A tale of two Dons
Trump appears to have exceptional role models
Ya gotta hand it to Donald J. Trump. His immorality and dishonesty rival only his self-dealing and self-delusion. But he works the system like nobody else, except maybe another Don, the fictional mob boss Don Corleone, who bestows deadly punishment if crossed.
Consider Washington Don’s “One Big, Beautiful Bill.” Of course, it passed, even as several Republican legislators decried it either for boosting the national debt by between $3 trillion and $4 trillion over a decade or for slashing Medicaid by $1 trillion, along with imposing cuts in food aid to the poor. The bill squeaked by the Senate in a 51-50 vote, with the tie broken by Vice President JD Vance. It slipped by in the House 218-214.
In the Senate, just three Republicans showed some cojones. Kentucky’s Rand Paul and the already-endangered Maine Sen. Susan Collins voted no. They joined North Carolina’s Thom Tillis, who announced he would retire before casting a vote that would otherwise have led to a Trump-backed primary challenger in 2026. “Tillis is a talker and complainer, NOT A DOER!” Trump said on his Truth Social. “He’s even worse than Rand ‘Fauci’ Paul!”
In the House, the only Republicans to stand tall were Pennsylvania Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick and Kentucky Rep. Thomas Massie. And Massie has felt Trump’s wrath for a while now. “MAGA should drop this pathetic LOSER, Tom Massie, like the plague!” Trump posted last week.
Truth isn’t a high priority for Trump and his minions. But some of these opponents spoke uncomfortable truths about a bill that will reward high-end earners with a continuation of 2017 tax cuts, which were otherwise slated to expire, at the expense of lower-income Americans, particularly in healthcare.
"The Medicaid program has been an important health care safety net for nearly 60 years that has helped people in difficult financial circumstances, including people with disabilities, children, seniors, and low-income families,” Collins said. “Approximately 400,000 Mainers – nearly a third of the state's population – depend on this program…. A dramatic reduction in future Medicaid funding, an estimated $5.9 billion in Maine over the next 10 years, could threaten not only Mainers' access to health care, but also the very existence of several of our state's rural hospitals."
Collins took a principled stand even though recent polls suggest she would face an uphill fight if she seeks a sixth term next year. As Newsweek reported, a University of New Hampshire poll found that only 14 percent of Mainers have a favorable opinion of Collins, compared to 57 percent who see her unfavorably. Another 26 percent are neutral, the poll found, while 2 percent say they don't know enough about her to say. That gives her a net favorability rating of –42, which is virtually unchanged from June 2022, when her rating stood at –40.
Similarly, Tillis warned that his party was making a mistake “and betraying a promise” in imposing the healthcare cuts.
But just as the Godfather’s Don seemed shrewd in his criminal operations, so do Washington Don and his allies seem in their politically foul ones — or at least they are trying to. “At the core of Republicans’ newly finalized domestic policy package is an important political calculation. It provides its most generous tax breaks early on and reserves some of its most painful benefit cuts until after the 2026 midterm elections,” The New York Times reported.
But will that bit of wool-pulling work?
Perhaps Washington Don and Co. expect so many folks to enjoy such 2025 tax benefits as a higher standard deduction and the elimination of taxes on tips and overtime that they won’t bridle at the pain borne by less well-off folks through cuts in health insurance and Medicaid. Maybe the Republicans are betting that this lag will shield some of their Congress members from furious constituents.
Is the electorate that dumb, though? It’s true that nearly a majority did vote for Trump last November, so perhaps he and vulnerable Congress members can count on such folks again. Still, when onerous work requirements and trims in Medicaid benefits begin to hit, perhaps some Trump supporters will realize what they voted for.
Nonetheless, the Don’s ability to work the system is extraordinary. In other ways, too, he has shown his brilliance at manipulation, particularly when it involves fellow billionaires.
He played Shari Redstone at Paramount like a fiddle, extorting a $16 million settlement for an offense by CBS’s “60 Minutes” that amounted to nothing more than common television editing. Earlier, he fleeced Disney’s ABC for the same amount because an anchor called him a rapist when the technical term was sexual abuser. And he cowed Jeff Bezos into changing the editorial policy at The Washington Post to abandon election endorsements and end its practice of running a broad array of opinion.
All the outfits had reasons for genuflecting to Trump. Redstone wants to sell Paramount to Skydance in an $8.4 billion deal that Trump’s Federal Communications Commission must rule on, and on which it’s been dragging its feet. For its part, Disney fretted that it might have lost a lawsuit brought by Trump in red Florida and worried that such a fight could hurt its brand, its “family-friendly movies, television shows and theme park rides that appeal to people of all political persuasions,” as The New York Times noted. And Bezos is beholden to Trump for business units far more important to him than the Post, notably a rocket company and Amazon.
Like a mob boss, Trump knows where the pain points are.
