The most audacious con game in American political history is unfolding before our eyes, and the marks don’t even realize they’re being fleeced. Republicans have successfully courted working-class voters with promises of putting “America First” and bringing back good-paying jobs, only to govern with an agenda that systematically picks their pockets while enriching the wealthy elite they claim to oppose.

The GOP’s One Big Beautiful Bill represents the culmination of this betrayal—a reverse Robin Hood scheme that steals from the poor to give to the rich on a scale that would make medieval bandits blush. While Republican politicians wrap themselves in populist rhetoric about fighting for forgotten Americans, they’re quietly advancing plutocratic legislation that would literally take food out of the mouths of the families who voted for them.

Let’s examine what Republicans are actually proposing versus what they promised on the campaign trail. The Big Beautiful Bill would slash trillions in federal revenue over the next decade through tax cuts that overwhelmingly benefit the wealthy and corporations. To help them pay for this massive giveaway to their donor class, Republicans are proposing the largest cuts to safety net programs in American history.

The bill would gut Medicaid, stripping health care coverage from millions of Americans. It would hack away billions in spending from SNAP, the largest cuts to food assistance in the program’s history, threatening to take grocery money away from more than 40 million Americans. These aren’t abstract policy debates; these are programs that disproportionately serve the very working families that have increasingly turned to the Republican Party since 2016.

The cruel mathematics are simple: Republicans are asking working-class Americans to pay for tax cuts they’ll never see by surrendering the health care and food assistance their families depend on. It’s wealth redistribution in reverse, flowing from kitchen tables in Ohio to boardrooms in Manhattan.

Meanwhile, President Donald Trump‘s tariff obsession represents another layer of this elaborate swindle. Tariffs function as a regressive sales tax that hits working families hardest, raising the cost of everything from groceries to clothing while doing nothing to bring back the manufacturing jobs Republicans promise.

The tariff con is particularly insidious because it’s sold as economic nationalism while actually functioning as a tax increase on American consumers. When import prices rise, those costs get passed directly to families already struggling with high prices. A working mother in Michigan pays the same tariff rate on children’s clothing as a billionaire in Beverly Hills, but that extra cost represents a much larger share of her family’s budget.

Even worse, tariffs are inherently temporary policies that can be reversed by the next administration. No rational business is going to make long-term investments in American manufacturing based on such transient policies. The temporary nature of tariffs makes them completely ineffective at achieving their stated goal of reshoring jobs, while the regressive tax burden they create is immediate and real.

This represents a fundamental betrayal of the political realignment that brought working-class voters to the GOP in the first place. Republicans correctly identified that globalization had left behind millions of Americans who never went to college, particularly in manufacturing communities that saw their jobs shipped overseas. Trump’s 2016 victory was built on promising these forgotten Americans that someone would finally fight for them.

The working-class Americans who trusted Republicans to have their backs are now set to learn a painful lesson about the difference between campaign promises and governing priorities. They voted for politicians who claimed to understand their struggles, only to discover that those same politicians view them as expendable once the votes are counted.

The tragedy is that there are genuine policy solutions that could help working families without requiring them to sacrifice their health care and food security. Strategic corporate tax reforms that reward companies for hiring American workers could actually bring back jobs without imposing regressive tariffs. Investments in infrastructure and education could enhance American competitiveness without gutting safety net programs.

But such policies would require Republicans to choose between helping their voters and enriching their donors. The Big Beautiful Bill makes clear which side they’ve chosen, and it isn’t the working families who believed their promises of economic populism.

The great MAGA swindle is approaching its climax. The only question is whether working-class voters will recognize the con before it’s too late, or whether they’ll continue to trust politicians who view them as useful idiots rather than constituents worthy of respect. The bill they’re being asked to pay—in lost health care, food assistance, and economic security—is far steeper than anything they bargained for when they cast their votes for change.

Nicholas Creel is an associate professor of business law at Georgia College & State University.

The views expressed in this article are the writer’s own.