There is a quote from one of the most successful con men in American history that explains everything about MAGA.
His name was Joseph Weil. He operated in Chicago in the early 1900s. He conned thousands of people out of millions of dollars over a career that lasted decades. When someone finally asked him why his victims were so eager to hand over their money, his answer was simple.
They wanted something for nothing.
That is the secret. That is the entire game. A con doesn’t work on someone who doesn’t want anything. A con works on someone who wants something they shouldn’t want, knows they shouldn’t want it, and jumps at the chance to get it anyway.
This is why con artists are almost never prosecuted. Not because they are hard to catch. Because their victims will not report the crime. Reporting the crime means standing in front of a room full of people and admitting what you were trying to buy.
And what you were trying to buy is the one thing you will never say out loud.
The Confidence Game
In 2016, psychologist Maria Konnikova at Columbia University published a book-length investigation into how con artists manipulate their victims. Konnikova holds a PhD in psychology from Columbia, studied under Walter Mischel, and spent years interviewing both con artists and the people they destroyed.
What she found overturned the basic assumption most people have about fraud. Most people believe the con artist tricks an innocent person into doing something they wouldn’t normally do. Konnikova showed the opposite is true. The con artist doesn’t force anyone to do anything. The con artist makes you complicit in your own undoing.
The con artist doesn’t steal from you. You give it to them willingly.
Konnikova called it the confidence game. The word confidence is not about the con artist’s bravado. It is about your confidence. The con works because the con artist earns your trust and then weaponizes it. But trust alone isn’t enough. The victim has to want something. And the thing they want has to be something that makes them willing to suspend their own judgment.
According to an AARP study Konnikova cited, only 37 percent of fraud victims over the age of 55 will admit to having been conned. Just over half of victims under 55 will admit it. Most con artists never see a courtroom. Not because they disappeared. Because nobody filed a report.
The shame of being conned is bad enough. But what keeps people silent isn’t just the shame of being fooled. It is the shame of what they were reaching for when they got fooled.
The Anatomy of a Con
Konnikova broke the confidence game into stages. Each stage maps perfectly onto what Trump did to the Republican base.
The first stage is the put-up. This is where the con artist identifies the victim. Not just anyone. The right person. Someone with a specific vulnerability. Someone who wants something badly enough to overlook the red flags.
Trump didn’t target everyone. He targeted people who already felt invisible, resentful, and left behind. People who already believed the system was rigged against them. People who already wanted someone to tell them that their anger was justified and their failures were someone else’s fault.
The second stage is the play. This is where the con artist builds trust. Not through credentials or evidence. Through emotional connection. The con artist mirrors the victim’s feelings. He validates their frustrations. He makes them feel seen.
Trump didn’t campaign on policy. He campaigned on rage. He said the things his audience was already thinking but couldn’t say out loud. He validated every grievance. He mirrored every resentment. He made millions of people feel like someone finally understood them.
The third stage is the rope. This is where the con artist introduces the scheme. Not all at once. Gradually. Each step feels reasonable. Each step feels like the victim’s own idea.
First you just support the candidate. Then you defend him online. Then you cut off the family member who disagrees. Then you donate money. Then you share the conspiracy theory. Then you show up at the rally. Then you buy the merchandise. Then you storm the Capitol. Each step felt small at the time. But each step pulled you deeper into complicity.
The fourth stage is the convincer. This is where the victim sees what appears to be real profit. Evidence that the scheme is working. The con artist gives back a small return to build confidence for the bigger ask.
Trump gave his supporters emotional returns. He punished the people they hated. He said the racist thing on television. He humiliated the journalist. He attacked the immigrant. Every cruelty was a dividend. Every outrage was proof that the investment was paying off.
The final stage is the blow-off. This is where the con is complete and the con artist disappears. But the blow-off only works if the victim stays silent. And the victim stays silent because talking means admitting what they were doing. Konnikova showed that the con artist relies entirely on the victim’s shame to ensure silence. The victim’s reputation, their self-image, their relationships all depend on never admitting what happened.