But, despite these high-profile scalps in his record of press intimidation, Trump hasn’t yet reached the level of an autocrat he admires, Hungary’s Viktor Orban. Recall that Trump said of Orbán: “He's a very great leader, very strong man. Some people don't like him 'cause he's too strong.” Striking a different tone, the Associated Press, has explained how the Hungarian rules through “a sprawling pro-government media empire that’s dominated the country’s political discourse for more than a decade.”
For now, the U.S. still remains blessed with some courageous media outfits that haven’t been cowed. For those in the electorate who pay attention, they offer a beacon illuminating the ways of Trump and his GOP.
Consider the exceptional piece The New York Times recently ran that explained how Trump’s business empire was teetering last year, making it financially necessary for him to run for reelection to the White House. “His office building in Lower Manhattan generated too little cash to cover its mortgage, with the balance coming due. Many of his golf courses regularly lacked enough players to cover costs. The flow of millions of dollars a year from his stint as a television celebrity had mostly dried up,” the paper reported. “And a sudden wave of legal judgments threatened to devour all his cash.”
But now that he’s the leader of the free world, Trump’s businesses appear to be thriving. Many consider this self-dealing beneath a U.S. President, but Trump is as shameless as a Third World tinpot dictator.
“The president and his family have monetized the White House more than any other occupant,” the Times reported. “The scale and the scope of the presidential mercantilism has been breathtaking. The Trump family and its business partners have collected $320 million in fees from a new cryptocurrency, brokered overseas real estate deals worth billions of dollars and are opening an exclusive club in Washington called the Executive Branch charging $500,000 apiece to join, all in the past few months alone.”
Similarly, The Atlantic shines bright lights on Trump’s misuse of his elected position:
“He's accepted a $400 million plane as a gift from a Middle East autocracy that hosts both Hamas and the Taliban, and also may be the home of a new Trump hotel,” Atlantic Editor Jeffrey Goldberg said on PBS’s “Washington Week with The Atlantic. “He's dined with top investors in one of his cryptocurrency projects and reportedly promised to promote the crypto industry from the White House. He's pardoned prominent Republicans and reality T.V. stars, including a man convicted of securities fraud, who, with his wife, donated $1.8 million to Trump's reelection campaign, for good measure.”
Goldberg added that Trump's family is charging half a million dollars to join a private club in Washington, D.C. He's building a golf resort in Vietnam, a country that sought and got tariff relief, and a Trump skyscraper in Ho Chi Minh City. “The Trump organization is planning to build a Trump Tower in Riyadh, for good measure,” Goldberg noted. “After a dinner at Mar-a-Lago, Jeff Bezos agreed to pay $40 million to license a documentary about Melania Trump, the most expensive licensing fee ever paid for a documentary.”
So, not all media voices have been silenced or humbled. As a spokesperson for Trump’s legal team called the Paramount capitulation “another win for the American people” and said that Trump was holding “the fake news media accountable,” many others have noted the sword the president’s wields through the FCC.
Trump’s efforts might even constitute bribery, Sen. Elizabeth Warren has suggested.
“With Paramount folding to Donald Trump at the same time the company needs his administration’s approval for its billion-dollar merger, this could be bribery in plain sight,” Warren said in a statement. “Paramount has refused to provide answers to a congressional inquiry, so I’m calling for a full investigation into whether or not any anti-bribery laws were broken.”
Some independent media, too, have suggested that such potent language is well-suited to Trump and his cronies. Mother Jones headlined a piece about the Paramount dealings “Trump’s Mob-like Shakedown: A Scandal Starring ‘60 Minutes,’ Paramount, and the FCC”
“This is an Olympic conflict of interest,” the outlet’s Washington bureau chief, David Corn, wrote. “Trump, via [FCC Chairman Brendan] Carr, can squeeze Paramount and Redstone and force a settlement of his lawsuit, which could result in Paramount paying millions to him. It’s a mob-like shakedown: Hey Paramount, you want your billions? Reach a deal with Trump. And Carr is his Luca Brasi—the enforcer who applies the pressure to serve the criminal kingpin.”
Of course, bribery – or rather the despotic misuse of government power by a sitting president – would not be inconsistent for a man convicted of 34 felonies, as well as someone on the hook for $90 million plus because of his sexual abuse. And it would not be inconsistent for someone who keeps an iron grip on his party through means any real Godfather would envy.
In about a year and a half, with Congressional elections, voters will get the chance to either show their admiration for the Don’s handiwork, celebrating it in the perverse way some fans of novelist Mario Puzo exalted mob chiefs, or to make a different call. Just 29 percent of voters support Trump’s bill, according to a recent Quinnipiac University poll, as reported by The New York Times. And roughly half of voters — including 20 percent of Republicans — say they expect the bill to hurt them and their families, according to a Fox News poll.
Trump, who is also a skilled huckster, will now set out to persuade the skeptics — and those done dirty by his bill — that what they see with their own eyes and feel in their own wallets isn’t really there. Will Americans fall for his claims, as they did last November? As they still say on CBS and ABC, stay tuned.