By Tony Bruce & Don Terry | Saturday, May 17, 2025 | 8 min read
If you’ve ever been scammed, you remember the feeling. That flash of hope just before the bottom drops out. The slick pitch, the confident tone, the illusion of control—all unraveling the moment you realize you were never in on the game.
That’s not just a street con. That’s Donald Trump’s political strategy.
Back in 2016, he stood in front of roaring crowds and promised a wall. A “beautiful” wall, stretching across the southern border. A wall that Mexico—yes, Mexico—would somehow pay for.
It was absurd. Laughable even. But it worked.
The wall was never really built, and Mexico never wrote a check. And yet, for millions, that didn’t matter. It was never about the bricks. It was about the belief. About the rage it stirred. The illusion of strength.
Now he’s running the same con again, just swapping bricks for tariffs. Different product, same scam.
The ‘Build the Wall’ Blueprint
Let’s rewind.
The wall was a promise engineered for emotional impact, not feasibility. A symbol of control in a world that felt increasingly chaotic. People weren’t cheering for concrete—they were cheering for vengeance, for identity, for a fantasy where someone else finally paid the price.
When it didn’t happen, Trump didn’t admit defeat. He blamed Democrats, judges, immigrants themselves. And the base? They didn’t care about the invoice. They bought the spectacle, not the structure.
That spectacle is back. Only now it wears a different costume: trade tariffs.
Tariffs: The Wall Rebranded
Trump says tariffs are tough. He claims they make America rich. That China or Mexico or whoever the villain of the week is will pay.
Sound familiar?
Just like the wall, the tariff pitch is simple, forceful, and entirely false.
The promise: “Tariffs bring jobs home. They punish cheaters. We win, they lose.”
The reality: Higher prices at the store. Chaos in global markets. American farmers needing billions in taxpayer-funded bailouts because their crops suddenly had no buyers.
Here’s the twist: those bailouts? They weren’t funded by Chinese pesos. They came from your taxes.
Trump insists foreign governments are footing the bill. But the mechanics of a tariff are crystal clear: it’s a tax. On imports. Paid by American companies. Passed directly to American consumers.
The Grift Disguised as Governance
What makes tariffs even more dangerous than the wall promise is how easy they are to manipulate.
Congress doesn’t need to approve them. Trump just picks up a pen and announces a new policy at breakfast. One tweet can throw entire industries into panic.
This isn’t economic strategy—it’s a slush fund with legal dressing.
Want to reward an ally? Exempt them from tariffs. Want to punish a critic? Jack up their import costs.
This isn’t hypothetical. It happened.
Small businesses couldn’t plan. Supply chains crumbled. Farmers in red states watched their exports rot while begging Washington for relief—relief they wouldn’t need if the tariffs hadn’t been imposed in the first place.
Meanwhile, Trump strutted on stage, boasting about “winning.”
The Same People Get Hurt
Here’s the brutal truth:
Trump’s tariffs don’t hit the elite. They hit the everyday American.
A factory worker buying school clothes for her kids? Tariffs made them pricier.
A retiree replacing a washing machine? Tariffs added hundreds to the tab.
Meanwhile, Mar-a-Lago elites sip cocktails in tax shelters while the rest of us debate whether to cut groceries or delay car repairs.
And here’s the irony: the people cheering Trump’s tariffs are often the ones bleeding the most from them. Because the pain is buried under outrage, and the anger is carefully redirected.
The Media’s Part in the Performance
Every good con artist has an accomplice. Someone in the crowd who nods at the right time, laughs at the right jokes, swears it’s all legit.
In this scam, the right-wing media plays that role perfectly.
Fox & Friends calls the tariffs “brilliant.” Talk radio insists the chaos is 4D chess. Truth Social feeds its loyalists a steady diet of victimhood, nationalism, and half-truths.
And the mainstream media? Often too cautious or polite to call it what it is: a scam.
They’ll fact-check the numbers but avoid the obvious.
Because here’s the key: This isn’t just bad policy—it’s deliberate manipulation.
Why It Keeps Working
Trump’s genius—if you can call it that—isn’t in economics. It’s in emotional leverage.
He doesn’t need to deliver results. He just needs to deliver resentment.
