Americans Have Always Been Easy Prey for Hustlers: From PT Barnum to DT Trump
A big part of American Exceptionalism has been Exceptional Gullibility — yada, yada, yada — Donald Trump
Aa all of us well-meaning, thoughtful, “high-information”, engaged Americans stare to disbelief at the spectacle of the Trump 2.0 Administration, we inevitably ask: how could this have happened? We ask it over and over again.
- How could so many Americans fail so completely to recognize the strange orange man with the long red tie for what he obviously is: a meticulously-documented fraud, a pathological liar, a convicted felon, and an adjudicated rapist who carries behind him a life-long record of business failures (four bankrupted casinos … casinos!) and unsuccessful swindles (Trump University, Trump Foundation), not to mention numerous failed products and absurd branding schemes?
- How could we not recognize that someone who enjoys the company of “friends” like Roy Cohn, Jeffrey Epstein, Roger Stone, Steve Bannon, Rudy Giuliani, and Elon Musk might not be completely honest? Or that someone who hires racists and sociopaths like Stephen Miller, Kristi Noem, and RFK Jr. might not have Americans’ best interests in mind?
- How could we fail to see his obvious disdain for the rule of law when he used the President’s pardon power exclusively to reward and celebrate criminals who expressed loyalty to him, including over 1,200 January 6 rioters and 16 fellow Republican office holders who were convicted of crimes like electoral corruption, bribery, and insider trading.
How could we be so gobsmacking stupid … TWICE?
Americans have always fallen for a good con
The answer is that there is nothing new to see here folks. Donald Trump is not a unique calamity sprung from the brow of Zeus to wreak havoc on the people of America. On the contrary, he’s just the latest in a long line of successful con men who have preyed upon Americans’ credulity since our earliest days.
In Democracy in America, Alexis de Tocqueville’s epic study of America in the 1830s, we find several insights that still ring true today, and may help us understand our susceptibility to the siren songs of hustlers and con men. First, de Tocqueville was struck by how acquisitive and materialistic Americans were compared to their European counterparts:
So in America, each man finds opportunities unknown elsewhere to make or to increase his fortune. Greed is always in good condition there, and the human mind, distracted at every moment from the pleasures of the imagination and the works of intelligence, is drawn only into the pursuit of wealth. Not only do you see in the United States, as in all other countries, industrial and commercial classes; but, what has never been seen, all men there are busy at the same time with industry and with commerce. (vol. 3, p. 767)
He saw danger in this focus on wealth acquisition, observing that if it were not constrained it could lead to a kind of blind materialistic pursuit:
Democracy favors the taste for material enjoyments. This taste, if it becomes excessive, soon disposes men to believe that everything is only matter; and materialism, in turn, finally carries them with an insane fervor toward these same enjoyments. Such is the fatal circle into which democratic nations are pushed. It is good that they see the danger and restrain themselves.
(vol. 3, p. 958)
I have written about the dangers of greed before. For de Tocqueville, American acquisitiveness is dangerous because it can divert people’s attention away from civic duties and higher moral purposes. But we can also see how it might make Americans more vulnerable to the kinds of “get rich quick” schemes that con artists are always ready to lay before them. From the false allure of multi-level marketing (where 99% of participants are known to lose money) to the promise of returns “too good to be true” from con men like Bernie Madoff, rich and poor Americans alike are drawn into these scams again and again.
For PT Barnum, the 19th Century American showman who lived by the motto “there’s a sucker born every minute”, the two keys to separating people from their money were spectacle and gullibility. Barnum is well-known for promoting numerous hoaxes and grotesqueries. He perfected the role of the carnival barker, a performer who would stand outside a show or exhibit and entice passersby to enter by offering loud hyperbolic claims and wild promises. For Barnum, the line between showmanship and outright deception was blurry at best, and his American audiences, always eager to believe, rarely questioned his spectacles too deeply. Today, Barnum’s legacy is everywhere in America, from our billion-dollar advertising industry, to our obsession with social media “influencers”, to what passes for much of our political discourse. And of course, let’s not forget one of Barnum’s greatest legacies, the fake violence and performative mayhem of American professional wrestling.
