confidence man

In that way, Trump is a hybrid professional wrestling heel, reality TV star, preacher, TV pitchman and confidence man fake billionaire, a carnie, and messiah father figure and lover.

Prosecutors, though, said Tunstall’s behavior was “tantamount to the historic traveling confidence man, pitching a shingle in a new community until discovery, and then moving on to engage in similar fraudulent conduct.”

Indeed, Trump offers an almost "ideal" or typical example of the cult leader and confidence man: He is an apparent narcissist and sociopath, profoundly Machiavellian and with no moral core or fundamental decency.

The definitive account of the confidence man Haberman portrays is decades away.

And Dr. Ike, as he was known, is a charismatic and especially dangerous type of confidence man because he has a medical degree.