It begins to dawn on me that the trouble with Trump may not be his behaving like a real estate huckster, reality TV star, faux populist or narcissist. Perhaps the daily distractions that mesmerize the media are not the disease but mere side effects or a deliberate campaign of disinformation.
The fights with Congress, with Democrats, with his own party, within the West Wing, the porn stars, the clownish appointees, the abuse of women and beating of wives, the saber rattling tweets, divisive polarizing tweets, the boasts and exaggerations and lies in urgent need of fact checking, the political incorrectness and boorish shattering of norms.
His followers obviously love the circus and his detractors are appalled. Result? For the first time since his election Trump’s approve/disapprove numbers are 50/50. He’s accustomed the country to the dysfunction and vulgarity, and the same people who believe reality TV is real now believe Trump is presidential.
But perhaps the truth is that Trump is what he always was, the minor mob boss of one of the lesser crime families. He is a thuggish con man who has betrayed, exploited and abused women, who violated labor laws, civil rights laws, tax laws.
In New York real estate it is customary to reach accommodations with the mob, corrupt politicians, various zoning and regulatory authorities, to pay baksheesh or strong-arm as needed, to fight with unions, and always to litigate in order to intimidate. And Trump excelled, even turning serial bankruptcy into a profit center where he got the profits and his creditors got the shaft.
His mentors and role models were his ruthless, amoral father and Roy Cohn, a lawyer so corrupt he was eventually disbarred but only after becoming so feeble he was no longer feared. Trump’s businesses were always based on a con, a promise of more than would be delivered — real estate with a mafioso’s idea of class, casinos, books touting secrets of success, Trump University, branding in which he got an income stream and the franchisees took the risks. His motto isn’t “Make America Great,” it’s “Never give a sucker an even break.”
And now he is presiding over the same sort of criminal operation he has all his life. He has brought this skill set to the presidency. He ran as a populist to garner the votes of the marks, but he has passed only laws useful to he and his fellow oligarchs including deregulation of their industries, a calling off of the watchdogs, a cutting of taxes for the business class, a cutting of benefits for the saps.
We should not really be surprised, therefore, that he is the first president to refuse to reveal his tax returns or to divest himself of business interests in order to avoid conflicts of interest. No wonder, his presidency is aimed at monetizing conflicts of interest.
Ivanka promotes her gewgaws and extracts favorable treatment from foreign governments. Jared’s sister pitches their real estate properties based on favorable government treatment of foreign buyers’ visa applications. Trump’s Washington hotel is the salon where supplicants gather to transact business with administration fixers. Mar-A-Lago boosts its annual fees, since it now offers members close proximity to the president, the better to lobby him. And these are all in plain sight. God knows what septic transactions are hidden beneath the surface.
Nor should it come as any surprise that, not since Teapot Dome, have so many presidential appointees crossed so many ethical and criminal red lines with impunity. Trump has populated his government with fellow pirates whose wealth is founded on pyramid schemes, leveraged buyouts, foreclosures, predatory lending, or who have served as tools of the oil and gas industry, fighting regulation and denying climate change.
In Trumpian fashion, they have used the government and the public purse for their own benefit, taking private planes to Wimbledon, the viewing of lunar eclipses, on European vacations and honeymoon trips, insisting on first class travel and security guards unavailable to mere Senators, allowing family members to profit from their positions, to use information from work for insider trading. In any other administration, these would be firing offenses. In Trump’s, they are emulation of the boss.
It is no accident Trump is surrounded by such creatures. They are his kind of guys and he the leader of the pack, both role model and enabler. Thanks to him, the cop is off the beat and anything goes. Public service is an opportunity to book private profits. Waste, fraud and abuse are the perquisites of power. With all branches of government in pliant Republican hands, and the public distracted by the bread and circuses, the looting has begun.