- Since at least 2004, Trump has issued financial statements boasting of his billions in assets.
- The most recent was sent out in 2021, just as NY officials began publicly calling them fraudulent.
- A fraud monitor now says Trump “does not intend to develop any estimations of value” going forward.
Because there are a lot of dumb people who fell for the grift and now large swathes of society equate wealth with intelligence and morality. They fail, miserably, to see how obscene wealth is gained through exploitation.
Sorry, but there’s a very long history of people conflating wealth with god’s blessing (and therefore righteousness, moral integrity and generally being “good”).
Since at least as long as the book of Job (early Bronze Age?) as the sudden reverses in Job’s fortunes were seen as displeasure etc.
(The book of job is a Bronze Age attempt by a narcissist to explain the problem of evil. Basically? “You can’t possibly understand me.”)
Ah, I mean the grift that’s as old as time, not this specific one.
Great way to put it.
Thinking critically about the Book of Job (and being disgusted by answers I was getting about it from adults) was one of the first dominoes to fall for me that ultimately led to my deconversion from the Evangelical Christianity I was raised in.
Just an awful book with a terrible “message.” There is literally no way to spin it that doesn’t make Yahweh out to be an evil prick.
I remember looking around the room during sermons about Job thinking, “do these people buy this shit? And they think this makes god look good? These are not my people.”
The sad irony being that it was the values that my (still very Christian and Republican) parents raised me with that gave me the ability to recognize how fucked up it was.
Replace Yahweh with “dog owner” and Adam and Eve with golden retrievers. And the garden with a backyard and the stupid fruit with a squeaky toy. (Or maybe pizza)
Wut an asshole.