Behold Donald Corleone, the US president who behaves like a mafia boss – but without the principles. Of course, one hesitates to make the comparison, not least because Donald Trump would like it. And because the Godfather is an archetype of strength and macho glamour while Trump is weak, constantly handing gifts to America’s enemies and getting nothing in return. But when the world is changing so fast – when a nation that has been a friend for more than a century turns into a foe in a matter of weeks – it helps to have a guide. My colleague Luke Harding clarified the nature of Vladimir Putin’s Russia when he branded it the Mafia State. Now we need to attach the same label to the US under Putin’s most devoted admirer.
Consider the way Trump’s White House conducts itself, issuing threats and menaces that sound better in the original Sicilian. This week the president said that a deal ending Russia’s war on Ukraine “could be made very fast” but “if somebody doesn’t want to make a deal, I think that person won’t be around very long”. You didn’t need a translator to know that the somebody he had in mind was Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
On Thursday, Trump was confident that the Ukrainians would soon do his bidding “because I don’t think they have a choice”. Almost as if he had made them an offer they couldn’t refuse. Which of course he had. By ending the supply of military aid and the sharing of US intelligence, as he did this week, he had effectively put a Russian revolver to Ukraine’s temple, its imprint scarcely reduced by Trump’s declaration today that he is “strongly considering” banking sanctions and tariffs against Moscow, a move that looked a lot like a man pretending to be equally tough on the two sides, but which should fool nobody. He expects Zelenskyy to sign away a huge chunk of Ukraine’s minerals, the way Corleone’s rivals surrendered their livelihoods to save their lives.
This is how the US now operates in the world. Dispensing with the formalities during his annual address to Congress on Tuesday, Trump repeated his threat to grab Greenland: “One way or the other, we’re going to get it.” That recalled his earlier warning to Copenhagen to give him what he wants or face the consequences: “maybe things have to happen with respect to Denmark having to do with tariffs”. Nice place you got there; would be a shame if something happened to it.
It’s the same shakedown he’s performing on the US’s northern neighbour. Canada’s outgoing prime minister Justin Trudeau spelled it out this week, accusing Trump of trying to engineer “a total collapse of the Canadian economy because that will make it easier to annex us”, adding that: “We will never be the 51st state.” It’s a technique familiar in the darker corners of the New Jersey construction industry: a series of unfortunate fires that only stops when a recalcitrant competitor submits.
Both the substance and the style are pure mafia. Note the obsession with respect, demonstrated in last week’s Oval Office confrontation with Zelenskyy. Between them, JD Vance and Trump accused the Ukrainian leader three times of showing disrespect, sounding less like world leaders than touchy Tommy DeVito, the Joe Pesci character in Goodfellas.
Note too the humiliation of subordinates. In his address to Congress, the president introduced secretary of state Marco Rubio as the man charged with taking back the Panama canal. “Good luck, Marco,” said Trump, with a chuckle. “Now we know who to blame if anything goes wrong.” Cue anxious laughter from the rest of the underlings, briefly relieved that it wasn’t them.
It’s hard for aides and opponents alike to keep up because power is exercised arbitrarily and inconsistently. Tariffs are imposed, then suspended. Indeed, one reason why import taxes so appeal to Trump is that they can be enforced instantly and by presidential edict. That extends to the exemptions Trump can offer to favoured US industries. As MSNBC’s Chris Hayes observed: “This is very obviously going to be a protection racket, where Trump can at the stroke of a pen destroy or save your business depending on how compliant you are.”
Because, naturally, Trumpism does not confine the Cosa Nostra tactics to foreign affairs. This week Reuters reported that several federal judges in the Washington DC area had received pizzas sent anonymously to their homes, a gesture that police interpreted as “a form of intimidation meant to convey that a target’s address is known”. Already rattled by a fusillade of posts from Elon Musk denouncing as “corrupt” and “evil” those judges who have stood in the way of his ongoing demolition of large swathes of the federal government, the judiciary is now fearful for its safety. “I’ve never seen judges as uneasy as they are now,” said John Jones, who retired from the bench in 2021.
Whether neutering the judges – “Thank you again, I won’t forget,” Trump told John Roberts, chief justice of the supreme court, as he slapped him on the back this week – or moving to control the press, it’s all straight out of the Corleone playbook. The effect has been remarkably swift, with a strange silence falling on America’s public square. One Democratic congressman says Republican colleagues have told him they won’t criticise Trump because they worry for their physical safety and that of their families.
But it’s not just politicians. “University presidents fearing that millions of dollars in federal funding could disappear are holding their fire. Chief executives alarmed by tariffs that could hurt their businesses are on mute,” according to the New York Times, which again cited the growing anxiety among would-be critics that online attacks from Musk and Trump could lead to violent assaults on themselves or their loved ones.
All this protects Trump, encouraging him to ape the corruption and callousness of a mafia don. See how blatantly he now charges individuals to dine with him at Mar-a-Lago: $5m for a one-on-one, $1m to be part of a group. In case you didn’t get the message, Trump has announced that the US will no longer enforce the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, which prohibited Americans from bribing foreign officials, while his attorney general has dissolved all of the kleptocracy-related task forces at the Department of Justice. As for callousness, note Musk’s glee at feeding the US agency for international development “into the wood chipper”, thereby ensuring death comes to the sick and the starving who relied on US medicine and food.
At least the Corleones were guided by their own supposed code of honour. They believed an act of service had to be remembered and, in time, reciprocated. But Trump has gone to court rather than pay suppliers for work already done for the US government and has no memory of those to whom the US owes a much greater debt. How else could his vice-president so glibly forget the blood spilled by America’s allies, including the UK, when he dismissed the offer of “20,000 troops from some random country that has not fought a war in 30 or 40 years”?
These are despicable people, lacking even the morality of the hoodlum – and now they run the country we have regarded as our closest friend since the Edwardian age. Given all that, of course British politics should be contemplating a radical new direction, whether that means an economy rewired for rearmament or a rapprochement with the European Union, given that the world of the Brexit vote of 2016 has vanished and to stand apart from our nearest neighbours is now not only stupid but dangerous. When the planet’s most powerful country has become a mafia state, you do whatever it takes.
Jonathan Freedland is a Guardian columnist
On 30 April, join Jonathan Freedland, Kim Darroch, Devika Bhat and Leslie Vinjamuri as they discuss Trump’s presidency on his 100th day in office, live at Conway Hall London, and live streamed globally. You can book tickets here
