In the spirit of keeping my friends close and my enemies closer, I maintain a rogue email account for updates from the Trump folks. Usually, it’s good for nothing more than a few laughs like the time Eric promised to mail me a “special hat” if I’d send his dad some money—I envisioned something fashioned from tin foil– or when Don Junior assured me, I was part of an elite group of special big-money donors although I’ve never given a dime. There are daily emails from the whole fam, including Melania who admitted, with surprising candor, “It has been a while since I’ve been in touch…” which made me think she’d dissed Ivanka and been tossed in a car trunk, surviving on a single, tattered granola bar for weeks.
To show you how naïve I am, I figured these money grabs would disappear like alcohol on a skeeter bite after Trump lost. Instead, the requests for donations from “SPECIAL PATRIOTS” like me have been coming with “fire and fury” to use Trump lingo. Thing is, Trump’s constant and increasingly desperate inbox appeals for money are puzzling. Is he the multi-billionaire he tells us he is? I mean, he wouldn’t lie about that, would he?
I think this is the final, white-knuckled grift, the chef’s kiss, if you will, to the con of cons: talking the base into parting with their hard-earned and legally taxed income to help out a “billionaire.” It would be funny except it works. It’s crazy in the same way the odious Wayne Lapierre, longtime leech at the National Rifle Association used donations that were supposed to pay for all manner of Second Amendment protection/lobbying to instead fund fancy yachts and trips for him and his equally noxious pals. And NO ONE CARED.
Trump’s current grift remind me of a tent revival I went to many years ago. The “preacher” wound down with a blustery and emotional money grab. He was from out of town. He drove a Mercedes convertible. He had a very fancy diamond ring on his pinky. And I watched a woman I knew, whose son was severely handicapped, hand over her paycheck from a week’s wages at the textile mill to this oily mutton-chopped bastard. Pardon my French. Even after all these years, I get extra agitated when I think about it.
For her wages, she got a specially anointed “prayer cloth” along with his very best wishes.
Similarly, your donation to Trump’s Crooked As A Dog’s Hind Leg Post Election PAC will give you…not much of anything except the warm, furry satisfaction that comes with lining the pockets of an alleged billionaire facing myriad indictments.
There’s no time to fret about any of that. Trump says he’s considering running again in 2024 and his daughter in law is exploring running for the Senate in our native North Carolina, two tidbits that make me wanna drink bleach… just a lil bit.
Celia Rivenbark won’t leave the couch just because someone texts “OMG, y’all. The moon is seriously gorgeous tonight. Check it out!”