Donald Trump is perhaps the most successful version, ever, of an American archetype: the snake-oil salesman, the confidence man. He jumps from scam to scam, patching over the previous with a new one, avoiding accountability through shamelessness and belligerence. He claimed to be a self-made tycoon and an Artful Dealmaker, which people seemed to believe, despite the fact he could frequently be found hocking shitty steaks or swill vodka, until we learned he lost a billion dollars of his daddy's money over 10 years through terrible business deals and owes much of his standing to a multi-generational tax fraud scheme. Maybe we all should've internalized the message when we learned the famous Trump Tower boardroom from The Apprentice was built just for the reality show.

But, of course, the scams have continued in the White House. I'm old enough to remember when Mexico was going to pay for The Big, Beautiful Wall. Now, the president has seized American taxpayer money earmarked for the Pentagon in order to pay for it, an assault on the Constitution's separation of powers that has secured the blessing of the five guys on the Supreme Court who decide what the law is. The president rails against illegal immigration in dangerous terms, yet seemingly every week we learn more about just how many undocumented people he employed at his properties—or still does. During the campaign, he promised to balance the budget within five years. Instead, the deficit has ballooned to over $1 trillion in each of the last two years—close to double the $587 billion in President Obama's last year in office—thanks in part to a Republican tax bill that also turned out to be a gigantic scam.

What’s he selling this time? SAUL LOEB Getty Images

But there is no scam quite like one of Trump's core slogans: "AMERICA FIRST!" The most essential fraud of it is that the president's governing principle throughout his entire life has been TRUMP FIRST, an arrangement that frequently led to, say, stiffing hundreds of contractors and small businesses who did work for him. As president, it has led to him pursuing a sprawling web of foreign business ventures while making foreign policy on behalf of the United States, a blatant conflict of interest that could allow other governments to make American policy through his wallet. The list of countries in which Trump reportedly has interests includes Argentina, Azerbaijan, Bermuda, Brazil, Canada, China, Dominican Republic, Georgia, India, Indonesia, Ireland, Israel, Mexico, Panama, Philippines, Qatar, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Scotland, South Korea, St. Martin, St. Vincent, Turkey, United Arab Emirates, and Uruguay.

But courtesy of a House Oversight Committee report, commissioned by Democratic Chair Elijah Cummings and examined by ABC News, we have an even more clear-eyed view of the scam that is America First.

When candidate Donald Trump prepared to give a major energy speech during the 2016 campaign, one of his closest advisers provided a pre-speech review to senior United Arab Emirates officials...

Two weeks before Trump was scheduled to deliver the energy policy speech, Thomas Barrack, a California investment tycoon with extensive contacts in the Middle East and who later helped oversee Trump’s inauguration, provided a former business associate inside the United Arab Emirates with an advance copy of the candidate’s planned remarks. The associate then told Barrack he shared them with UAE and Saudi government officials, after which Barrack arranged for language requested by the UAE officials to be added to the speech with the help of Trump’s campaign manager at the time, Paul Manafort.

Thomas Barrack, the chair of Trump’s inaugural committee, greets Mike Pence on inauguration day. Tom Williams Getty Images

“This is the most likely final version of the speech. It has the language you want,” Manafort confirmed in an email to Barrack on the day of the speech, according to the report. Manafort has since gone to prison for financial crimes unrelated to his campaign work...

Trump traveled to North Dakota in May of 2016, having just clinched the Republican nomination for president. He intended to give a policy speech that would solidify his position on oil, gas and coal – an energy speech that would make clear he would prioritize American energy jobs over grand multi-national environmental pacts like the Paris climate agreement.

Trump called his approach an “America First” energy plan that would “make America wealthy again.”

ABC notes that the Saudis and Emiratis failed to get all the language they wanted in the America First speech, but they did get some: "We will work with our Gulf allies to develop a positive energy relationship as part of our anti-terrorism strategy." The investigation also did not establish that Trump was aware that his advisers were peddling his speech to foreign business contacts to influence. But why did they get input in the first place, particularly on a speech meant to tout America's coming energy independence from those very countries?

The most straightforward explanation is that America First is a lie, and that corruption pervaded the president's campaign, where advisers were working on behalf of foreign powers—in eventual National Security Adviser Michael Flynn's case, at least one—and everybody seemed to be trying to siphon cash off the venture. Flynn is now set to go to prison. Trump's lawyer and fixer, Michael Cohen, appeared to be running an unregistered lobbying shop selling access to the president. He's also now in jail, albeit for separate crimes. The deputy 2016 campaign chairman, Rick Gates, has also pled guilty. And of course, there's Paul Manafort.

The undercurrent of all this, one that few seem willing to grapple with, is that Trump has always run organizations that resemble a criminal syndicate and that he has brought this model to the White House. He does not attract ethical people because he has no use for them. He papers over his blatant monetization of the office with rhetoric like America First, a slogan favored by racists and xenophobes throughout the history of this country. In recent weeks, he has ramped up the attacks on various Enemies of color, because racial division is another essential instrument of the white plutocrat. What we'll all have to grapple with, assuming we survive this frontal assault on the republic, is that so many millions of our fellow citizens were ready, willing, and able to get conned.

Jack Holmes Politics Editor Jack Holmes is the Politics Editor at Esquire, where he writes daily and edits the Politics Blog with Charles P Pierce.

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