America’s long fascination with con men and hustlers is regularly reflected in our literature and films. In Herman Melville’s The Confidence-Man, published in 1857, a Mississippi steamboat becomes a microcosm for 19th Century America, as a mysterious stranger engages in a series of scams that fleece his fellow passengers out of money and valuables. In Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, published in 1884, we are presented with a classic portrayal of two con men, “the King” and “the Duke”, who accompany Huck and Jim in their journey, engaging in various scams and performances to swindle gullible townspeople along the way. More recently, American cinema has delivered numerous portrayals of swindlers and con men, frequently presenting them in a more positive light than their victims, who are often portrayed as bad people who “get what they deserve”, as in the 1973 long-con classic, The Sting. Other American films in this genre (and there are a lot of them) paint a more nuanced picture of scam artists and their victims, for example, The Music Man (1962), Paper Moon (1973), The Grifters (1990), Catch Me If You Can (2002), and American Hustle (2013).
With all this exposure to the ways and means of hustlers and con artists, it is somewhat surprising that Americans continue to fall for their schemes. It’s not like we’re unfamiliar with the plot. So there must be more to this story. De Tocqueville points us to one possible cause: excessive emphasis on pursuing material wealth. Barnum offers another: an appetite for spectacle combined with a propensity to believe unlikely propositions that are unsupported by evidence. Let’s start there.
Six reasons why Americans are so vulnerable to hustlers and con men
PT Barnum may have believed that suckers are born every minute, but it is much more likely that susceptibility to hustlers and con men is not genetic, but rather a function of numerous cultural influences which, if not unique to the American people, are certainly prominent in American society. Here are six possible underlying causes that may contribute to Americans’ unusual susceptibility to the allure of con men and their lying narratives.
Inequality and financial insecurity
De Tocqueville saw American obsession with money as a character flaw exacerbated by extreme individualism. But what he missed was another factor that has become even more prominent over time — financial insecurity. In a society in which 59% of all Americans in 2025 say they don’t have enough savings to cover a $1,000 emergency expense (source, see also source, source), it is not surprising that people might be drawn to promises of fantastical financial or partisan gains. As inequality continues to grow, and people continue to find themselves falling further and further behind, hustlers and con artists find fertile ground for their schemes and scams.
Anti-intellectualism
Many Americans don’t trust experts. They don’t trust science. They don’t trust evidence-based journalism. So it’s not surprising that they dismiss the mountains of evidence exposing the machinations of con men and grifters. Yet, they continue to be attracted to the false promises and true lies of modern carnival barkers like Donald Trump. The reason, in part, has to do with how our brains are wired. Humans, neuroscientists have found, would much rather to have their feelings reinforced than their beliefs corrected. We are emotionally-driven creatures who sometimes manage to engage in reasoning, but for the most part make our choices based on how we feel, not the facts on hand.
When people follow their “gut instincts” instead of “the facts”, they inevitably find themselves vulnerable to fanciful narratives in which they are presented with emotionally-satisfying claims of future riches or power, while at the same time they are told to ignore the “fake news” that tells them they are being lied to for someone else’s benefit. Time and again, they choose to embrace the lies and deny the facts.
Anti-intellectualism is not new in America. De Tocqueville recognized it in his Democracy in America, noting a tendency among Americans to distrust expert opinion and rely instead on their own common sense and judgment (vol. 3, ch. 11). Today, this general tendency has been weaponized by the American Republican Party and its media allies, who have spent decades encouraging their followers to reject science and expertise when either contradicts the narratives and policies promoted by the Party. Given the Party’s success on November 5, 2024, its strategy of weaponizing American anti-intellectualism appears to have been wildly successful.
