As I say with almost every post, I’ve been following Scott Adams assertions that Donald Trump is using techniques of master persuasion to rise to power. Adams ideas align with this New Yorker article from a few months ago, “Donald Trump, Con Artist?”

One of Adams arguments is that Trump’s political ideas are merely window dressing, a way of attracting attention and standing out from the crowd. The New Yorker piece states…

If Trump were a con artist, he would be interested in politics only as a means to some other end. He wouldn’t believe in his political opinions; instead, he would see those opinions as convenient tools for gaining what he actually desires. Insofar as he believed in any of the policies he espoused, that belief would be purely incidental.

Another of Adams’ conceits is that Trump’s policy proposals are deliberately ill-defined so that his fans can fill in the details with what they would like to see. Additionally, Trump has garnered his following using appeals to the emotional side of the brain. As the New Yorker piece says…

Trump’s promises are often deliberately vague. He meets demands for specifics with another tool from the con artist’s arsenal: emotion. People who are emotional are not logical.

I would posit that Trump is a con man and he has pulled off one of the great cons of political history early in his campaign. Recall that he started out at the back of the horse race. I think he devised a plan of making seemingly unbelievable political statements (“Mexicans are rapists,” “Let’s build a wall,” etc.) knowing the media would turn their cameras on him bemused with his seeming desire for self-destruction. Thus they gave him unmatched air time to make his case to a certain segment of the population (what used to be called the silent majority.) And make his case he has, with a complicit media that is only now realizing they were grifted.