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“MAGA was always just aggressive marketing built on nothing.”—Joni Askola
A billion words like stars in the sky have been written to detail the corrupt actions of the criminal mob currently occupying the White House.
And yet, I am always seeking more and better words.
Here are some fine words from Special Counsel Jack Smith, spoken at yesterday’s hearing:
“Rather than accept his defeat in the 2020 presidential election, President Trump engaged in a criminal scheme to overturn the results and prevent the lawful transfer of power.”
“Criminal scheme”… pretty good words, but not slogany enough.
We never know which words may precede a tipping point, where members of Trump’s base finally defect en masse. We also look for signs of elite defection, when loyalists begin making their exits, signaling a dictator is about to be overthrown.
To wake up the former, I’ve spent a decade seeking a simple string of words — a slogan that can jolt them back into reality, while releasing them of their shame.
Geopolitical analyst Joni Askola provided them yesterday at Bette’s Happy Hour.
As I often do, I asked our guest for magical words that our community can use in advance of the midterm elections to help people see Trump and his loyalists for who and what they really are, and he said:
“MAGA was a scam.”
I knew when I heard those words they comprised the phrase I’d been seeking.
MAGA was a scam.
People get scammed.
It happens.
A lot of billionaire and corporate-owned media was in on the scam. Fox, NBC, CBS and the plethora of Russia propaganda outlets passing as US news was in on the scam. “The Apprentice” was part of the scam. “Art of the Deal” was part of the scam. I first wrote about Trump-linked scams two decades ago.
It wasn’t like one day millions of people just decided out of the blue they loved an orange wigged con artist, known for stiffing his workers and getting Russian mob bailouts. There was a mass effort to create the ‘strongman,’ with help from foreign nation states.
Independent investigative reporters like me and many others have provided thousands of kilotons of evidence.
If you are new to these pages and just getting used to the idea you may have been scammed, here is a short cut to evidence:
As I noted in my review of Russia watcher Keir Giles new book, American Overthrow:
French thinker Francois Heisbourg calls what’s happening in America a “kind of assisted suicide,” hurried along by China and Russia.
Keir asks you to look at the totality of events and not the fragmentation, as he writes:
“It is hard to overstate the depth or speed of change in the United States. Media reporting focuses on discrete issues without bringing them together into a coherent picture. But military patrols in US cities, police raids on homes of government critics, mass detentions without due process, the suppression of the media and rights to free expression, masked paramilitaries enjoying impunity for committing murder on the streets, convicted criminals released because the victims of their violence were the President’s enemies, and the evisceration of America’s defences against terrorism, extremism and disease are part of a whole rather than disconnected phenomena.”
Just because Trump hugged the flag in photo ops, does not make him a patriot.
Let’s take another look at a NATO slide I posted on Twitter in 2019, from an officer’s meeting in London. I have referred to it many times over the years, but when I read it today at our meeting with Joni, you can see how Trump is fulfilling Putin’s consistent aims.
Reduce US role in providing European security
Weaken Transatlantic links
Undermine faith in US security commitments
Weaken US Intelligence Community
Challenge and undermine Western liberal values
Erode US world leadership and global respect
Weaken US society; undermine social cohesion
Show the US as the enemy of Islam
Establish post-truth, post-fact information space
Discredit independent media
See Russia treated as (equal) partner
Reach a grand bargain to ensure stability
Reading the slide to our group yesterday, I can see how in Trump’s second term, he’s finishing the job ruthlessly.
MAGA was a scam.
As Keir told me in 2024, six months before the US election: “People have already forgotten Trump actively was working for Russia in his first term.”
Clearly, Trump’s been in a hurry to fulfill all of Russia’s objectives, perhaps trying to run out the clock on potential defenestration.
As Joni told me this morning:
“MAGA was a scam from the start. Many of us saw it coming, but tens of millions of Americans fell for it anyway. A chunk of them still fall for it today, but those numbers are dropping. The truth is that campaigning is easy, but governing is hard. Populists around the world are great at the first part, but they almost always fail at the second. MAGA is the textbook example of that.
Look at what they promised: lower prices, more jobs, the release of the Epstein files, no new wars, and an instant end to the war in Ukraine.
Almost two years in, we know that Trump and his friends were even closer to Epstein than we thought but still haven’t seen the details because he has only released what he wanted and because he was forced to. We also have new wars, higher prices driven by tariffs and war with Iran, and an emboldened Putin who keeps escalating in Ukraine after seeing Trump’s weakness. The trade war was lost and the economy is underperforming. Anyone who complained about Biden’s economy is getting a harsh lesson in how much worse things can actually get. On top of that, allies around the world barely respect US anymore.
Our job isn’t complicated. We just need to keep pointing out the reality.
Some people will finally wake up. Others will lean into cognitive dissonance because they can’t bring themselves to admit they were lied to. That is okay, because we don’t need to turn every single one of them into a Democrat.
We just need to break the illusion.
If a former MAGA voter gets disillusioned and stays home in 2028, or refuses to buy into whatever new brand they try to sell next, that is still a win. MAGA was always just aggressive marketing built on nothing, and the scam is finally wearing off. MAGA was a scam.”—Joni Askola for Bette Dangerous
MAGA was a scam.
Get the bumper sticker.
Make the t-shirt.
And join the pro-democracy forces of America, leaving only a bitter memory where Trumpism once existed with a sign that reads: MAGA was a scam.
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Great phrase. Bullseye. At some point, as a former Fox journalist, can you please explain in more detail why the media was in on the scam? (Also, please explain in simple terms the state of the US media today.) That would help me better wrap my mind around all this.