In early November, just days before the presidential election, Donald Trump received the endorsement of a figure who normally stays out of national politics: Salvatore “Sammy the Bull” Gravano, a former hit man and deputy boss of the Gambino crime family. In 1991, as part of a deal with the federal government to testify against his former mob boss John Gotti, Gravano confessed to 19 murders. But there is enough reason to believe that Gravano is responsible for even more murders. Speaking in favor of Trump, Gravano said“I’ll call him a gangster. We need a thug.”
Gravano’s imprimatur might be dismissed as fancy news if it weren’t for the fact that Trump is actually assembling a government of gangsters. Trump himself is a repeat offender who was convicted of several felonies by a New York court earlier this year and has been the subject of multiple legal investigations. Now that he’s won the presidency for a second term, Trump has almost certainly escaped legal jeopardy — a sad fact that also strengthens his hold over those who love him for being an anti-establishment rebel. The criminal who outsmarts the system has long been a folkloric archetype that speaks to the universal reality that people often hate the legal system and the political establishment.
Gravan’s praise for the incoming president is a testament to the single best book on Trumpism, Jon Gantz’s When the watch brokewhich uses John Gotti’s popularity among some New Yorkers during his trial in the 1990s as an example of the anti-establishment sentiment that eventually spilled over into Trumpism. (In fairness, I must admit that Ganz is a friend, and he does thank me profusely in his book for the help I have given. But the quality of the book is such that I would praise it even if Ganz was a sworn enemy).
Trump’s MAGA movement is often compared to authoritarian political trends such as fascism or Peronism. But the Mafia is a more apt point of comparison for Trump, who was able to see Cosa Nostra up close thanks to his lawyer and mentor Roy Cohn, who was also adviser to mafia bosses like Paul Castellano (Gotti’s predecessor as head of the Gambino family) and Anthony “Fat Tony” Salerno. As a real estate developer, Trump had repeat business relations with the mafiosi, who have been in control for a long time aspects of construction in New York.
Trump operates like a mob boss, surrounding himself with family members and loyal supporters, valuing loyalty above all else, and practicing a transactional politics of favors and deals with little respect for legal norms.
On Saturday, Trump appointed Charles Kushner, the father-in-law of Trump’s daughter Ivanka, to the position of ambassador to France. In 2005, Kushner was convicted of a number of crimes, including tax evasion and witness tampering. One of his crimes was particularly heinous and decorated. According to the Associated Press reportsAfter he learned that his brother-in-law was cooperating with a federal investigation into his business affairs, Kushner “hired a prostitute to lure his brother-in-law, then arranged a meeting in a motel room in New Jersey, recorded by a hidden camera and a recording sent by his own a man’s sister, wife.” In 2020, in the final days of his first term, Trump pardoned Kushner.
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In addition to Kushner, Trump’s circle included friends and former advisers many who broke the law: Steve Bannon, Roger Stone, Michael Flynn, Paul Manafort and Allen Weiselberg. And in the new administration he’s forming, Trump has shown a particular fondness for those involved in or accused of sex crimes.
U American AvenueMaurina Tkatik provided A chilling list of Trump officials accused of or guilty of horrific wrongdoing:
The alleged education minister is married to a man whose former co-worker claims he forced her to have sex with a friend within an hour and a half of him defecated on her head. Presumptive Commerce Secretary preemptively sued his former aide in 2018 after her lawyer threatened to release an “ugly” SMS at 2 am she received from him and his wife. Explanation of the proposed Director of Health and Human Services to grope with force former nanny’s chest while holding her hostage in the kitchen pantry was that he “had a very, very turbulent youth”; he was 46 years old at the time. The White House efficiency czar is currently the defendant in a purported class action lawsuit filed by eight former staffers who to accuse he perpetrated an “Animal House” work environment with “rampant sexual harassment” and paid a quarter of a million dollars to a flight attendant who says he dressed down and asked her to touch his mangy penis in exchange for a gift of a horse.
And, of course, the supposed defense minister was accused of raping a woman who was tasked with monitoring what she described to police as his “creepy vibe” after a Republican women’s conference where he was the keynote speaker, just a month after the birth of his fourth child with a woman who was not his wife. time
If Abraham Lincoln created, in the words of historian Doris Kearns Godwin, “a team of rivals” in his cabinet, Trump is creating a team of sexual predators, himself the main villain.
Why did the American people elect a government of thugs and predators? Perhaps one reason is that crime and government are not that far apart, especially in an age of elite impunity. Think of all the people with more political power than Trump who have avoided prosecution: the officials in the George W. Bush administration who peddled the war of lies and created the torture regime at Guantanamo Bay and secret prisons around the world, or the bankers who destroyed the global economy in the 2008 crash . Both Republican and Democratic administrations have made a deliberate decision that these crimes will never go unpunished. President Biden’s pardon of his son Hunter only adds to the sense of impunity for the rich and well-connected.
Explaining the popular protests in support of the mob boss in the 1990s, Gantz notes that there was a widespread crisis of legitimacy at the time that remade even those who had previously considered themselves a bastion of legal respectability, such as prosecutor Rudy Giuliani.
According to Ganz:
When New York turned its lonely eyes to John Gotti, it yearned for a different kind of authority figure than the type Giuliani had represented up to that point. It did not really want law, universalism, meritocracy, rationality, bureaucracy, good government, reform, blind justice and all that nonsense. Institutions failed, the welfare state failed, markets failed, there was no justice, only racketeering and the mob: the mob didn’t want the G-man dutifully following the rules, and he didn’t want to participate in the “gorgeous mosaic” (New York City Mayor David Dinkins); it wanted protection, a godfather, a boss.
In 1993, Giuliani went from politician of law and order to servant of mob violence, his favorite mob being the NYPD, whose riots and disregard for the law he encouraged. Giuliani’s transformation foreshadowed the transformation of the United States.
In Francis Ford Coppola’s classic gangster film Godfatherthere is scene where new mob boss Michael Corleone defends his family to his girlfriend Kay Adams:
MICHAS
My father is no different than any other influential person.
(after Kay laughs)
Any person who is responsible for other people. Like a senator or a president.KAY
Do you know how naive you sound, Michael?MICHAS
why?KAY
Senators and presidents don’t kill people…MICHAS
Oh, who’s naive, Kay?
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If you’re horrified by Trump’s thug government, think about all the crimes the ruling class has gotten away with over the past few years, and then ask yourself, “Who’s naive?” Really who?
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