People are being tricked by deepfake videos of Donald Trump pitching “Trump Bucks”, a supposed way to donate to Trump now; and Donald will use his superior business acumen to increase their value after the election as a way to thank his most loyal backers. The videos claim you’ll be able to redeem $1,000 in Trump Bucks for as much as $10,000 worth of merchandise at Walmart, Home Depot, Wells Fargo, and other major companies.
And now the sad part is kicking in where the victims are starting to be helped by their adult children, who claim their parents are acting like cult members. They’ll have mom or dad bring their thousands of dollars worth of Trump Bucks to the local branch only to be told they’ve been scammed.
On one hand I am repulsed by the obvious and pervasive scam against mostly elderly victims. On the other hand they were scammed because they supported fascist garbage.
I applaud the FTC for going after the scammers but couldn’t give a flying fuck whether there is restitution to the victims.
I also hope there isn’t restitution, because they’ve demonstrated their willingness to waste it on Trumps fascist regime. At least this way a scammer who is not Trump is keeping the money out of Donnie’s racist tiny hands.
Similarly I’m also taking no small amount of pleasure thinking how mad it must make the Real Donald that scammers are diverting money from his coffers, money that he believes he deserves from running his own scams.
If these people already believe “Trump is a financial genius, so can turn my $99.99 into $10,000 for me” they’re already so far gone, I can’t imagine they’d make it much further in this world with that $99 anyway…
One silver lining perhaps, if redirecting this money away from Trump helps prevent him from winning a second term, these suckers lives will ironically be better than if they’d wasted the money on him and he’d won. So in this case they’re weirdly getting a better return than if this had been an “authentic” Trump scam.
I won’t give them that. Since the ad supposedly promised the 10X return on “investment” only after Trump wins in 2024, none of the victims was likely to be buying them out of current desperation. I think it was simple greed, the kind of clueless morons Trump intentionally loves to scam.