When the wall failed, he blamed immigrants. When tariffs failed, he blamed China. When farmers suffered, he blamed Biden—even though the damage was done years earlier.
He turns failure into fuel.
The more chaotic things get, the more he thrives. Because in a fog of confusion, it’s easier to pick your pocket.
Lessons From the Wall That Wasn’t
Remember this:
Mexico didn’t pay for the wall. Americans did—through diverted military funds, legal battles, and environmental destruction.
The wall was never finished. Most of what got built was replacement fencing, not the grand fortress Trump promised.
The spectacle was the product. Trump didn’t need to deliver the wall—he just needed the chant. It wasn’t about immigration policy. It was about rally energy, identity politics, and the illusion of dominance.
Accountability never came. The grift was exposed in real time, and yet the checks kept coming, the rallies kept roaring. When the wall’s funding plan fell apart, when private efforts like “We Build the Wall” were revealed as outright scams (with Trump allies indicted for stealing donations), the base barely blinked.
The media got played. Time and again, news outlets obsessed over the logistics—steel slats versus concrete, where it would start, how tall it would be—while ignoring the deeper con. The story was never about border security. It was about creating a perpetual crisis to justify power grabs and endless campaign momentum.
The harm was real. Families were torn apart. Asylum seekers were treated like enemies. Ecological damage was inflicted on sacred Native lands—all to serve a talking point that was never supposed to materialize.
And through it all, Trump’s people paid the price. His supporters believed they were getting strength. What they got was chaos, debt, and division.
Now he’s pulling the same stunt with tariffs. Different lie, same lesson.
The wall was the blueprint for distraction-as-policy. Tariffs are just the sequel.
And unless we start learning from the last con, we’re bound to fall for the next one.
Time to Walk Away From the Table
There’s a reason con games get repeated.
Because they work. Because the pain is slow and the anger is fast. Because the mark doesn’t want to believe they’ve been played—so they double down instead.
Trump knows this. That’s why the wall grift became the tariff grift. Why “Mexico will pay” became “China will pay.” Why what was once a literal wall is now a metaphorical one—separating reality from illusion, accountability from consequence.
And it will morph again.
Maybe next it’ll be a “patriotic economy” where dissent is punished and corporate loyalty is measured in MAGA caps. Maybe it’s a “digital dollar” conspiracy, or a “deep state” crackdown that just happens to target his enemies and enrich his friends.
The truth doesn’t matter in this game. Only the pitch. Only the applause.
So ask yourself:
What’s the next promise he’ll make that won’t come true?
What’s the next cost you’ll quietly pay for a lie wrapped in a slogan?
You don’t need a Ph.D. in economics to see the hustle. You just need to ask one question:
Who profits if I believe this?
If the answer is Donald Trump, and you’re not him—you’re the mark.
And the only way out of the con is to walk away. Not with a shrug, but with clarity. With courage. With the knowledge that patriotism isn’t blind loyalty—it’s the refusal to be lied to by someone waving your flag while picking your pocket.
Because this isn’t just about trade. Or immigration. Or taxes.
It’s about whether we choose spectacle over substance. Whether we’ll keep cheering for slogans while the bills stack up at home.
And whether, finally, we’ve had enough of being played.
Who’s really paying?
Not China. Not Mexico. Not the billionaires with offshore accounts and lobbyists on speed dial.
It’s the worker whose hours got cut when their factory couldn’t afford imported parts.
It’s the farmer whose soybeans sat unsold while “America First” tanked their markets.
It’s the family scraping by while grocery bills swell with hidden taxes.
It’s the single mom watching prices climb, wondering how “winning” got so expensive.
Because in Trump’s America, the answer is always the same.
You are.
You’re the one covering the cost of the stunt. You’re the one footing the bill for the photo ops, the rallies, the hollow boasts. While Trump sells you pride, you pay in real dollars. While he blames everyone else, the receipts show up in your mailbox.
And he’s counting on you not to notice.
But maybe this time, you will. Maybe this time, the chant won’t be enough. Maybe this time, the mark looks up, sees the trick for what it is, and refuses to play along.
Because it’s your table. Your wallet. Your future.
And it’s time to stop paying for his lies.
Copyright 2025 FN, NewsRoom.
