How Trump Fleeced His Own Supporters

[ShazzieB]

38. The idea that you can't con an honest person makes no sense to me.

A person can easily be both deeply honest and highly gullible. Look at the scams that people fall for and the kinds of people that fall for them. Many, if not most, are based on the willingness of the "mark" to believe whatever outlandish notions they are fed (Nigerian "princes," I'm looking at you), and that has very little to do with whether they themselves are honest people.

Greed can certainly make a person more vulnerable to certain types of "get rich quick" scams, but greed isn't a synonym for dishonesty, any more than gullibility is. Chump's followers are gullible, but I do not believe that automatically means they are all dishonest people. To say they fell for Trump's dishonesty because they are not honest themselves sounds like victim blaming to me.

Here's an article that talks about the reasons people get suckered into scams: https://theconversation.com/five-psychological-reasons-why-people-fall-for-scams-and-how-to-avoid-them-102421 (Dishonesty on the part of those being scammed is not on the list.)