The US didn’t pay NK medical bill for North Warmbier, the American who died days after being released from custody there in 2017, despite agreeing to it, John Bolton said on April 28, confirming a Washington Post report that Trump had earlier called “Fake News”.
If you knew nothing about the conservative movement, you might be appalled by that kind of deception. But the truth is that this kind of scam is absolutely central to how the American right has operated for decades. It’s not that there aren’t a few con artists on the left; there certainly are. But only the right treats its entire constituency like nothing but marks to be swindled, a few dollars at a time. https://apple.news/AaZNe7zmnRxG6ZUwRYwRpQQ For instance, here’s a story about Dick Morris getting nearly $2 million in donations to fight Barack Obama, virtually none of which went to fighting Barack Obama. Here’s a story about tea party groups paying prominent conservative radio hosts to promote them, and using the proceeds to keep paying the radio hosts. Mike Huckabee uses his email list to hawk scam “biblical” cancer cures. Herman Cain will help you cure your erectile dysfunction. Ben Carson sold “glyconutrients.”
As historian Rick Perlstein details, it amounted to a “strategic alliance of snake-oil vendors and conservative true believers ... designed to corral fleeceable multitudes all in one place — and the formation of a cast of mind that makes it hard for either them or us to discern where the ideological con ended and the money con began.” https://apple.news/AaZNe7zmnRxG6ZUwRYwRpQQ The political pitches and the snake-oil pitches are aimed at the same population of the angry and credulous, people who spend hours every day watching Fox News and then, when they get a letter asking them to contribute $45 (in honor of our 45th president!) to a group like the Presidential Coalition claiming to have Trump’s back, whip out the checkbook to give all those rotten libs the what-for.
