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The right-wing scammers who paved the way for Trump
(www.vox.com)
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this post was submitted on 07 Apr 2024
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politics
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This is the best summary I could come up with:
In 2024 alone, Trump debuted $399 gold sneakers emblazoned with the American flag, sold a $60 “God Bless the USA” Bible endorsed by singer Lee Greenwood, and convinced millions to purchase stock in Truth Social’s unprofitable parent company.
The book’s author, Joe Conason, is a veteran New York journalist; he personally knew some of the key figures in the scammy right’s history, like mobbed-up lawyer and Trump mentor Roy Cohn.
Cohn, who worked for McCarthy, figured out a way to transmute that popularity into profit: exploiting fears of Communism to, among other things, finance a lavish trip to Europe.
I spoke to Conason about this fascinating, hidden-in-plain-sight history: about how it started, why it succeeded, how it paved the way for Trump’s rise, and whether there’s any equivalent grifting culture on the American left.
Richard Viguerie was a guy who had been brought into the direct mail business with the Buckley crowd — Young Americans for Freedom, which was their central organization, aside from the National Review, for raising money.
So now, we get the leading Republican presidential candidate hawking multi-hundred-dollar sneakers and an America-themed Bible as a means of making money — a full integration of political party with scam ventures.
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