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Several political commentators have linked the rise of Donald Trump to the abominable prosperity gospel. The prosperity gospel is the heretical belief that God wants his followers to be rich. I guess followers of the prosperity gospel ignore the part of the Bible where Jesus commands his followers to leave all their worldly belongings and follow him.

But there is a link between Trump and the prosperity gospel. Several prosperity gospel preachers, such as spiritual charlatans Paula White and Pat Robertson, were early Trump supporters. Televangelist Joel Osteen also called Trump a “great brander” and a “good man.” Chris Lehmann, author of the “The Money Cult: Capitalism, Christianity, and the Unmaking of the American Dream,” also noted the similarities.

“When it comes to the particular behavioral preachments of Trumpism and Osteenism, the parallels are even more striking,” said Lehmann in a Washington Post article. “Each espouses wealth as an expression of personal greatness — and vice versa. True, Trump announces this message with a self-hymning candor that doesn’t strike our ears as especially spiritual. But the broader affinities that his crude songs share with Osteen’s superficially scriptural prosperity faith are unmistakable. ‘You have to be wealthy in order to be great, I’m sorry to say,’ the mogul declared at a North Dakota campaign stop in May.”

The partnership between Trump and these shysters is understandable. Conmen of a feather flock together. Much like Trump, prosperity gospel preachers are also running a con. The prosperity gospel is a spiritual Ponzi scheme. The parishioners who give their money, hoping they will be rewarded, never get rich. The only people who profit off the prosperity gospel are the ministers who rake in money from their gullible followers. That sounds a lot like the scam Trump’s been running for decades.

When Trump finally wore out his welcome in the American real estate industry, after he bankrupted several businesses, including a casino, he turned to schemes such as Trump University, where he convinced poor souls to part with thousands of dollars. They believed if they attended his university, they would learn how to be a smart investor like Trump. What Trump neglected to mention is he was born into wealth, and his father Fred, gave him a stake, connections and repeatedly bailed him out financial jams. That’s not something you can learn in a classroom.

“The Apprentice” continued the con because it sold the image of Trump as the all-knowing, all-conquering businessman. The whole show was fake. The much-vaunted boardroom scene was staged for TV. As Penn Teller, a contestant on the “The Celebrity Apprentice,” said, Trump pretended to fire people who pretended to work for him. (In real life, Trump hands off firing to flunkies, because he doesn’t like to do it.)

And the final con of Trump’s lifetime of fraud is convincing enough uninformed Americans to elect him president. But, you can’t have a con without a mark, and Trump has identified plenty of victims among his supporters.

During the 2016 presidential campaign, Trump bragged he would build a wall and get Mexico to pay for it, which was impossible. Realizing he can’t do that, he now wants Americans to pay for the wall, and his supporters are so dense, they’re lining up to donate their own money!

Several news outlets have reported that a crowdfunding project has already raised almost $12 million for a border wall. Not money for orphans’ Christmas presents, homeless vets, or clean water in Flint, Mich., but a border wall, that Mexico was supposed to pay for!

However, there are several problems with this project. Estimates for the wall are more than $20 billion, so the donations have a long way to go. And there is always the problem of what to do with the money. According to The New York Post, the government can’t accept the money until there has been legislation to move forward with the border wall.

Brian Kolfgage, the man behind the GoFundMe campaign, doesn’t seem to have thought it through. He told the Huffington Post, he was going to play the next stage “by ear.”

“We don’t know [what comes next], we’re just playing it by ear,” he said. “We’re waiting to see what happens with the wall itself.”

Kolfage has his shyster bonafides, since he also had several Facebook pages shut down because they drove traffic to conspiracy websites.

But maybe Kolfage is just like Trump and his prosperity gospel allies, preying on easy marks. In 2015 Creflo Dollar, an infamous prosperity gospel preacher, managed to persuade his congregation to buy a new Gulfstream jet which cost $65 million. He said the old one had become unsafe to fly.

Trumpism, the prosperity gospel and other scams are easy traps for rubes, because as P.T. Barnum said, “There’s a sucker born every minute.’