That's not what happened though. The link between Trump and the person being scammed and this scam is much, much stronger.
The scam itself was meant to look like one of Trump's usual Grifts/Scams. The imagery had Trump and Elon selling some silly ordinary thing for a massive price (just like his watch, guitar, bible, shoes, $Trump, DJT shares etc). So it was on first sight a pretty believable thing. Noone would think it is out of character for this current USA president to be peddling a coin with his face on it and "In God we Trust".
The whole scam only worked BECAUSE it was so believable, many people were not able to distinguish it from a Trump "venture".
But it is far outside the norm to have the presidents of Chase bank and Bank of American claiming "if you guy this going for $30, we'll give you $1000 when you get here"
Regardless of how overpriced or goofy Trump's campaign swag was, the people still got what they were looking to get.
"Steve pays $300, Trump's campaign gets $300, Steve receives a pair of gold clown shoes via FedEx in 3-5 business days", so there was no fraudulent activity taking place.
(perhaps you should've used Trump University for your example, that one I would agree was a scam)
But it still goes back to having a need for being able to spot real vs. fake.
1) A quick search of public records would've indicated individual campaign donations from executives at Bank of America largely went to Harris, and Trump just recently had something of a unfriendly exchange with the CEO of Bank of America at the World Economic Forum over Trump's accusation that "They don't open banking and lines of credit to conservatives" (the CEO of JP Morgan Chase was also a vocal critic of Trump, and there was even speculation that Jamie Dimon may have landed a cabinet position with Harris had she won). So the odds that those two gentlemen would've been getting on board with some sort of "Trump's coins for cash" exchange promotion would've been slim and none.
2) The CEOs of those organizations are wealthy men, if the coins actually had that kind of value, they'd would've bought them all up themselves (after all, they run the banks that were being purported by the video to be facilitating the exchanges)
Also, trying to frame it as a "Trump's following has been so cultish, that this incident lends itself to similarities with how he actually operates, and that's why the scam worked and didn't seem out of the ordinary to them" is an unfair framing.
Democrats for years have grumbled about shady operatives within their ranks. It’s bursting out into public right as the campaign heats up.
www.thebulwark.com
The Harris campaign had to contend with a very similar situation. An organization using unofficial and sometimes fake pics/videos depicting well known democratic celebrities (like Streisand and Clooney) claiming that they'd do a 700% donation match to "Crush Trump", turns out, it was all bogus.
The entity behind it raked in millions of dollars from unwitting democratic donors.
Her campaign had to release a statement:
“Voters have been inundated with text messages and other solicitations from political action committees claiming to support the Vice President or working to defeat Donald Trump,” said Lauren Hitt, a Harris campaign spokesperson, in a statement last week. “In reality, these are financial scams from bad actors trying to take advantage of the urgency Democrats are feeling in this moment. We’re urging our supporters to be careful when they donate. The only committees raising money directly for our campaign are Harris for President, Harris Victory Fund, and Harris Action Fund.”
Or to put it another way...
It's not purely a case of "
the scam worked because Trump's backers have become so conditioned to scams, it's like shooting fish in a barrel" as some are trying to portray it.
The scams largely work because people get all fired up about politics and "crushing the other side" that they have lapses in good judgement, and behave recklessly with their money when they fall susceptible to emotionally-fueled tunnel vision, whereas, if they took a few deep breaths, and thought about it for more than five minutes...they'd probably see it for what it was.
