The article got it right about the Trumps: "As Charles P. Pierce said in Esquire last week, 'I swear, it's like we elected the Clampetts, if the Clampetts were grifters.'”
Ousted FBI Director James Comey believes President Donald Trump’s White
House operates like the mafia.
“What is happening now is not normal,” Comey wrote in his blockbuster memoir
A Higher Loyalty: Truth, Lies and Leadership, comparing his visit to Trump Tower with New York mafia social clubs he encountered throughout the 1980s and 1990s as a prosecutor.
“The silent circle of assent,” Comey added. “The boss in
complete control. The loyalty oaths. The us-versus-them worldview. The lying about all things, large and small, in service to some code of loyalty that put the organization above morality and above the truth.”
In his rise to power, Trump dominated Manhattan as a real estate developer tied to mobbed-up concrete companies;
banished GOP shapeshifter Steve Bannon reportedly collected
opposition research on the billionaire’s ties to organized crime.
From physical threats allegedly made against Stephanie Clifford to strong-arming D.C. players like Comey, mafia tactics followed Trump to Washington and entered national conversation thanks to investigative reporting on
Trump’s financial payouts.
“This is like a secret society that calls it’s own shots,” organized crime historian Christian Cipollini told Observer. “The Trump administration, despite reaching out to demographics everyone forgot about, has taken [the presidency] to a level where parameters of ethics don’t exist anymore.”
After bulldozing into Washington through a campaign priding loyalty above all else, helmed by a former manager charged with
money laundering by the FBI, Trump struggled to
consolidate his influence.
One specific gangster provides insight into the president’s firings and paranoia-hyped tweets: John Gotti, the notorious ringleader of the Gambino Crime family.
“There was a mob boss who was so defiant and flashy, it was the nail in the coffin,” explained Cipollini. “Gotti was not liked by the mob for what he did. Where I think Trump is hurting himself is not just with his detractors, he’s hurting within his own world.”
A Russia controlled by oligarchs tied to Vladimir Putin has upended democracy throughout Europe and the United States, and is being investigated by U.S. intelligence agencies for colluding alongside Trump’s campaign.
“Over the past 20 to 30 years alongside the rise of globalization, there’s been a surge of transnational organized crime groups,” concluded Deitche. “Along with that comes literal gangster states where these organized crime groups have become so powerful they’re influencing national elections in other countries. The relative ease to fly around the world and transmit things electronically and technologically has only strengthened their grip.”