has Trump even ever been on a bicycle in his life? I’d be shocked. Biden may be older, but really, who’s the more likely stroke victim here, the guy who still rides the occasional bike or the guy who eats well-done steaks and whose four major food groups are McDonald’s, KFC, pizza, and Diet Coke?
Psychically, he’s in far, far worse shape. He knows very well in some corner of his brain that he’s guilty of everything he’s accused of. He knows that if he doesn’t win the presidency, there’s a very serious chance that he ends up convicted of one of those crimes and in prison. It won’t be Angola Penitentiary, but there won’t be chandeliers in the bathroom or an 18-hole golf course for him to win phony championships on, either.
He would never admit any of this publicly, but privately Trump is surely terrified of this possible future. He knows that if he loses, the cases go forward, and he’s going to have to fight them as long as he possibly can, and it’s going to cost untold millions. Hence the sneakers and the Bible. And there’s surely more in store.
Some people will buy these things, there’s no question of that. But I’ll bet you that if we look hard six months from now, we’ll see that sales did not meet expectations. Of course, we’ll never know that because Trump will have full control of that narrative, and he’ll insist that sales were off the charts, and the press will print it. But we’ve seen this movie and heard this b.s. Trump Steaks were moving faster than they could cut them. Trump University was making millionaires out of many, many people. Right.
So let’s avert our gaze from the people who’d walk across hot coals for Donald Trump (while he stood off to the side, pleading bone spurs) and think instead about the ones who are slowly peeling off. They’re out there too. And they’re starting to see what you and I have so obviously seen for years: a twisted, desperate huckster who’s never cracked a Bible in his life and whose only religion is hustling the suckers who are born every minute.
*Apparently Barnum never said that famous oft-quoted line about a sucker born every minute, but he did believe in selling frauds to the gullible. https://www.thedailybeast.com/pt-barnum-makes-trump-look-like-a-clown
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Feel that earthquake, Diane?
LikeLike
I felt it in Boston – I thought is was the remaining wind from yesterday’s storm.
LikeLike
Was there a literal earthquake in the east?
LikeLike
Yes; 4.8, centered in NJ.
LikeLike
FLERP, I somehow did not feel the earthquake though lots of people I know did.
LikeLike
Biggest one I’ve ever felt. My office was bouncing up and down like it was hanging from bungee cords.
LikeLike
If the small Shelf my printer is on wasn’t bouncing a few inches I would have thought it was a truck going by.
LikeLike
We definitely felt a tremor here in Prospect-Lefferts Garden.
LikeLike
I find it useful to remind myself that Trump is a performer. His four years living in the White House at taxpayers’ expense was only that – for sure he didn’t do much presidenting.
LikeLike
It was an unpresidented performance!
LikeLike
Whether rump is this or that, this much is certain: If the “Status Quo” members of “our” Government could PRETEND the electoral college could transform the rump into a trust worthy holder of national vulnerabilities, powers, or decisions, how far behind are his supporters? The peaceful transfer of PRETENDING continues…
“A man is none the less a slave because he is allowed to choose a new master once in a term of years. Neither are a people any the less slaves because permitted periodically to choose new masters…”
LikeLike
Here’s how to tell that a self-styled “educator” is an utter fool: he or she takes the Common Core and its associated tests seriously.
Here’s how to tell that anyone is an utter fool: he or she supports Donald Trump. I have no interest whatsoever in being in the company of or conversing with Trump supporters. I have only contempt and loathing for such people. Idiots and creeps.
LikeLike
At this point, if someone still supports Trump, he or she is irredeemable. No trucks with Trumpanzees. Ever. They are utterly vile, utterly loathsome. Treble that for the billionaires pouring money into Trump’s campaign.
LikeLike
I would separate the common Trump supporter from the billionaire supporter. Often the Trump people I know are too busy to read much or have a particular disinclination to trust government, a seed planted deep in the body politic deliberately by those on the distant right as far back as the Great Depression. That many fall victim to this gamut is not really surprising. The billionaires, on the other hand are mostly of the transactional type, and are well aware that he holds the best chance for them to steer the economy in their direction. They would ditch him in a minute if they saw a good alternative. This contrasts with the loyal Trumpist, who is likewise loyal to other brands or habits.
LikeLiked by 1 person
You can’t have literally nearly half the country be irredeemable.
LikeLike
That’s why I support dividing it into two countries. The combined entity is not governable, clearly. Let the Trumpanzees have their own Ivankalandia or whatever the want to call it. They can elect grifters until they are all living in trailers and scrounging in landfills to find something to eat.
LikeLike
Trump is very like parasitic wasp larvae. He has no moral code whatsoever and no self-regulation. The very idea of such a code or such an editor, in relation to him, to what he is, is ludicrous. He is nothing more than a maw connected to a body pushing through, slithering through life, seeing what it can gobble up.
LikeLike
I am not talking, ofc, of the exquisite regulatory systems of the bodies of these and other biological creatures.
LikeLike
Traitor Trump’s secret to staying wealthy (not getting wealthy because he never earned his wealth — it was handed to him several times because he kept losing all the free money from his father and family — is getting even and threatening anyone that says no to him and/or reveals he’s a loser and always has been a loser.
The Traitor is also a loser at lying because anyone that fact checks him may easily discover his lies from his history.
The best way to discover who a person is, is to pay attention to what they do and have done and not what they say about themselves.
Only fools rush in when the traitor lies to make more money. If the traitor runs out of fools, he won’t have to worry about being homeless because there are many prison cells with his name on them waiting for him to arrive.
LikeLike
“He’s a very weak and insecure man,“ As are the vast majority of his supporters.
LikeLiked by 1 person
yup
LikeLike
Well, I see I’m in good company here. Feels good.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Every circus needs its clowns:
LikeLike
Quite impressive that she has landed a job in God’s public relations department! Is this the role vacated by Pat Robertson?
LikeLike
Trump hawking his Bible makes Sinclair Lewis’s fictional con man and womanizer, Elmer Gantry, look like a saint by comparison.
LikeLike
IKR? It’s completely self-parodying, but the Trumpanzees are too stupid to get that.
LikeLike