Why They Will Never Admit It
In 1957, psychologist Leon Festinger published the theory of cognitive dissonance. Festinger showed that when a person holds two contradictory beliefs at the same time, the psychological discomfort is so intense that the brain will do almost anything to resolve it. And the brain almost never resolves it by admitting the uncomfortable truth. It resolves it by building a story that makes the contradiction disappear.
Festinger studied this by infiltrating a doomsday cult. The cult’s leader had predicted the world would end on a specific date. When the date passed and the world did not end, Festinger expected the members to leave. They didn’t. They doubled down. They became more committed. They started recruiting new members more aggressively than before.
The reason is elegant and terrifying. The cult members had sacrificed too much. They had quit jobs. They had sold homes. They had cut off families. Admitting the prophecy was false didn’t just mean being wrong about a date. It meant every sacrifice they made was for nothing. Every relationship they destroyed was destroyed for a lie.
So the brain did what brains do. It rewrote the story. The prophecy wasn’t wrong. Their faith had saved the world. The sacrifice wasn’t pointless. It was heroic.
This is exactly what is happening with Trump supporters. They didn’t just vote for him. They defended him at Thanksgiving dinner. They cut off siblings. They screamed at their children. They posted things online that are permanently attached to their names. They donated money. They wore the hat. Some of them committed federal crimes on camera.
Admitting Trump is a con artist doesn’t just mean changing a vote. It means every argument they started was wrong. Every relationship they destroyed was destroyed for a fraud. Every dollar they donated went to a man who wouldn’t let them into his living room.
The psychological cost of that admission is so catastrophic that the brain simply refuses to make it. It is cheaper, psychologically, to keep believing the lie than to face what the truth would mean about who you are and what you did.
What They Were Really Buying
This is where Konnikova’s research cuts the deepest.
A con only works when the victim wants something they shouldn’t want. The con artist doesn’t create the desire. The con artist finds the desire that is already there and builds a story around it.
Trump didn’t trick innocent people. He found people who already wanted permission to be racist and called it patriotism. People who already wanted permission to be cruel and called it strength. People who already wanted someone to blame for their failures and called it politics.
He didn’t sell them a lie they didn’t want. He sold them the lie they were already telling themselves. He just said it out loud.
That is the confidence game. The victim can’t expose the con artist without exposing themselves. A Trump supporter can’t say “he conned me” without someone asking the obvious follow-up question: what were you buying?
They were buying permission to be the worst version of themselves. And they got it.
They got to be openly racist and feel patriotic about it. They got to be cruel and call it toughness. They got to be selfish and call it freedom. They got to hate and call it love of country.
That is the product Trump sold. Not economic policy. Not national security. Permission.
And you can’t return permission. You can’t ask for a refund on something you already used. You can’t report the crime when the crime is that someone sold you exactly what you wanted.
The Blow-Off
When MAGA eventually collapses, and it will, the blow-off will be the most predictable stage of the entire con.
They will not admit they were conned. They will not apologize. They will not take responsibility for the damage they caused. They will do what every con victim does when the shame is too big to carry.
They will go quiet. They will take the hat off. They will delete the posts. They will stop bringing up politics at dinner. They will act like none of it ever happened. And they will expect the rest of us to play along.
That is the blow-off. The con artist disappears. The victim pretends the con never happened. And nobody is held accountable.
The difference this time is that the rest of us watched the whole thing happen in real time. We saw what they were buying. We know what they wanted. We have the receipts.
They weren’t shopping for a president. They were shopping for permission.
And they will never confess that. Because confessing means admitting what they wanted in the first place.
And what they wanted is the one thing they can never say out loud.
Sources
Konnikova, M. (2016). The Confidence Game: Why We Fall for It... Every Time. Viking Press.
Festinger, L. (1957). A Theory of Cognitive Dissonance. Stanford University Press.
Festinger, L., Riecken, H. W., & Schachter, S. (1956). When Prophecy Fails: A Social and Psychological Study of a Modern Group That Predicted the Destruction of the World. University of Minnesota Press.
AARP. (2015). Caught in the Scammer’s Net: Risk Factors That May Lead to Becoming an Internet Fraud Victim. AARP Research.
Konnikova, M. (2020). The Biggest Bluff: How I Learned to Pay Attention, Master Myself, and Win. Penguin Press.
