Behavioural similarities between Don Trump and Don Corleone are increasingly hard to ignore, although some differences still persist.
For one thing, people were only expected to kiss Don Corleone’s hand. Then Don Trump is a loudmouthed bully who speaks in a language of insults and threats, whereas Don Corleone spoke softly but carried a big lupara.
Then again, Don Corleone made people an offer they couldn’t refuse, whereas Don Trump, for all his deal artistry, often makes them an offer they can’t possibly accept (or, due to his use of the English language, even understand).
Such as his current offer to destroy European exports with 50 per cent tariffs unless those smelly American-hating foreigners move their production stateside by 1 June. Now, I don’t know if Don Trump has ever visited a factory but, if he has, he must know it takes longer than a week for a manufacturing facility to up sticks and move across the ocean lock, stock and barrel.
Even without the benefit of first-hand experience, Don Trump must realise that what he is demanding is an impossibility. Hence his ultimatum isn’t so much an opening move in a negotiation as a blackmailing ploy.
“Okay, EU,” he seems to be saying, “you can’t do that, I guess. But what can you do for me, to wet my whistle? Gotta be something big or your exports will sleep with the fishes.”
EU Trade Commissioner Sefcovic replied the only way he could: “EU-US trade is unmatched and must be guided by mutual respect, not threats. We stand ready to defend our interests.”
That means both sides are going to the mattresses, you put our exports into a hospital, we’ll put yours into a morgue. As always, it’s the foot soldiers, in this case consumers, who’ll bear the brunt of hostilities. The cost of at least some of those tariffs will be passed on to them, but that’s not the only casualty they’ll suffer.
Markets all over the world have again headed south, as they always do when Don Trump starts blackmailing other countries. This means people are taking yet another hit on their savings, investments and pensions. Don Trump’s mafioso tactics will affect at least two-thirds of all Americans, which is roughly the proportion of the population involved in securities markets.
Add to this the long-suffering bond markets, and the picture gets even darker. Every time Don Trump practises his art of a blackmailing deal, investors get out of US government bonds. As a result, the US has to pay higher interest rates on her sovereign debt, and the country has already lost her top AAA credit rating.
Another similarity between Don Trump and Don Corleone is that both put the family above all else, although the latter’s understanding of the word went beyond just his next of kin. Both relied on their sons as the most trusted lieutenants.
Don Trump’s sons, Don Jr and Eric, are busily cultivating the fields he has ploughed. They are striking billion-dollar deals all over the Middle East, with office towers, hotels, golf courses and other facilities to be built – with the host countries picking up much of the costs.
Jared Kushner, married to Don Trump’s daughter Ivanka, has built a $5.5 billion empire (emirate?), mostly in the Middle East. He has thus done considerably better than Don Corleone’s son-in-law did (remember your Godfather?), and he has even managed to break through his partners’ zoological anti-Semitism. You Sheik mine, I’ll Sheik yours, is the order of the day, and never mind parochial animosity.
All those camel drivers know to stay on Don Trump’s good side. This they’ve proved over the past couple of weeks.
Don Trump visited that part of the world recently, and a most productive visit it was too, for the US possibly and in the distant future, for his family definitely and straight away. His sons were getting writer’s cramp signing all those deals on his behalf, and the Don himself got his whistle wetted to the tune of a $400-million jumbo jet, appointed in his favourite style, early King Farouk.
His regime in Israel had to be shunted aside, much to its capo’s indignation. But that capo has only himself to blame: where are his billion-dollar tokens of appreciation for Don Trump? Where is his rispetto?
Whenever Don Trump has to deal with foreigners, he acts in the Don Corleone mode. Bully those who can be bullied, pacify those who are too strong to bully, betray those he sees as insignificant, be comfortable only with his fellow mafiosi, even those hostile in the past. They speak the same language, go after the same quarry, and they don’t have the silly scruples of civilians.
Well, I think this metaphor has expanded to its outer limit. The trouble with President Trump is precisely that his fiefdom isn’t a mafia family, but a great Western country that’s the linchpin of the world order that emerged out of the Second World War.
Trump’s corrupt bungling leaves that world order in a maelstrom of chaos reigning in every walk of life: economy, defence, diplomacy, alliances. Under his aegis, America is rapidly running out of friends – his demonizing the country’s friends and allies as its enemies is turning out to be a self-fulfilling prophecy.
If the world doesn’t end up in an economic meltdown and a war of all against all, it’ll be in spite of Trump’s efforts, not thanks to them. This leaves only a few questions to ask, which is what I’ll do even though I don’t propose to have the answers.
One: How did a man like that ever end up as president of the United States?
Two: If he was the better option in two elections (and he was), what does it say about the current state of democracy in America and elsewhere?
Three: How can he continue to get away with corruption on such an epic scale? The MAGA lot made a huge brouhaha about the corruption of the Biden family, but his son Hunter only used his father’s position to help himself to the odd million or two. With Trump’s family, the scale is greater by orders of magnitude, and yet the word ‘impeachment’ hasn’t yet crossed anyone’s lips.
Four: is there any way of stopping Trump before he plunges the world into an unmitigated disaster, economic, military or both?
Five: and this one is ever so slightly facetious. Can Don Trump do the Brooklyn-Italian accent? As a native New Yorker, he should be able to without much trouble. That would be true to style.
As usual, Mr Boot, I am lost in admiration for your ability to hit the nail on its head whilst adopting the appropriate accent.
Thank you, I try. Having lived in the US for 15 years helps.
Sir, you wanted to type 400-million for the jet, instead of ‘billion’.
Thank you. Somehow one always thinks of billion wherever Trump is involved.
I’m sorry to say that I’ve never read any of the Godfather books or seen any of the films. But I’ve read some Byzantine history, and it seems to me that the Trump family is even worse than the Biden family in much the same way as the Isaurian dynasty was even worse than the Heraclian dynasty.
There are no immutable laws of history, but there are two historical tendencies that it would be unwise to bet against: that the good doesn’t last, and that the bad gets worse. Exceptions to these tendencies are uncommon enough to be reasonably called miraculous, and I don’t hope for many miracles during Mr Trump’s reign.
By the way, do you share my impression that Mr Trump gets his idea of what’s happening in the world and likely to happen next, not from professional expert intelligence reports, but from TV and the Internet? If nobody’s telling him what’s really going on, I’m not sure whether to be worried or reassured.
I’m sure Trump gets his daily briefings. But, as he said in his first term, he trusts Putin more than his own intelligence services. Since he didn’t say that about TV or the Internet, it’s a fair guess he gets his data from Putin. But I’m shocked by your lack of the common touch. Not read Puzzo? Not seen Godfather I, II and III? You haven’t lived. Next thing you’ll say is that you’ve never attended a pop concert. No, that would be too much.
I’m surprised, Mr Boot, that it isn’t obvious to you from my comments here that I much prefer such progressive genres as Thrash Grime and Acid Metal to mere Pop. And I’m certainly not planning to spend two hours of my Saturday evening listening (for the first time) to Franz Schmidt’s Notre Dame, with Dame Gwyneth Jones singing Esmeralda. Oh no, not I!
As for Mr Trump, I’m starting to miss the good old days when the Leader of the Free World got his advice, not from Mr Putin, but from men and women whose names he couldn’t remember.