Trump and his Disciples in the Pyramid Scheme

Donald Trump’s vitamin scheme is one of the lesser known of his failed enterprises. In 2009, he bought a company called Ideal Health, which sold nutrition products, the most prominent being the custom vitamin –“created just for you based on a simple, yet complete in-home urinalysis test!” The science was, to put it nicely, dubious. Equally sketchy was the distribution system.

Trump Network, as Ideal Health was renamed, was a Multi-Level Marketing company (MLM). MLMs are often called “pyramid schemes.” Distributors don’t make money so much by selling the product (in an illegal pyramid scheme, there isn’t even a product to sell) as by recruiting others to sell, getting them to do the same, and so on. The more your “downline” makes, the more you make.

Think Amway. Or think Herbalife. Or, better yet: Think of that person you liked until she signed on with an MLM and … You can’t believe the money I’m making! You really should get in now. No, it’s TOTALLY not a pyramid scheme! This is different. The products are amazing. Did I mention how much money I’m making?

Before Trump Network, I’d scarcely known anyone involved in an MLM. Suddenly I couldn’t swing a cat without hitting a neighbor, former colleague or friend who had signed on. (Protip: A swinging cat will, in fact, ward off an MLM recruiter, like a cross to a vampire.)

My friend Charlotte also knew several people who’d gotten involved, but she was resisting their attempts to recruit her. She’s not really the type. She isn’t particularly motivated by money. She worked from home already, so wasn’t enticed by the promise of freedom. Though she assumed Trump was successful, (“didn’t everyone just know that?”) she wasn’t a fan of his. And her friends seemed just a little too rah-rah.

“It almost sounded like a cult,” she said. **

But when her friends invited her to a Trump Network convention in Miami she went along, but mostly because … Miami!

The convention highlight was Donald Trump himself, addressing the 5,000 distributors in attendance. Charlotte went into the speech still skeptical, amused by how enraptured everyone seemed just by the prospect of hearing from this blowhard.

She came out sold, raring to go.

Six years later, I still remembered Charlotte’s strange enthusiasm. In an effort to understand the hold Trump had on his voters, I asked Charlotte to meet for coffee. I brought along a copy of his remarks from that night in Miami.

This is going to be something that’s really amazing. Really amazing. I want people to be successful. I want people to make a lot of money, and I want people to enjoy it, because if you don’t enjoy it you’re not going to be successful…. Blah, blah and blah.

“How could this have worked on you?” I asked her. “It sounds like Pabulum.”

“I know, it looks like B.S. on paper. And it turned out it was B.S.,” Charlotte said, laughing. “But he knew how to reel people in. They’re all about dreams. He was so confident, had so much authority. He convinced us he wanted to make our dreams come true, that he could make our dreams come true. He’s really seductive.”

“Seductive?” I almost spit out my coffee. “Are we talking about the same man — weird hair, orange skin? Seductive?”

“Yes, seductive,” she insisted. “I’m not talking about sexual seduction, although he’s probably good at that, too. I mean like what a sociopath does. He’s brilliant. Even I was taken in.”

Charlotte’s half French, so I tried to convince myself that was the half doing the talking, but it felt like puzzle pieces were sliding into place. I had the sickening sense she was right.

“So you think he’s a seductive conman.”

“Yes. A seductive conman. We were his mark. And you know how it is when you’re seduced. Once you’re in, you’re in.”

She lifted her shoulders in a little Gallic shrug, as if to say, “C’est la vie.”