Lack of reasoning skills
Americans’ reasoning skills are not weak by accident. Republicans believe that the purpose of education is to indoctrinate children into their right-wing ideology, not to teach critical thinking. Sadly, American public education writ large is not much better: American schools invest little in teaching the critical thinking skills needed to identify and reject lies and patently false claims. There are a number of reasons for this, not least of which is community pressure against critical thinking (guess which communities) (see source). But the bottom line is stark: nowhere in America do K-12 schools teach critical thinking as a standalone subject. This failure to instill critical thinking skills in the American population not only benefits political propagandists, but also advertisers, marketers, and, of course, all varieties of con artists.
Magical thinking and religiosity
The flip side of a lack of reasoning skills is an over-reliance on magical thinking and religious dogma in place of reasoning skills. Most people like to draw a line between magic and religion, between (say) astrology and Christianity, but such arguments are themselves based on magical thinking, so are unlikely to persuade anyone beyond fellow believers. Whether one believes in leprechauns, the Holy Trinity, or the magical healing power of the number “88”, one is expressing faith, preferably blind faith, so further critical thinking is unnecessary. The answers are provided, no need for any fact-checking on your part.
Magical thinking is of course the con man’s best friend. If you believe in magic, there is a good chance I can get you to believe I have a bridge you can buy. Or that I’m a Nigerian Prince who will share $10,000,000 with you. Or that I will instantly lower the price of eggs and end the war in Ukraine if you vote for me.
Whether your pastor is telling you to hate immigrants, or “Q” is telling you to believe a cult of cannibalistic child molesters is operating a global sex trafficking ring out of a Washington DC pizza parlor (source), your blind faith makes you vulnerable to the schemes and machinations of others. In America, where 40% of the people say they believe in ghosts, 57% say they believe in aliens, 70% say they believe in the devil, and 83% say they believe in miracles (source), a significant portion of the population is unlikely to apply critical thinking to the claims of a con man, whether he be a street hustler hosting a game of Three-Card Monte or a demagogue seeking the American Presidency and unlimited power.
Consumerism and “demand creation”
This is another factor that contributes to the financial desperation many Americans feel today. Consumers are often demonized (or lionized) as greedy little hoarders, unable to control their acquisitive impulses. If that were accurate, then why do companies spend $800 billion a year on advertising and marketing to the American public? As I argue in my book Intuitive Marketing, most advertising in America today, whether digital or traditional, focuses on some form of inadequacy, and how to cure it:
“… much of traditional advertising focuses on increasing motivational intensity by using an emotional display to suggest that some aspect of our current state should induce in us a negative emotion such as fear, shame, disgust, or guilt. Perhaps the problem is with the clothes we wear, the car we drive, the whiteness of our laundry, or the color of our hair. After this emotional activation, the informational part of the message is designed to come to our rescue and provide the solution: a product or brand that will fill the void, give us what we are missing, and allow us to overcome the negative feelings the ad so cleverly helped us feel in the first place.” (Intuitive Marketing, p. 276)
So, do Americans greedily want more, or are they subjected to a constant barrage of messages telling them they need more? Of course it’s a combination of both. But American consumption is more driven by demand creation than most people realize. With almost 70% of the American economy derived from consumer spending (source), the need to keep consumer demand high — and permanent — is clear. It is driven in part by “real” needs (e.g., people need toothpaste). But it is perhaps more powerfully driven by the capitalist imperative to maintain growth at all costs (source).
For the average American consumer, an unending cacophony of manufactured needs — that is, needs created to benefit sellers, not buyers —can result in a quite reasonable conclusion that one can never catch up, that the game is rigged, and that the pursuit of fulfillment through acquisition is hopeless. Such a consumer, especially if already burdened by financial insecurity, poor reasoning skills, and magical thinking, may find himself or herself easily seduced by a charismatic con man’s false promises of future wealth, higher status, or political retribution against one’s perceived enemies.
American exceptionalism and misplaced hubris — USA! USA!
Finally, we come to a factor that is probably hardest for Americans to accept. We simply are not as smart as we think we are. Once upon a time, as the world emerged from the rubble of WW II, America was indeed exceptional. We reignited prosperity around the world and became both the world’s policeman and its banker. But those days are now becoming a faded memory in the era of Trump.
