flimflam

America was largely founded on greed, exemplified by land-grabs, gold rushes and real estate flimflams, not to mention the institution of slavery.

He's almost certainly lying about that, of course, but this rhetorical flimflam is still quite revealing.

When the then-president tried to flimflam him with misleading statistics at one point, Swan replied with precision, detail and follow-up.

“They were dying off,” Whitehead writes, “the old crooks and hustlers and flimflam artists, or upstate after an ill-advised scheme to cover medical bills or six months’ back pay or new teeth.”

But in characteristic fashion, she’s refused to acknowledge defeat, filing a lawsuit — since thrown out of court — and widely peddling false claims about voter fraud and other conspiratorial flimflam.