The late actor Lawrence Dobkin plays a con man named Walter Trump, who enters a dusty town in Texas to scare the locals into believing that the world will end in a rain of cosmic fire unless they let him build a giant wall to protect them. “I am the only one. Trust me,” says Trump. “I can build a wall around your homes that nothing will penetrate.”
In 2018m, Rob wrote this post about it for our blog. I didn’t remember the story until he mentioned it today.
From Rob, 10/2/2018:
I see that PBS has a special tonight, Oct. 2, called Trump Showdown, a deep analysis of Trump’s rise. When I heard about it, I couldn’t help recalling the publicity last year related to a 1950’s episode of a Western about the Texas Rangers called Trackdown that featured a con-man named Walter Trump who warned the townsfolk that the end of the world was coming and he is the only person who can save them by building a wall.
The episode so resonates in strange ways with the current scenario of politics that it seems as if the episode must have been altered to insert the name Trump as the con man. In other words, a con about a conman. But I’m glad to see that Snopes verified that the episode is in its original form and was not changed by CGS magic.
That makes it quite an incredible synchronicity. I’ve watched the entire episode a couple of times, and —spoiler alert—it ends with Trump being arrested.
Vanity Fair in February 2017 published a related article entitled, This Television Show Predicted Donald Trump…in 1958.
