Shakedown Santa
Extortioner-in-Chief Threatens Base for Campaign Cash
You can’t make this stuff up. It reads like satire. Bad satire. It’s not. We have screen shots.
Just in time for the holidays, a friend received an email telling her, in no uncertain terms, Trump knows if she’s been bad or good:
He’s making a list, checking it twice …
Where to start? For openers, the Trump re-election team thinks rank and file supporters are willing to believe they are “top supporters” with the potential to lead campaign efforts in their states. While revolting, that’s pretty typical boilerplate for fundraising letters of all stripes.
More patronizing is the postulate that Trump supporters would believe their hero would, each day, creepily, notice their name missing from a purported donor list.
Does notice of that missing name make Trump sad? No! It makes him mad.
You’d better watch out …
“I better see your name on that list.” Which leads the reader to ask, “Or else — what?” [Cut to an ominous knock on the door.]
Who does that? Who threatens their fans? Worse, what is the psychology of someone who responds to an implied threat by whipping out their checkbook rather than their middle finger? Someone in dependent relationship, a relationship based on want and fear. The victim of a protection racket.
Just as children, eager for goodies and lacking power, are kept in line by the threat of Santa’s surveillance state — “He sees you when you’re sleeping. He knows when you’re awake.” — those eager for a tyrant’s blessings and anxious to escape his wrath know falling in line is how you stay safe.
P.S.: For those of you wondering, my friend is not a Trump supporter. She’s never given him a dime, which makes her designation as a “top supporter” transparently risible. She subscribes to his list to read the messages his base receives.
Here’s another fear-inducing beauty from later the same day:
