A con man’s challenge is to stay ahead of his con. If his marks begin to see too many signs that they are being played—and the swindler can’t craft a cover story to account for these contrary facts—the artifice can start to crumble.
Donald Trump may be at this point.
Of course, millions of Americans have known from the start that Trump has long been a deceitful scammer. But millions of others have fallen for his hustle—and they stuck with his flimflam after his first stint as president demonstrated he lied when he promised cheaper and better health care, a revival of American infrastructure, and an end to budget deficits. Despite his failure to make good on these pie-in-the-sky promises, he managed to keep the con going—even after miserably mismanaging the Covid pandemic and then scheming to overturn a national election.
Facts can emerge and threaten a hustle. That might be happening now.
As we know—and he certainly does—many scams depend on people wanting to believe the scammer. That was evident in 2024, when Trump’s vow to lower grocery prices and spur an economic Golden Age appealed to voters slammed by inflation and the high cost of living. He had conned the electorate once before and nearly destroyed American democracy, but these voters were willing to give the bunko artist another shot. This was akin to an abused spouse offering their abusive partner a second chance on the promise that all will be grand this time.
Yet even within false realities, facts can emerge and threaten a hustle. That might be happening now. It has been widely noted that Trump campaigned as an America Firster opposed to so-called “forever wars,” and yet he launched this war of choice against Iran on what appears to have been a whim. (His press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, called it a “feeling.”) At the time of his impulse, negotiations between Washington and Tehran were still underway and Iran was not two weeks away from producing a nuclear weapon, as Trump has insisted. His trigger-happiness has belied his proclaimed aversion to Mideast wars and overseas interventions. He showed no fealty to what he professed to be a chief principle. This brazen contradiction is tough for everyone but the most committed Trump devotees to ignore.
And that’s not all. This past week, Trump proposed a $1.5 trillion Pentagon budget, which would entail a 44 percent increase for the military. Such a boost is inconsistent with an America First position. If the priority is the well-being of Americans at home, why spend so much more for potential overseas military actions? The 2025 US military budget is already $962 billion, the most in the world and more than the combined total of the next nine nations (China, $246 billion; Russia, $150 billion; Germany, $109 billion).
Moreover, Trump’s wish-list budget cut 10 percent of non-defense spending. He said last week that it’s “not possible” for the federal government to fund Medicare, Medicaid, and child care costs—which was sort of big news that got lost in the shuffle. Any president saying something like that in years past would have faced days—maybe weeks—of headlines.
He has cast himself as the champion of the little guy who’s been screwed over by Washington and the elites. Yet in his second term, Trump has wallowed in opulence and narcissistic self-worship.
This budget proposal is unlikely to be adopted by Congress, but his call for shoveling an additional half-a-trillion dollars into the Pentagon while further gutting health care programs and much else is no America First position. Plus, pursuing such a path would exacerbate the budget deficits he once pledged to eliminate.
Trump’s con is being undermined on other fronts. His one big promise in 2024 was to lower prices and make life more affordable. His tariffs have done the opposite—so, too, the Iran war. He has cast himself as the champion of the little guy who’s been screwed over by Washington and the elites. Yet in his second term, Trump has wallowed in opulence and narcissistic self-worship, gold-leafing whatever he can, attaching his name to whatever he can, constructing a poorly designed White House ballroom, and pocketing tremendous amounts of money in assorted grift, including his own crypto scam. (In a December poll, 66 percent disapproved of Trump adding his name to the Kennedy Center; only 18 percent favored this self-glorifying move.) His claim that his mass deportation crusade targets criminal migrants has been proven false by horrific accounts of arrests, detentions, and deportations of law-abiding residents, including students, workers, grandmothers, and other valued members of local communities. And the public has reacted with revulsion to his immigration policies.
In a healthy sign of popular rationality, Trump’s approval rating has been on a steady decline over the past year, and many polls now have his approval only in the mid-30s. That means he’s getting close to his floor. My guess is that about 25 percent of American adults are full-on MAGA—people who believe whatever bunk Trump peddles and will follow the guy off a cliff, while he has the only available jet pack. These surveys suggest that non-cultists are not buying his crap anymore.
Trump’s act is getting old. His chaos does not wear well. He’s not delivering on the unrealistic promises he made, and he’s making things worse.
That seems especially true regarding Iran. A Reuters/Ipsos poll last month found that only 35 percent of Americans support the military strikes on Iran. And the numbers are sliding among non-MAGA Republicans. A CBS News poll in mid-March showed that while 92 percent of self-identified MAGA Republicans backed his war on Iran, only 70 percent of non-MAGA Republicans did. An Economist/ YouGov poll published on March 31 found that support for the war in Iran had dropped by 1 point for the MAGA GOPers fell by a whopping 23 points for those non-MAGA Republicans. Trump is losing everyone but the die-hard Trumpists, who don’t really give a damn about the supposedly cherished ideas of MAGA—such as America First—and are driven mostly by devotion to a divisive demagogue.
Trump’s act is getting old. His chaos does not wear well. He’s not delivering on the unrealistic promises he made, and he’s making things worse. And there’s not much room for improvement on the horizon, especially since it’s unclear how this dumb war will be resolved. Which may be why some folks fear that Trump—cornered like a wounded bear—might become more dangerous and resort to authoritarian measures in the midterms to preserve GOP power (to avoid a boatload of investigations and possibly another impeachment).
Or that he could lash out with more war. His Easter message to Iran’s leaders—“Open the Fuckin’ Strait, you crazy bastards, or you’ll be living in Hell—JUST WATCH! Praise be to Allah”—showed derangement and desperation. His subsequent statement to Axios—“If they don’t make a deal, I am blowing up everything over there”—was a threat to commit war crimes.
One commentator—I don’t recall who—recently observed that Trump might be hitting an “Emperor’s New Clothes” moment. In that Hans Christian Andersen fairy tale, the con is that the vain emperor’s new outfit is made of magical fabric only the intelligent can see. So he struts around naked, with everyone afraid to say he’s wearing nothing—until during a procession through town, while his aides pretend to be carrying his train, a child exclaims, “He hasn’t got anything on.” Then all the people join in and cry out the same: The dude’s not wearing anything! The scam is uncovered. The Emperor exposed (literally).
Is Trump close to such a brink? Andersen’s story does not conclude with that moment of truth. After the people see through the ruse, Andersen wrote,
The Emperor was vexed, for he knew that the people were right; but he thought the procession must go on now! And the lords of the bedchamber took greater pains than ever, to appear holding up a train, although, in reality, there was no train to hold.
The spell was broken. But the Emperor and his die-hard supporters continued with the charade.
Trump is the most successful con man in American history. Maybe in world history. (Who else ran a swindle that landed him in charge of an arsenal that can blow up the planet?) But the con is fraying. Perhaps it will collapse. As Bob Dylan once warbled, “Even the president of the United States / Sometimes must have to stand naked.” Now, no one wants to see Trump in the buff. But it may be time to wonder what happens when his racket no longer holds—and what perils that could present.
