Mobbed Up at the White House

AKA Stormy Daniels, on CBS "60 Minutes"

-- By Tom Phillips 

“That’s a beautiful little girl.  It’d be a shame if something happened to her mom.”  

With that quote from a thug in Las Vegas parking lot, Stephanie Clifford parted the curtains on the Trump White House and the family business.  It took a porn star, a businesswoman who understands how things are done, to reveal what we’re living with and how difficult it may be to extricate ourselves.  America, these people are mobbed up.  

All the characters are out of a B-version of “The Godfather.”  Starting at the bottom there’s the enforcer in the parking lot. Then the lawyer, who is “almost” one of the family, so much that he claims to have paid the lady out of his own pocket.  The sons and sons-in-law, their loyalty assured by their financial needs and their knowledge of what happens to rats and squealers. The daughter, a business and glamor asset, a “piece of ass” to her father.  The wealthy extended family with far-flung properties and criminal records.  The religious cover, in this case both Orthodox Judaism and Evangelical Christianity, with religious leaders silent in the face of rampant amorality.  And inside the White House, the mob wife, who bargained away her respectability for a wardrobe. The silent, sad child.  And then the man himself.  Not a Godfather but the grandson of a Godfather who ran brothels in the American West, son of a rapacious builder in the New York real estate market, trained from childhood to be “a King and a Killer.”  A businessman who evades taxes and stiffs contractors and charities alike, while cultivating an image as a philanthropist.  

I don’t know the mob, just “The Godfather.” But to me this is Godfather 4, the fantasy where the family moves to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.  Presidential power is the mobster’s ultimate American dream, second only to absolute rule, and we’ll get to that.  For now, as he promised, he runs the country the way he runs his business -- trashing rules and regulations, issuing promises and reversing them at will, borrowing and spending with no regard for who pays.  Privatization means skipping the middleman, giving family and friends direct access to the public purse.  Abroad, allies are used but never trusted, and the arrangement is mutual.  Enemies are useful for scapegoating and bullying.  War is normal, and useful to rally support. 

The greatest threat to America is not another war.  It is the global trend toward one-man authoritarian rule, entrenched now in Russia and China, spreading fast in Europe and Asia and coming most likely with the next transfer of power under the US Constitution.  Mobsters do not relinquish power peacefully.  His congratulations to Putin on the results of a fixed election and his applause for Xi Jinping’s accession to president for life are signs of what can happen here.  With sustained attacks on the right to vote and the credibility of the press, the groundwork has been laid for a challenge to any election results that do not please the leader.  His Trump card is his constitutional role as commander of the armed forces.  His Achilles heel is the loyalty of the military.

We are now in the situation of a banana republic:  the next transfer of power may well depend on whether the army obeys the president, or the constitution he is trying to trash.  As the first George Bush liked to say – and don’t you miss him? -- “stay tuned.” 

Copyright 2018 by Tom Phillips