W.M. Peterson wrote what might be a very honest and helpful explanation for the Trumpening 2.0.

In his 1987 book The Art of the Deal, Donald Trump describes a stunt he pulled a few years earlier that involved deceiving Holiday Inn executives into partnering with him on the construction of a casino. Trump, who owned a strip of land along the Atlantic City boardwalk, lied when he told the hotel chain’s top brass that construction was already underway and that encouraging progress was being made. In reality ground had barely been broken at Trump’s site which, at that time, was little more than a plot of empty land. On the day the executives were scheduled to appear on-site, Trump “directed his construction manager to hire dozens of pieces of heavy equipment to move dirt around the site, digging holes and filling them back up if necessary.” “What the bulldozers and dump trucks did wasn’t important…so long as they did a lot of it,” Trump said. [Source: Business Insider, Apr. 20, 2017]

The hoodwink worked just as Trump expected, for he knew that the mere appearance of activity would be enough to persuade the hotel executives to invest in his project.

A similar trick is being played on the American people today.

Read the whole thing. As soon as he mentioned the fake construction site, I remembered the lesson from the book. Whether Peterson is right, time will tell. And whether or not, if there is a lesson to be learned here, then the ‘Murikan people will not learn whatever it is.