It's probably both, but leaning much more towards the grifting side of things. There's something about conservative politics in the US which encourages grifters and cons.

When my very Republican stepfather fell into dementia, I helped my mom monitor his mail so he'd stop spending so much money on things he didn't understand. It was a deluge of stuff every day. Often from groups I had never heard of who wanted money to stop Sharia law or stop the "war on Christmas" or whatever the big conservative cause was that day. And even the mainstream GOP got into the act. More than once, a FedEx envelope would show up with a plea that everything was doomed unless a check was overnighted. Once the GOP FedEx solicitation contained a letter accusing my stepfather of no longer being a member of the Republican Party, but he could clear up this misunderstanding by writing a check.