Amazing isn't it. How some people can totally go off the rails with their support of Trump.
Not really, if you think about it. The Trump campaign and presidency was just one big affinity scam. He appealed to people who thought he'd give them the best economy ever, and a lot of deregulation they didn't understand, to the science deniers, to racists, to the hardcore QAnon crazies. And of course there were also a lot of people who voted for him simply because they were Republicans.
Trump's presidency could be compared to the story of a successful cult stock like CMKX. Not all the Xers were crazy; the greater part were people who originally believed they were investing in a diamond-mining company. But as time went on, the more susceptible among them literally went mad. They were willing to believe utterly implausible stories, and even added their own contributions to the mythology. They would be the equivalent of Trump's QAnon people. And in fact, some of those Xers who're still around are now expressing their support for Q. But most of the others--the ones who were mostly in it for what they hoped would be a windfall profit--have moved on.
Needless to say, CMKX leadership--Jeffrey Turino, John Edwards, and Urban Casavant, chiefly--were criminals and grifters. It wasn't just a stock-selling scheme; they found a million other ways to separate marks from their money. The NASCAR races Casavant sponsored were the most successful. But as with Trump, there were many spinoff scams, in the form of other public companies, and some private ventures. And then the Xers began scamming each other, begging for money to keep PalTalk rooms open (and skim off the top), to conduct a giant cert pull, to trade CMKX stock off the public market, illegally, and more.
Having witnessed all that, I'm less surprised by the Trump phenomenon than many.
