Just about every time Donald Trump cuts a deal, someone’s getting scammed—students, workers, charity donors, veterans, piano makers, taxpayers, models, you name it. The lone vice presidential debate of 2016 was at bottom a reminder that his selection of a running mate was no exception.

The only question now is who the true marks are: Trump’s supporters, or Mike Pence’s allies in the elite ranks of the Republican Party?

For an hour and a half on Tuesday night, the Republican Party’s vice presidential nominee parried with Democrat Tim Kaine as if Trump were as mild mannered as Mitt Romney and as doctrinaire as Paul Ryan. He shook his head in disbelief when Kaine faithfully recited Trump’s litany of offenses—his racist and sexist attacks on political and legal enemies, his affinity for autocrats and dictators, his promises to deport all immigrants and ban Muslim travel and immigration—as if Kaine had just invented them.

Pence represented his ticket by mentioning Trump’s name as infrequently as possible and glossing over all the ways Trump threatens Republican Party dogma. He failed, repeatedly, to defend Trump when Kaine prodded him to. It’s possible to interpret Pence’s approach, as some analysts have, as a kind of damage-mitigation strategy to preserve his viability to run for president in 2020. But we don’t even need to reach the question of Pence’s future ambitions to explain his performance. His evasions and deceptions are a big part of what’s propping up the rickety GOP union. Trump and Pence are either lying to voters about their platform reform or lying to officials in the Republican Party about it. If the truth were known, the union would fall apart.

The basic incompatibilities giving shape to the con have been clear for some time. In certain key ways, Trump is a standard issue Republican, exemplified by support for supply-side tax policy and opposition to environmental and financial regulation. But Trump shored up and grew his political base by promising to depart from GOP leadership objectives in key ways. He embarrassed party elites by excoriating amnesty and promoting a maximally hostile and restrictionist immigration policy. He has proposed abrogating major trade and defense treaties. And he’s rejected the idea that the largest federal retirement programs (Social Security and Medicare) should be shrunk and privatized, contravening decades of movement conservative orthodoxy.

