If, as suggested in my previous post, Trump is less like a politician or run-of-the-mill capitalist than like a mobster, such as fellow native of Queens John Gotti, then many of his odder quirks begin to become explicable.
He hates the press, for example, except for the tame segments run by fellow oligarchs who are not interested in uncovering facts but in manipulating opinion, the better to publicize those who can help them and attack those they regard as enemies. So, Trump is cozy with Rupert Murdock’s Fox, the Mercer’s Breitbart, and protected from his own sleazy tabloid behavior by friendly tabloid CEO David Pecker.
Conversely, he is perpetually irate over investigative reporting by “The Bezos Amazon Post,” “The Failing New York Times” and “Fake News CNN”. What mobster wants inky scribblers poking their noses where they don’t belong? And clearly, Trump is afraid they will report actual news, defined by Bill Moyers as follow: “What people want to keep hidden. Everything else is publicity.”
If Trump, like any mobster, fears what the press might discover about his activities, he is really terrified of the forces of criminal justice. Friends and foes alike have been baffled by words and actions that have expressed contempt for the FBI, judges, courts, prosecutors and the intelligence community.
Most presidents, especially Republicans, are gung-ho fans of law and order and national security. Critics have supposed Trump’s fury over Jeff Sessions recusing himself, his firing of Comey, and the bashing of Rosenstein, McCabe, and Mueller reveal a guilty mind and collusion with the Russians to steal the presidency. Maybe so.
But it’s nothing new. Trump has spent almost 50 years litigating, bending if not breaking laws, delaying trials endlessly, refusing to settle until all other means have been exhausted, then paying the minimum and admitting nothing. On this subject he should be taken at his word. He really does have contempt for justice.
He is used to junk yard dogs like Roy Cohn crushing his enemies or Michael Cohen paying off bimbos and plaintiffs. Now that he is the boss of America, Trump has been stunned to learn that the Attorney General, the head of the FBI and federal judges won’t serve as his employees, as fixers.
In the wider world, foreign policy experts have been stunned that Trump has treated our traditional allies like dirt and long-standing agreements as negotiable or meaningless scraps of paper. Is this populism, nationalism, or the scorn of a mob boss for nickel and dime public servants who are at the mercy of voters, who stupidly play by the rules, and whose net worth is a paltry fraction of his own?
He has saved his regard for his peers, crooked kleptocrats and oligarchs who grab what they want and spit on the rule book. So, he’s praised Duterte of the Philippines for his strength in combatting drug dealers by personally assassinating malefactors. He’s overlooked Erdogan of Turkey’s scorn for democratic and NATO niceties and his jailing of political foes and dissident journalists.
For Trump, such thuggery makes them birds of a feather. As does the fact that somehow the head of Turkey has managed to pile up a fortune of around $200 million, matched by a like amount in the hands of the famiglia – his daughter and sons.
But of course, his most lavish praise and deference have been reserved for the real Dons. First, Ji Xinping, a lifelong “civil servant,” who has returned China to greater autocracy and, on a salary of $10,000, has amassed a net worth of at least $1.5 billion while his extended family controls billions more.
Not bad, but a mere bagatelle compared to Vladimir Putin, the capo di tutti capi. If he has political enemies or media critics, they die. His oligarchic friends kick back their profits to him. His oligarchic rivals are striped of their wealth and banished. His press is good since he controls the press, and his net worth is reckoned at between $40 and $200 billion, making Trump’s putative $3-4 billion look like chump change. Putin is what Trump wants to be when he grows up.
Is the feeling mutual, or is Trump a useful idiot? When Trump’s bankruptcies made him toxic to conventional lenders, Russian money came to his rescue. When he needed tenants, Russian oligarchs anxious to launder money via real estate investments bought into his buildings in New York, Panama, and elsewhere. When he was seeking office, Russian hackers offered him dirt on Hillary. She was his enemy, but also an enemy of Putin’s.
So, what do you think, would he turn down any of these boons, or would he, like Bonasera seeking justice, kiss the ring of the Godfather? Even though he surely knew what such a deal meant, that “someday, and that day may never come, I’ll call on you to do a service for me.”
And that day having come, is it any surprise that he would repay the debt? So, the party platform regarding assistance to Ukraine was changed, sanctions against Putin were quashed, despite mounting evidence of cyberwar Trump has denied it all and defended Putin, and has refused to launch an effort to make sure such election fraud never takes place again?
Even a minor league Don like Trump knows the rules of the game – loyalty and omerta. And he knows that Putin is more to be feared then the press, the law, or the voters. Trump also knows that he may need Putin’s help again, in 2018 and 2020. What he doesn’t seem to know is that he, personally, his election is Putin’s most destructive act of war against the United States. But Putin knows, and in Trump’s elegant words, “is laughing his ass off in the Moscow.” As for his fellow Americans, not so funny.