(Dobbs) Is It Too Much To Call Trump A Gangster?
It might fall to a porn star to save America from the gangster tactics of Donald Trump.
If Al Capone were going on trial today, we wouldn’t be surprised if the judge told his lawyers that in the interest of protecting witnesses, the lawyers would have to refer to each one with a pseudonym, rather than identifying them by name. Otherwise, a gangster like Capone would do everything he could to intimidate them.
If John Gotti were going on trial today, we wouldn’t be surprised if the judge issued a gag order to forbid him from publicly attacking the prosecutors trying to put him behind bars, let alone from attacking their families. Otherwise, a gangster like Gotti would do everything he could to discourage and discredit them.
If Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman were going on trial today, we wouldn’t be surprised if the judge, mindful of the Mexican drug lord’s reputation for retribution, warned him again and again of the punishments he’d suffer for further misbehavior. Otherwise, a gangster like El Chapo would do everything he could to disrupt the trial.
In the interest of orderly trials, in the interest of justice, these are the kinds of things judges sometimes have to do to muzzle defendants if, left to their own devices, they would not follow the rules. That’s why it’s so appalling that these are the kinds of things judges in New York, in Washington, in Florida, and in Georgia also are having to do with Donald Trump. It’s appalling because if you didn’t know who was on trial and only heard the list of criminal charges and the measures judges have been forced to take to ensure peace and protection for all involved, you’d think you were hearing about another dangerous gangster being brought to account for his crimes.
Maybe you are.
Trump’s first trial starts today, ignominiously making him the first ex-president in history to face criminal charges in court. The indictment? Illegally falsifying business records during his first presidential campaign to conceal hush money payments to a porn star. With his history of intimidating witnesses and attacking prosecutors and disrupting proceedings, several judges have had to issue orders to try— try— to keep him in line. True to form, he’s not embarrassed— he said a week ago that it would be “my great honor” to go to jail for violating the gag order imposed on him in this first of several pending criminal trials. And, no surprise after actually comparing himself last month to Jesus Christ, he also said, “I will gladly become a Modern Day Nelson Mandela.”
For the record, Nelson Mandela was a political prisoner for 27 years, most of it at hard labor, chopping limestone rocks in a prison quarry.
But even if Trump doesn’t have the dignity to be embarrassed, the rest of us ought to be. This immoral, dishonest, undemocratic bully will be the nominee of one of this great nation’s two political parties— for the third time now— to return to the White House. He got to this pinnacle with the support of tens of millions of Americans who can’t see this this guy for who he is.
Even worse, many can, but genuflect anyway. As Princeton sociology professor Kim Lane Scheppele told The Washington Post in a story titled “This Is What You Get When Fear Mixes With Money,” political leaders like Trump “can threaten businesses with tax audits, more regulation, even criminal charges, unless they give in to the autocrats’ demands.” The Post story gave several illustrations of supporters who berated him, but then buckled. “Billionaire and G.O.P. megadonor Nelson Peltz called the insurrection a ‘disgrace’ and expressed remorse for voting for Donald Trump: ‘I’m sorry I did that.’ In early March, nonetheless, Peltz hosted a breakfast meeting at his Palm Beach mansion with Trump and such billionaire Trump backers as Steve Wynn and Isaac Perlmutter.”
When principles meet profits, profits sometimes win.
So is it too much to call Trump a gangster? Consider the caliber of the cohorts to whom he granted clemency as his final acts in the Oval Office before he fled to Mar-a-Lago. You could call them part of his MAGA mafia. His short-lived National Security Advisor Michael Flynn, who’d been criminally convicted of lying to the FBI. His longtime advisor Roger Stone, criminally convicted of witness tampering and obstruction. Stephen Bannon, his White House strategist, criminally convicted of conspiracy to commit money laundering and wire fraud. His 2016 campaign chair Paul Manafort, criminally convicted of conspiracy against the United States.
To say nothing of his disbarred consigliere Rudy Giuliani.
They only got Capone for tax evasion and violating the laws of Prohibition.
Trump couldn’t do anything to help his company’s CFO Allen Weisselberg stay out of jail because Weisselberg’s convictions, for financial fraud and perjury, were in a state court, not federal. In fact he just went back to jail last week— to New York’s infamous Rikers Island— for five more months on the perjury conviction.
But if Trump couldn’t buy Weisselberg’s freedom, he could buy his loyalty. As he has for his two co-defendants in the classified documents criminal case in Florida, Trump paid his ex finance chief’s legal bills and, when Weisselberg had to resign from the Trump Organization, Trump gave him a $2-million severance. In return, Trump’s faithful moneyman has never ratted on his old boss.
In the mafia world, that loyal code of silence is called “omertà.”
And of course if he gets back to the White House, Trump has promised to “free” seditionists from January 6th. He continues to call them “hostages” and claims they are “wrongfully imprisoned.” He wouldn’t set every one of them free, he says, “because a couple of them, probably they got out of control.” So in Donald Trump’s self-serving universe, that’s what’s left of the armed attempt to obstruct the peaceful transfer of power: a couple of rioters who “probably got out of control.”
Trump uses language that begs the comparison to gangsters. He has called Michael Cohen, his one-time lawyer who got imprisoned for his involvement in the same case for which Trump goes on trial today, “a rat.” After his former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley spoke out against him, he called for Milley to be executed for his conduct in office. He promised last November— on Veterans Day no less— to “root out the communists, Marxists, fascist and the radical-left thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our country.”
I can almost hear Al Capone and John Gotti and El Chapo, albeit in a different context, threatening their enemies the very same way.
This cartoon underscores the embarrassment we all should feel for letting a man with the characteristics of a gangster even come close to getting back to the White House.
It should be the insurrection charges, the election interference charges, the top secret documents charges, that bring him down. Those were affronts to our republic. But because of all his maneuvers to impede and delay his trials, it might fall to a porn star to save America, even before voters can, from the gangster tactics of Donald Trump. I’m rooting for her.
Over more than five decades Greg Dobbs has been a correspondent for two television networks including ABC News, a political columnist for The Denver Post and syndicated columnist for Scripps newspapers, a moderator on Rocky Mountain PBS, and author of two books, including one about the life of a foreign correspondent called “Life in the Wrong Lane.” He also co-authored a book about the seminal year for baby boomers, called “1969: Are You Still Listening?” He has covered presidencies, politics, and the U.S. space program at home, and wars, natural disasters, and other crises around the globe, from Afghanistan to South Africa, from Iran to Egypt, from the Soviet Union to Saudi Arabia, from Nicaragua to Namibia, from Vietnam to Venezuela, from Libya to Liberia, from Panama to Poland. Dobbs has won three Emmys, the Distinguished Service Award from the Society of Professional Journalists, and as a 37-year resident of Colorado, a place in the Denver Press Club Hall of Fame.
Excellent piece, Greg. Thank you. Heather Cox Richardson, yesterday, also wrote about T’s mafia don approach to “enforcing loyalty” among wealthy businessmen and politicians…. Sounds decidedly like his master, V Putin.
Great piece, Greg. I wasn’t exactly sure what the indictment was, but you spelled it out quite clearly herein. It doesn’t seem like a difficult task for the prosecution. I’m certain that I could go into that courtroom this morning, in my pajamas, and convince the jury that then candidate Trump paid off a porn star to keep her quiet! So why am I worried about the outcome of this trial!?