Saturday, January 12, 2019

Did '50s TV show feature a con artist named Trump promising to build a wall?

By Mike Moffitt, SFGATE

It certainly sounds like an urban legend — an episode of a 1950's western TV series featured a snake oil salesman named Trump who claimed that only he could save a community from destruction by building a wall.

But the debunking site Snopes says the show, part of the "Trackdown" series starring Oakland native Robert Culp, did in fact air on CBS in 1958.

A clip from the episode was uploaded to YouTube, captioned "Predicted Donald Trump," in November 2016.

The "End of the World" show features actor Lawrence Dobkin as Walter Trump, a con man who predicts a firestorm would rain down on the Texas town of Talpa unless he intervenes to save it. Culp, playing Texas Ranger Hoby Gilman, calls Trump's bluff and eventually arrests him for "stealing."

Trump sold the townspeople force-field umbrellas to deflect meteors.

Interestingly, the character's speech is so similar to the resident, it almost seems as if Donald Trump borrowed some catchphrases from Walter Trump. A portion of the dialog follows:

Narrator: Hoby had checked the town. The people were ready to believe. Like sheep they ran to the slaughterhouse. And waiting for them was the high priest of fraud.
Trump: I am the only one. Trust me. I can build a wall around your homes that nothing can penetrate.
Townperson: What do we do? How can we save ourselves?
Trump: You ask how do you build that wall. You ask, and I'm here to tell you.

During the presidential campaign, Donald Trump declared, "Politicians have used you and stolen your votes. They have given you nothing. I will give you everything. I will give you what you've been looking for for 50 years. I'm the only one."

On June 16, 2015, Trump said, "I would build a great wall, and nobody builds walls better than me, believe me, and I'll build them very inexpensively,"


https://www.sfgate.com/tv/article/Did-50s-TV-show-feature-a-con-artist-named-Trump-10848356.php

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