Beyond Trumpy Tangerine

In the midst of last week's Republican National Convention, there was a 'blink and you'll miss it' moment which, in my estimation, lays bare the whole rotten scam. It was a seven minute and eight second speech, railing against burdensome tax rates and onerous regulations, delivered by a stern-looking Valkyrie in a dress with weird pauldrons:





It's funny to see this particular individual railing against regulation, because she's a shill for a multilevel marketing scam that peddles bogus dietary supplements. While investing sites warn against the Youngevity MLM, they only scratch the surface of the awfulness. Youngevity is associated with a scam artist named Joel Wallach, a veterinarian who was pushing colloidal minerals as a cure-all for everything from cancer to cystic fibrosis to crippling ennui. Of course, these cures were being suppressed by the sinister medical establishment- Wallach first came to the world's notice with a tape titled 'Dead Doctors Don't Lie', detailing the perfidy of physicians and making counterfactual claims that medical doctors have a lower life expectancy than the general population. The names of the scams may change, but the basic claims are the same- don't trust anybody with actual expertise- the simple country veterinarian will somehow cure your ass-cancer with colloidal minerals sourced from faraway lands and that, yes, even Lyme disease and the Zika virus are somehow related to sufferers' failure to get enough molybdenum or shark cartilage in their diets.

If Trump makes it to the White House, he'll probably make Joel Wallach his Surgeon General... five years ago, Trump himself got involved in a multilevel marketing supplement scam. Maybe he can revive this particular scheme by lending his branding power to the grifting power of Wallach. By law, the FDA cannot regulate dietary supplements, due to a 1994 law passed by legislators with ties to the industry. These are the 'burdensome' regulations that Van Etten labors under... yeah, virtually no regulation. That 'Tangy Tangerine' shit might be made out of pulverized skin flakes falling from Donald Trump's oddly orange epidermis.