Don Trump and the Mafioso Style in World Politics

Don Trump and the Mafioso Style in World Politics

Gilbert Achcar

By a remarkable historical coincidence, the name of the present US president can intuitively be abridged as Don, which is the equivalent of Sir or Lord, historically used in Sicily in designating powerful landowners and later applied to Mafia bosses. This designation became widely known in the United States and globally with Francis Ford Coppola’s film series The Godfather, featuring Marlon Brando and Robert De Niro in the role of Don Corleone.

The fact is that Donald Trump’s style in world politics looks very much like a mafioso’s conduct on the global arena. Here are some of the Mafia methods applied by Don Trump on the world scene:

1. Extortion and racketeering: That’s the most common method practiced by the Mafia.

Don Trump’s use of tariffs is the exact equivalent of the mafiosi’s practice of racketeering. He has shaken down several countries in forcing them to pledge an increase of their imports from and investment into the United States, along with other concessions. He has been consistently and persistently threatening other countries with tariffs in seeking to impose his will, be it for commercial purposes or even political purposes, such as trying to bail out from jail his fellow neofascist, Brazilian ex-president Jair Bolsonaro. Since tariffs are eventually paid by the US consumer, Don Trump’s use of tariffs is also a way of extorting money from the American people – a sort of regressive tax – in order to fund the considerable deficit resulting from the combination of his huge tax gifts to the rich with ever increasing military expenditure.

Another element of racketeering is extortion as a prize for extending protection. This is very typically the way in which the United States has been taking advantage of the Gulf oil monarchies, extracting all sorts of profits from them in exchange for providing them with military protection against neighboring Iran and its regional allies, such as the Houthis in North Yemen. Don Trump’s ongoing onslaught on Iran is the culmination of the fulfilment of the US role as protector of the Gulf monarchies, starting with the richest of them, the Saudi kingdom.

2. Violence, Intimidation and Outsourcing:

To be sure, Don Trump’s practice of extortion is not restricted to economic coercion. He has also plainly used the threat of violence in exerting pressure on various countries – including US allies such as NATO member Denmark that he tried to intimidate into handing the United States control over Greenland. Most importantly, Don Trump did resort to violence in imposing Washington’s will on other states.

Unlike previous US presidents, he makes no pretense of promoting democracy worldwide: that’s certainly not part of the mafioso worldview. Instead, he seeks to coerce into submission to Washington’s will and interests refractory regimes as they stand. This is what he has done in Venezuela, abducting the country’s president in typical mafiosi fashion and forcing its government to collaborate with the United States on Washington’s terms. He is strangulating Cuba in seeking to force the island to relinquish its political independence. Don Trump is presently busy bombarding Iran in trying to compel this country’s regime to abide by his will. The present onslaught started with a “kiss of death” by the Don, marking Iran’s Supreme Leader for execution. In typical Mafia custom, he outsourced this assassination to a lesser criminal group, the Israeli governmental mafia headed by Benjamin Netanyahu, and associated them as a junior partner in his war.

3. Hierarchical Families or Clans: Don Trump’s reigns over a whole set of underbosses and consiglieri (advisers).

On top, the Trump family is the equivalent of the Corleone clan headed by the Don as Godfather. His sons run the Trump Organization, whose name befits well Mafia-like practices. They have been massively profiting from the Don’s extortionary methods, making juicy business deals with foreign mafias – the Gulf oil monarchies in particular – and have engaged, as well as the Don himself, in gambling, which is another typical activity of the Mafia – most prominently in the field of cryptocurrencies.

It is well-known that Don Trump had significant interests in the gambling business from the 1980s to the 2000s, through the development, ownership, and operation of multiple casinos in Atlantic City and other locations. His gaming ventures were characterized by high-profile ownership, immense debt, and multiple bankruptcies, while he remained in management roles. Despite the failure of his gambling businesses to turn a profit, Trump benefited through high-interest junk bonds, taking cash upfront for construction, management fees, and using company funds for personal expenditures like his yacht (the “Trump Princess”).

The Kushners and Witkoffs are the most prominent underbosses’ families, fully benefitting from the Don’s mafioso methods. Then there are the Dons of the Tech Mafias, who have endorsed Don Trump – particularly the two Dons of the former PayPal Mafia, Peter Thiel and Elon Musk. Their alliance with Don Trump is embodied by JD Vance who was groomed by Thiel and strongly recommended to Trump as vice-president, with a view to getting him to be the next MAGA candidate to the White House. As for Don Trump’s consiglieri, they are many, but the most sinister among them, far and away, is certainly Stephen Miller.

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In sum, there has never been a time before Don Trump when a president has so closely matched the mafioso pattern at the White House. Richard Nixon was almost an altar boy in comparison. Don Trump represents the triumph of the mafioso style in American and global politics. And like in the famous book that inspired the title of this article, Trump’s style is deeply paranoid indeed, involving a typically irrational strain in political discourse characterized by extravagant exaggeration, conspiracy theories, and trumped-up charges hurled at all rivals – a type of paranoia very much befitting a Mafia Don.

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