Donald Trump’s latest act seems ripped from the American literary canon. In addition to running for the highest office (again) and fighting some 90 criminal charges in court, the former president is now hawking a $60 copy of the King James Bible that also includes copies of the U.S. Constitution, the Bill of Rights, the Declaration of Independence, the Pledge of Allegiance, and the “handwritten chorus” to the country song “God Bless the USA,” by Lee Greenwood. (Naturally, it is known as the “God Bless the USA Bible.”)

This Bible has been the subject of yearslong controversy for, among other things, promoting “the idea of the United States as both a Christian Nation and a nation especially favored by God,” as experts interviewed by Slate’s Molly Olmstead have put it.

But Trump clearly hopes to expand the product’s niche market of customers (those who buy Bibles as political identity statements) and to receive royalties—along with fees for the use of his likeness—along the way.

In doing so, he has stepped into a role American film and literature have long associated with grift. A rhetorical cousin to the traveling snake oil salesman or the villainous priest, the fictional Bible salesman has, through books and movies, become the metaphorical manifestation of the biblical warnings against those who “peddle the word of God for profit” (2 Corinthians 2:17, NIV). Real-world embezzling Bible salesman William P. Evans (who was jailed in 1931, after a Bible publisher received dozens of complaints about his activities) may have been one source of........

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