Maggie Haggerman is reporting today TFG’s next grift.  He’s now selling “digital trading cards” of, you guessed it, himself.  Just as one grift stops working, he comes up with another, and this one is hilarious.  TFG was (is) the worst physically conditioned president since William Howard Taft, who weighed in at a whopping 332 lbs.  He’s well known for being unable to walk any distances and famously rode in a golf cart during the G7 meeting in Sicily in 2017 rather than walking through the town with other world leaders.  His physical presence looks like a soup sandwich.  Hilariously, his first “trading card” is his head spliced onto Superman’s body.  I actually burst out laughing at the idiotic image, but I’m sure his sycophantic base is lapping it up.  At the risk of offending, here’s the image, complete with his, “buy it now because it’s selling fast!” sales pitch.

We are living is some strange times.

Those of us who are paying attention to the January 6th Committee woke up yesterday to the strategy of these public hearings; well, at least I did.  The committee is clearly taking direct aim at TFG, heaping loads of evidence on the facts that he KNEW that he didn’t win; he KNEW there was no fraud that would change the outcome of any state result; HE whipped up The Big Lie and repeats it continuously, even today.  We all pretty much knew or suspected that all this lay at TFG’s feet.

However, all this evidence is hard to use to get TFG convicted, much less even charged, so the committee is giving prosecutors a roadmap to get this sumbitch.  This roadmap is not going down the insurrection road; it shows the way down the wire fraud road.  Testimony revealed yesterday that using The Big Lie TFG raised a QUARTER OF A BILLION DOLLARS for the “Election Defense Fund”, which, wait for it…doesn’t and has never existed.  The Election Defense Fund was supposedly to be used to fight election fraud lawsuits, but the money didn’t go to that activity.  It went, instead, to TFG’s Super PAC, doled out to his hotels, family, and even Jr.’s girlfriend.  That’s wire fraud.  So now we have not only The Big Lie, we have The Big Grift.

There is clear and ample evidence that TFG and his cronies defrauded millions of supporters, and the good thing about this crime is that the attorneys general in the states where the donors live can also prosecute TFG.  On top of all the possible federal cases you can name, this wire fraud charge is serious with heavy penalties and up to 30 years in the slammer.  The states have similar penalties.

The committee is drawing the roadmap with turn-by-turn directions, making it easy for the feds to go after TFG and Corruption Inc..  If Garland lacks the will to prosecute, I know a bunch of states with aggressive AGs who would likely be happy to perp walk TFG live on television.

Trump is a crook – we all know that (at least normal people do); he played his supporters from chumps and they fell for it.  A television game show host who wears heavy makeup, a weird hair weave, and has 5 kids from 3 wives, is accused of 2 dozen incidents of sexual assault, has 4,000 lawsuits against him and who’s being investigated by the NY AG, NYC DA, and the feds for everything from financial fraud, to tax fraud, to cooperating with foreign powers, and even inciting insurrection is not the ideal guy to lead the free world.  His followers, though, were actual chumps and we all paid for it with economic disaster, half a million pandemic deaths, and being labeled a pariah on the world stage.

As bad as all that is, it actually hit Trump’s supporters directly in the wallet, and I’m not talking about just the economy. During the 2020 campaign, Trump’s fundraising actually grifted his most loyal followers.  Trailing far behind the Dems in fundraising, Trump’s campaigned CHANGED the giving option on its website to default to recurring rather than one time.  What that meant was that if a donor wasn’t paying attention, whatever donation they made to Trump, the same amount was charged each week until the election, draining thousands of people’s bank accounts and running up credit card bills.  The only way to opt out was to wade through all the fine print and then check the box for one time donation.  That’s right, folks, Trump actually drained the bank accounts of supporters, using the money to pay for his campaign.

AND, if it’s even possible, it got worse.  Late in the campaign, the opt out box was made more opaque, and even buried another pre-checked box that DOUBLED the contribution. This scheme snagged scores of people including retirees, military veterans, and people couldn’t afford to donate thousands of dollars to anything, much less Trump.  One veteran donated $900, only to have his account drained by $8,000.

The effort was clearly intentional.  Trump grifted money from loyalists in the waning days of the campaign to prop up his spending.  Even worse, after his election loss, Trump’s disinformation campaign where he falsely claimed massive election fraud raised tens of millions of dollars that he then used to refund the money to donors he had defrauded before the election.  The total he had to refund?  Over $122 million.

As if anyone needed more evidence of Trump’s criminality and utter disregard for anyone but himself, this is it.  By deception, Trump shook down his unwitting loyalists for over $122 million to fund his own charade to cling to the presidency.  I’m just thankful the effort ultimately failed.