(Spoiler alert: This article gives away plot twists and endings of The Music Man; The Sting; Dirty, Rotten Scoundrels; and House of Games).

Everyone recognizes the con artist archetype in American cinema and culture. From Professor Harold Hill (played by Robert Preston) in The Music Man, to Henry Gondorff (Paul Newman) and Johnny Hooker (Robert Redford) in The Sting, this character is usually an iconoclastic rogue beating the system with cunning and guile. We root for these con men (and occasionally women), even though they draw innocent “marks” into their confidence (thus the name), in order to fleece them. Sometimes their cons appear harmless. In The Music Man, Hill convinces the townsfolk that there’s trouble in River City, that starts with “T” and rhymes with “P,” which stands for pool. The only way to protect the town’s youth from exposure to pool halls is by forming a marching band. The citizens happily give Hill their money to buy band uniforms and instruments, even though neither are to be had. In the film’s ending, uniforms and instruments magically appear, and equally as magical, the kids know how to play them. It is all harmless fun, where no one ends up getting hurt.

In other con-artist tales, the marks who get swindled are very bad people who get what’s coming to them. At the beginning of The Sting, Hooker and his partner Luther perpetrate a short con unknowingly on a bag man for a mobster. They give the man money (or at least he thinks they’ve given him money) to deliver to its rightful owner. But we learn that the bag man takes off in a cab in the opposite direction than the rightful owner. So, they’ve conned an immoral person. Then, Gondorff and Hooker set up the elaborate long con of the mobster himself, Doyle Lonnegan, who oversees a large, criminal enterprise, and casually orders Luther’s murder. As in many of these American myths, the film is a morality play in which the con artists, employing unconventional and even illegal means, exact justice against victims who are the actual evil-doers. Again, good folks don’t get hurt.

Of course, real con artists have practiced their art on real, flesh-and-blood victims throughout American history. On the frontier they sold snake oil. In the twentieth century, they sold swampland in Florida, and later junk bonds. On the internet they range from the Nigerian Prince asking that you hold their funds in exchange for a handsome fee, to all manner of phishing practitioners. Rather than loveable rogues, they are predators preying on people’s greed, yes, but also on their gullibility or innocence.

Out of this rich history of con artists, both of movie heroes and their ignominious real life counterparts, comes the greatest grifter of all-time: Donald J. Trump. His begins with a completely fabricated origin story. In his telling, upon Donald’s coming-of-age, his father, a fabulously wealthy developer, gives him a “modest” stake of $1 million. Let’s set aside for a moment that for most of us, a million bucks is an enormous amount of money that we could only wish we’d received when setting out in the world. The more important point is that the story is simply a lie. According to the 2018 New York Times expose by Pulitzer Prize winning journalists Susanne Craig and Russ Buettner, Trump’s dad gave him in excess of $400 million over time to prop up Trump’s failing business ventures or rescue Trump from financial ruin. As detailed in Craig and Buettner’s book, Lucky Loser, virtually every business Trump touched turned to shit (a sort of Midas-touch in reverse). Even after systematically stiffing his contractors and employees, Trump could not even make a go of running casinos (the ownership of which is generally likened to a license to print money), running several of them into bankruptcy. Over time, his so-called empire was built on a mountain of debt, requiring that he be bailed out by daddy, or other creditors. As just one example of his lack of business acumen, Trump bluffed his way into purchasing a team in the upstart United States Football League (USFL), using purely borrowed money. He then bullied his fellow owners into a series of awful decisions, such as moving the spring schedule to the fall, and into direct competition with the NFL. Almost singularly due to Trump’s bad judgment, the USFL collapsed in short order. His grifts have run far and wide, from Trump University to Trump Steaks. His first presidential campaign and inaugural were set up as grifts to profit Trump.

Somehow through it all, Trump sold the big con that he was a great businessman. The truth is that since the building of Trump Tower, one of his only true accomplishments, his greatest source of wealth has been The Apprentice, a television show in which he ironically played an enormously successful businessman. As Craig and Buettner explain, the producers of the show first approached a number of actual titans of business, all of whom demurred. They finally got to the bottom of the barrel with you-know-who. When they went to meet The Donald at his offices in Trump Tower, they were shocked to see a barely staffed workplace, with shabby and worn furnishings. The offices were so pitiful that the producers had to build a TV set of “the boardroom” that was used on the show. Utilizing all the magic of show business, they created the illusion of a successful business tycoon. After Trump’s election, at least one of the show’s creators lamented having created this mythological figure who rode that fiction all the way to the White House.

To be successful, almost all movies in the con-artist genre have to do more than tell the con artist’s story. In some way they need to con the audience itself. In The Sting, we believe that Hooker has sold out Gondorff to the Feds, and that they both get shot in the climax. Only at the very end do we learn that we too have been conned, and we love it. In Dirty, Rotten Scoundrels, (inspired by the classic To Catch a Thief) Michael Caine and Steve Martin play con men on the Riviera competing to swindle a gullible heiress out of her fortune. At the end we learn that she is the actual con artist, who has conned the con men (and of course the audience). Again, no one really gets hurt; Caine and Martin get their comeuppance. Throughout David Mamet’s House of Games, we think we are watching Mike (Joe Mantegna) teach a psychologist (Lindsay Crouse) about the short con, such as convincing someone waiting at a Western Union office to give away money being wired to him. Ultimately we learn that yet again we have been the mark; the whole movie is actually a long-con on the psychologist.

All of which brings me to the point: Liberals have for years shaken their heads in disbelief, wondering how Trump could have conned his supporters. How could they be fooled into believing that he was a great businessman? That he knew how to run our government? That he cared anything at all about their problems, let alone do anything to solve them? That he wasn’t using the presidency merely as a vehicle to line his own pockets with scores of new grifts? (Can I sell you some Trump action figures or cryptocurrency?!) And after the utter disaster of his first term, his impeachments, criminal prosecutions and his felony conviction, how could even more of them vote him back for a second? Apparently the adage of “fool me once…” has no application. Democrats have surmised that those conned simply refuse to admit, maybe even to themselves, that they’ve been had by the ultimate charlatan.

Well, the Left has it all wrong. Here’s the plot twist: A very large portion of Trumpers know full well that he is a grifter, and that they are being conned! They simply don’t care. To them, he is one of those loveable rogues we see in the movies. And in his own deceptive and often criminal way, he is sticking it to the real bad guys, who in their eyes are the liberal elites. In fact, some even enjoy being conned, just like the audiences watching those movies where the viewers themselves are the ones being fooled. And so really the Left was the true mark of the long con the whole time, tricked into thinking Trump’s supporters were being bamboozled when in reality they openly embrace his schemes to win the culture war they want so badly. The tragedy, of course, is that Trump is not a celluloid con artist. He is one of those very real ones, who cause very real harm to very real people. Now he is back on the stage where he can inflict maximum damage. When this horror movie finally ends, we cannot simply get up and leave the theater. We will have to live with the catastrophic and long-lasting results.