Beginning with the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980, this relatively benign state of affairs started to unravel as Republicans began executing their multi-decade project to turn America into a playground of the rich. That story has been recounted elsewhere (e.g., here) so I won’t repeat it here.
The point worth emphasizing is that many Americans failed to notice that the nation was no longer as “great” as it had been in those early postwar years. On the contrary, as inequality surged and democratic accountability receded, Americans became even more jingoistic and arrogant in their behavior toward each other and the rest of the world. Outside the American bubble, this behavior looks largely compensatory. America under Trump has become the world’s schoolyard bully, but few outside the jingoistic Americans themselves seem to be buying the bluster and braggadocio. The rest of the world looks away in despair and disgust.
The Dunning-Kruger Effect is a well-recognized cognitive bias in which people with low competence in a given domain (say, politics) falsely believe they actually have superior competence. In other words, someone suffering from this bias believes they are in fact much smarter than they actually are. This means they will often be surprised by a world that fails to conform to their preconceived notions, but it also means they will become very vulnerable to con artists and grifters who can prey on their misplaced self-confidence and hubris.
Ultimately, this is the story of Donald Trump and his MAGA cult. Trump’s true believers, lacking the knowledge and cognitive skills to see through his poisonous lies, are simply unable to recognize that they are being used and manipulated by the grifter they continue to idolize.
America has reached Peak Grift
And that brings us to the present. American gullibility and hubris have led us to the worst possible outcome. The hustlers, liars, and criminals are now in charge.
The grifters have now moved from the fringes of society to the highest levels of power.
They have dismantled most of the guardrails put in place to protect us from their predations. They have deeply embedded themselves in our communities, states, courts, and now our federal government. They have reached a kind of apotheosis of corruption and criminality. They are, quite literally, killing us.
Where do we go from here?
Democracy cannot survive in a nation of gullible suckers. Nor can it survive a government of crooks and grifters. That means, either we must lose our democracy or we must lose our gullible suckers. Personally, I prefer the latter course. And I believe I know how it is going to happen:
The grift has been so spectacularly successful that it is now creating the conditions of its own demise.
Donald Trump has failed to follow perhaps the most important rule of con artistry. I call it the Harold Hill Rule because it’s the rule Harold Hill violated in the classic play and movie The Music Man: he didn’t leave town before the con was discovered. And neither did Trump. He had his chance in 2020, but he screwed up his exit so horribly that he had to make a comeback or risk spending the rest of his life in prison. So he came back. But this time he has decided to stick around to enjoy the fruits of his brilliance. And fruits there are: insane tariffs, looming stagflation, communities disrupted by heavily armed masked thugs, military in the streets, inhumane and illegal deportations, massive corruption and self-dealing, and a world of former allies now actively looking for alternatives to American dominance in world affairs.
There is only one way to get rid of our gullible suckers: they have to spend some quality time living with the consequences of their beliefs. To put it bluntly: they have to suffer, and they have to know that Trump and the Republican Party are responsible for their suffering. As I argued in “FAFO: America’s Republican Base is About to Have a Teachable Moment”:
As the great late-20th century philosopher Joni Mitchell reminds us: you don’t know what you’ve got til it’s gone. And that is exactly the lesson the MAGA base is about to learn. They have been on a sugar-high of vicarious vengeance for about a decade. So far, they have remained relatively untouched in their personal lives. That is going to change, massively and consequentially, very soon.
Only lived experience, terrible, horrible lived experience, is going to awaken our low-information, spiteful, hateful Trump fans from the fever dream in which they’ve trapped themselves. … Republican voters, for their part, have insisted on touching the stove when they’ve been told over and over it will burn them. They’ve touched it anyway. This is the only way they will ever learn.
There is a path out of this nightmare. It begins with a catastrophic collapse of the American economy. It requires a vigorous repudiation of the Republican Party in the 2026 midterms. It depends on the emergence of a new generation of democratic leaders (both small-d and big-D) to provide a plausible path of recovery and revival. It won’t be easy, its chances of success are uncertain, but its the only choice we have. The next few years are going to be quite a trip.
