You have to hand it to serial sex abuser Donald Trump (SSAT). He has raised the bar for snake-oil salespersons to great heights, ingeniously finding new ways to part the suckers from their money. His new pitch is a real doozy.
Despite his claims, Donald Trump’s business career has had many more failures than successes.
His record of catastrophic investments has never held Trump back, however, and now the one-term, twice-impeached, 91-time felony-charged former president has embarked on a new hustle: selling little cut-out pieces of a suit he wore during one of his arrests.
…To buy a piece of the suit, people first have to buy 47 “digital trading cards”, each featuring an illustration of Trump, through the Collect Trump Cards website. Buyers will then receive a bit of the suit, or tie, that Trump wore when he was arrested – on charges related to his attempts to overturn the election – at Fulton county jail in August 2023.
The cost of buying the 47 digital cards featuring SSAT as heroic figures costs a total of $4,699.53. It is only if you buy the whole set that you get the tiny bit of fabric. Of course, it is quite possible that SSAT will keep the suit send them bits of blue cloth taken from a roll of suit fabric. His followers will not know and even if they are told, will not believe that they have been suckered yet again. Their gullibility seems to be inexhaustible..
When I read this, I was reminded of the relics of saints that are venerated by Catholic believers.
A relic is a fragment of the body or physical possession of a canonized saint that can help us grow closer to God. Relics are divided into three classifications. A first class relic is a body part of a saint, such as bone, blood, or flesh. Second class relics are possessions that a saint owned, and third class relics are objects that have been touched to a first or second class relic or the saint has touched him or herself.
…Many believe that certain relics signify good health and protection.
…When we touch the relic of a saint, the object itself isn’t healing; rather, God’s intercession through the object performs the blessing.
And so on.
I think that in the minds of his cult, SSAT is already a potential saint and thus they will no doubt treat this tiny fabric of cloth with great veneration and perhaps even create a small shrine for it in their homes. Of course, SSAT is not dead yet so he technically cannot be a saint in the Catholic sense so the best that his followers can do for the moment is have this second class relic. But in time, when SSAT sheds his mortal coil, they can declare him a saint and his family can continue to make money by selling parts of his body as first class relics. Once again, they can dupe the followers by sending bits of bone and hair from some other source.
Is selling body parts legal? Many people are organ donors and some donate their entire bodies to science upon their deaths. They think that it is going to medical schools and the like for research and education but the practice is very loosely regulated and it is not uncommon for bodies to end up in the hands of commercial interests that sell parts for profit.
In a recent episode of Last Week Tonight, John Oliver discusses the problems with the organ and body donation systems in the US that can lead to such abuses since there is no governmental regulation of the practice.
They don’t just think he’s a potential saint, they think he’s the bloody Messiah.
Of course, he’s not the Messiah -- he’s a very naughty boy.
I thought one of the big things about Protestantism was that you can interact directly with God without the need for any kind of intermediary. These ancient superstitions die hard.
Actually, if I were operating a 5th column inside the MAGA movement, that’s exactly what I would do: appeal to the pope to begin the process of canonization. Make a huge deal out of it. Maximum stupid.
I think that in the minds of his cult, SSAT is already a potential saint…
According to Catholic Church rules, he already qualifies for sainthood. In order to be canonized/beatified/whatever, a person must have performed at least three miracles, not explainable by reason or science. And I count at least FOUR miracles from Trump: he’s made George W. Bush look intelligent; he’s made Dick Cheney look compassionate; he’s made Karl Rove look like a patriotic unifying figure; and he’s made the past generation of neocon chickenhawks look like sensible foreign-policy wonks.
So…yeah…maybe…?
Matt G @ 2
The institution of intermediaries is how you can see this religion has it roots in a primitive society- the peons could not appeal directly to the king, they had to adress the flunkies and courtiers.
Next grift.
Limited* framed classified documents.
*limited to the number of copies we can make
Trump:”91 seems an odd number. Let’s go for 100!”
99 would be so much better.
“99 indictments of Trump on the wall, 99 indictments of Trump.”
“Take one down, convict on it, 98 indictments of Trump on the wall.”
.
.
.
“Zero indictments of Trump on the wall, zero indictments of Trump.”
“We’ll be rid of the stink when he’s deep in the clink,
and there’s zero left of Trump on the wall.”
Oh, gods, no, please don’t give them any ideas!
Oh, gods, no, please don’t give them any ideas!
Dividing the evangelical base by triggering a catholic vs protestant war would be pretty effective, except for the collateral damage those assholes always cause. But if they were shooting at eachother they’d be unable to worry about unifying on anti-trans, etc., issues.
A distinction without a difference, either way the rube has to touch the thing to trigger the spell or whatever.
Catholic relics are mostly fakes (how many foreskins did Big J have?), so Trump can just follow the tradition.
@Dunc: great reference!
Presumably this can be continued indefinitely, n+1th class relics being those touched to an nth class relic!
But what if the item believed to be a saint’s body-part isn’t really? Does God still “intercess”? The “body of Saint Mark” at San Marco’s in Venice may actually be that of Alexander “the Great” of Macedon -- it was pinched (by a Venetian expedition of 828 CE) from Alexandria, where Alexander’s body had been stashed for several centuries after Ptolemy I of Egypt (Alexander’s general, and possibly, half-brother) had it stolen on its way from Babylon back to Macedon. It was last heard of around 390 CE, just a couple of years before the “body of St. Mark” turned up -- with Christianity established in the Roman Empire, bodies of pagan kings were perhaps less valuable than those of top-grade saints. But the “body of St. Mark” disappeared again for a while in Venice, so it’s also possible the curent occupant of “St. Mark’s tomb” is a Venetian vagrant or criminal, substituted for Mark/Alexander so as to keep up the lucrative pilgrim trade when the original vanished.
Indeed. I suspect it’s down to a need for something tangible. “God’s invisible presence” sounds good and all, but it’s hard to brag about at parties. A bone in a box, though? That’s a conversation starter.
Well, according to Catholic rules at least, Trump does qualify for sainthood, in that he has performed at least FOUR miracles not explainable by modern science: he’s made George W. Bush look intelligent; he’s made Dick Cheney look compassionate; he’s made Karl Rove look like a patriotic unifying figure; and he’s made all those neocon chickenhawks look like sensible foreign-policy experts. Any others I missed…?