It has passed into perceived wisdom that Trump runs his operation like a Mafia boss. Yet that doesn't stop the talking heads or so-called pundits from acting like they've come up with a new and original idea every time they trot out that shopworn comparison.
And almost every time they do, they compare Trump to John Gotti, aka the Teflon Don for all the charges that bounced off him or the Dapper Don for the expensive yet cheesy-looking suits he wore. That's about right because in the end Gotti was a publicity-hungry asshole who got put away when his main man and top lieutenant, Sammy “The Bull” Gravano, ratted him out, leaving Gotti to die of throat cancer in prison in 2002. I hope they buried him in one of those bad suits.
Gotti was as far from a real old-time don as you can get, just as Trump is as far from a real president as you can get. Can you imagine Lucky Luciano strutting around the front pages of the New York Daily News or the New York Post like Gotti? Hell, Meyer Lansky wasn't even a made guy and he and Luciano and a few others laid the groundwork for what became La Cosa Nostra. And they stayed so far back in the shadows that they were almost invisible. These guys were criminal geniuses.
The only person who considers Trump a genius is Trump, and so far he has, it must be admitted, shown a real genius for destruction, lying, general ugliness, terror management, and the most creative comb-over since the invention of Spray-Net. His hair could be one of Marie Antoinette's hats.
Another significant difference is that Trump is a natural-born coward, while you don't get to be a big Mafioso without some bodies to your credit. Even Lansky, who favored brains over brawn, was said to have iced people on the way up. Trump, on the other hand, is even afraid to fire anybody face to face (despite the scripted “Apprentice”), and just the idea of Vietnam scared him into a bone-spur fantasy.
Still, Trump is like a Mafioso in stocking his administration with as many straight-up criminals as he can find. Most of them would steal the pennies off a dead man's eyes and Trumpworld to them is an endless bonanza of corruption and self-enrichment. And, like many of their Mafia counterparts, a record number of these sleazes got pinched and are either doing time or waiting to do time, including Paul Manafort, even if he just got a judicial Powerball jackpot.
Another thing: how many Mafiosi die free as old men? Name one. Even the big guys either get put away or assassinated. Nobody dies in office. Trump is still in office – so far. But he has as many committees, grand juries, and federal and state prosecutors digging into the plentiful dirt of his administration and businesses as there are flakes of dandruff on his blue suit lapels.
Another mob trope is the old “it's strictly business, nothing personal” when somebody has to go. With Trump it's all personal all the time. The dude must really hate himself to hate the rest of the world so deeply and openly. His last breath will be spent whispering, “Lock her up.”
He is indeed a gangster – a gangster of hate.
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