'God's Army' convoy shows how MAGA grifts 'the easily grifted': columnist

Donald Trump's MAGA movement is a "tissue-paper tiger," as evidenced by the underwhelming "God's Army" convoy that traveled to the U.S.-Mexico border, according to an op-ed in USA Today by Rex Huppke.

"The 'God’s Army' convoy was supposed to be a mighty force of 700,000 or more people from every corner of America," Huppke writes. "It wound up being maybe a couple hundred vehicles parked at a rural ranch in Quemado, Texas – basically a Trump rally without a Trump, but with plenty of hucksters selling MAGA merch and grifting the easily grifted."

Huppke contends that the convoy is a great summation of what the MAGA movement represents: a show of "underwhelming numbers" which has "accomplished little beyond showing everyone how tragically gullible they are and making the locals twitchy."

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It's "MAGA in a nutshell," Huppke writes: "loud, threatening and, in the end, impotent."

And like all things MAGA, the convoy was basically a "grift," Huppke contends.

"MAGA is and always has been a con to line the pockets of Trump and others who saw a swath of Americans waiting to be fleeced. The fact that our border is not now lined with big, strong, gun-toting patriots willing to defend America at all costs is not surprising."

The movement itself, says Huppke, is all "smoke and mirrors" that's inflated by its many loud influencers, which is then amplified by the press.

"But MAGA, at least since Trump first took office, has been a losing movement. It’s not unstoppable. It’s not a 700,000-person convoy of devoted citizen soldiers descending on Texas in a show of force," he writes. "It’s a comically disorganized and useless parade of con artists and the conned, drifting from one apocalyptic grievance to the next."

Read the full op-ed over at USA Today.