In case anyone hasn’t noticed for the last four years, five if you count the campaign period leading up to the 2016 U.S. Presidential election, citizens and residents of the United States and citizens of the world have been treated to a great con-artist at work. Perhaps no other description best explains the essence of Donald Trump. Certainly, one could call him many names, and many not very flattering, and many have certainly done so, but no term perhaps better sums up the man like con-artist.

Currently, he is hard at it trying to convince everyone that he has been cheated out of a second term of office as a result of the November election just past. And from all reports, polls and such, he is succeeding mightily in the eyes of the Republican public in pushing this con, and, oh, by the way, raking in tons of cash in the process.

For you see with Donald Trump it’s always been about the money, and, of course, the power, but the power was really was just another way to get at the money. Make no mistake, Donald Trump no more believes that he won the election than anyone believes the arctic is a tropical paradise. What he does believe and what he knows is that he knows how to run a con. He may not know how to run a country—witness the pandemic as evidence of that—or a business—witness his four, count ‘em, four bankruptcies—but he is particularly adept at running a con. And running a con is exactly what he is doing right now by claiming there was massive electoral fraud in the Presidential election. While he continues to make his claim without a scintilla of evidence, he has thousands of people donating to his cause to overturn the election results. Not that his campaign has even a ghost of a chance of succeeding, and he knows it. He just doesn’t care. He just wants to keep up the con long enough so that a sufficient number of people donate to ensure he is successful in his end-game, which is either to raise enough money to pay off his Russian creditors and/or pay for his next con, which speculation has it that he intends to set up an alternative news service to Fox and run for President again, or perhaps enable his daughter to run for President in his stead, after all, in four years he will be 78.

Donald Trump is a con-man par excellence. He learned from a master, his father, and he has carried on in the family business. Ask any contractor who was foolish enough to do work for him. Ask any employee who was unfortunate enough to be employed by him. Ask any banker who was foolish enough to loan him money. Ask any student who was foolish enough to attend his university. Or ask any member of his administration who has seen Trump in action and has run afoul somehow of Trump. All have been conned, every single one. And there are thousands.

But in running for and becoming President, Trump upped his game or he just found a bigger pool of suckers to believe all the lies he told them, probably the latter because he already was a master con-artist, having honed his skills over some four decades and countless con games. But being President has been the ultimate con, and there’s nowhere to go after that except down, something this con-artist’s ego cannot fathom, much less tolerate.

And how was Trump so able to con so many for so long? It was simple really; he told them what they wanted to hear. That is the art of a con: tell people that what they believe is true and convince them that you believe it. People only believe what they want to hear, and what they want to hear is what they themselves already believe. And he’s telling them that now in his current con. They don’t want to believe that he lost, so he tells them he didn’t; he was the victim of electoral fraud by those out to get him and those who support him, which is what his supporters have always believed.

It’s a beautiful con raking in so much beautiful money as Trump would say it. But this con as the whole Presidential con has depended on one key resource to make it work: the media. The Presidential con wouldn’t have worked without the media, just as this current con can’t work without the media. Think about it, what did Trump do to make himself stand out among all those other candidates back in 2015 and 2016 running for President on the Republican ticket? He made outrageous statements that played to the beliefs of so many in the Republican party, and the media ate it up because he was telling lies, bald-faced lies. Incensed that someone running for public office could be so brazen as to tell lies and so openly, the media devoured them as if they were candy from a trick or treat haul. And to whom were the lies directed? His Republican audience because they were the same lies that they themselves believed and do still to this day.

Trump knew what the media wanted and he gave it to them, just as he gave to the voting public what they wanted to hear. Trump began as a long-shot candidate, but he used the media’s need for novelty to spread his word and boost his campaign. And he kept giving it to them, over and over, every day, constantly, so he quite literally sucked all the air out of the other candidates’ campaigns. And he kept doing it in the general election campaign, and the media loved every minute of it even when they were so outraged by all of it because it brought attention to them and that attention translated into money, lots of money.

But Trump added a twist; he criticized the media, called it corrupt, spreaders of fake news, and he did it while the media was latched on to him like a lap dog to ensure his followers would not believe anything negative the media might say but also to ensure the media would continue to cover him. He knew that by denigrating the media he ensured their continued fealty to coverage of him because he understood that the media out of outraged pride would want to prove him false. The media was not about to allow him to call them names without fighting back. It was a symbiotic relationship between Trump and the media. Trump needed the media for his con to spread his word, and the media needed Trump, however outraged by him and his behavior, to prove their relevance to the public. And, of course, there was money in it, both for Trump and the media. The media’s fortunes soared with Trump and Trump’s soared because of the media’s constant coverage of him and his every move and tweet, over and over and over, all day and night every day of the week.

So, was the media conned by Trump? In a sense perhaps, but they were also used by Trump knowingly and he by them knowingly. Trump’s con would have never worked without the media. Had the media actually acted as they believe themselves to be, righteous purveyors of truth, they would have recognized Trump’s con for what it was, and perhaps they did or at least some more introspective members might have, and they would have refused to give it air time. Trump’s campaign and con would have never gotten off the ground. But the media didn’t do that, and Trump knew that they wouldn’t and couldn’t because he understood that the media was more like him than they would care to admit.

The rest folks is as they say, history. Trump became President and continued to tell people what they wanted to hear without giving them what they needed, and he played the role of President . . . badly. He could no more manage being a real President than he could manage being a competent manager of his many failed businesses. Trump is a con-man. He’s good at it, even great. But that’s all he is. That is all he is capable of being.

But in this con, the great con, Trump needed an enabler, and he found that in the media. Trump understood and understands that what drives the media is the same thing that drives him: a need for attention. It is this need for attention that creates the symbiotic and circular relationship between Trump and the media. Trump provides the outrage, and the media by reporting it and commenting on it ad infinitum amplifies Trump’s message, furthering his con.

Of course, it didn’t have to be this way. The media could choose simply to not purvey to the public what Trump says and tweets, thus foiling the con. But the media could no more do that than a fish could exist without water. No, Trump and the media were made for each other, however much both would deny that fact, which, of course, is part of the con. But what really is at heart of the nexus between the two besides the need for each other is that which drives them and drives so much of the world: money, the need for it and the opportunity to get a lot of it.