A few weeks back, Speaker of the House Mike Johnson (R) was asked by a reporter to address the massive money grab that our current president and his offspring are conducting for their own benefit, both at home and abroad, even as our democracy and our economy, once the envy of the world (and by “once,” I mean, “six months ago”), circle the drain.
Mr. Johnson, loyal MAGA foot soldier that he is, used that opportunity to essentially dodge the question by offering a critique of “the Biden Crime Family” (there it is, the classic Trumpian tactic for misdirection: naked projection). According to Mr. Johnson, there were all sorts of nefarious activities happening “behind the curtain,” as the Bidens engaged in a bonanza of self-enrichment at public expense.
These allegations have been repeatedly investigated: investigated by the press; investigated by a Republican-controlled Congress; investigated by the Department of Justice; and investigated by foreign governments. Those investigations, taking place during both the first Trump presidency and throughout Joe Biden’s single term as president, yielded absolutely nothing.
The net result of all of those investigations, paid for with your tax dollars, was that we learned what everyone already knew: Hunter Biden was an out-of-control, irresponsible addict who made spectacularly poor decisions while abusing drugs and alcohol; leveraged his father’s position to enrich himself; and behaved in a way that was an ongoing embarrassment to his family.
There was, in fact, one impenetrable curtain behind which the Biden family operated: the curtain concealing the reality that Joe Biden was in cognitive decline. That was the defining cover-up of Joe Biden’s presidency, and trust me when I tell you that every card-carrying Democrat is furious with them. There was a concerted effort to hoodwink the electorate, and because the Bidens engaged in massive pretense, Donald Trump is now at liberty to rob us blind for his own benefit until the day he dies.
So, no one is happy with the Biden family, but the bad behavior of an individual family member who holds no position of public trust does not indicate that Biden ran a financially corrupt presidency. If one chooses to take a stroll down memory lane, Billy Carter and Roger Clinton come to mind. Every family on Earth has at least one problematic, embarrassing relative, and Joe Biden’s youngest son is his.
That said, let’s take a look at actual public corruption, courtesy of another president who is cognitively compromised and appears to be incapable of running anything other than an obvious international and domestic crime ring. President Donald John Trump, ably assisted by his own entitled sons, is engaged in the most brazen case of pay-to-play this country has ever witnessed.
Even Mike Johnson had to acknowledge, after supplying the really lame smokescreen about the “Biden Crime Family” that Donald Trump’s singular virtue is that his corruption is unconcealed. Mr. Johnson said, specifically, “Whatever President Trump is doing is out in the open. They’re not trying to conceal anything … He’s very up front about it.”
In this assertion, Speaker Johnson was correct: Trump has no need to hide his corruption because it is no longer necessary to worry about accountability for criminality. He has no trepidation because there is no longer a functioning mechanism for punishing his outrageous behavior. Trump has hand-picked the most corrupt individuals alive to assist him in his unconcealed heist-a-thon. Republican legislators are complicit, as is the Supreme Court that provided him with a lifetime “get-out-of-jail-free” card while simultaneously giving him authority over the Department of Justice.
In case anyone needs a reminder, this is how the worst people on Earth become dictators and destroy their countries. Thanks, Supremes.
The United States is now being run by the Trump Organization, a crime family created to mirror the structure of all the other notorious crime families of New York: Gambino, Columbo, Bonano, Luchese, and Genovese. A Trump Organization hierarchical chart is virtually indistinguishable from a Mafia crime family organizational chart, because Trump’s deceased consiglieri, Roy Cohen (a famously corrupt and repulsive mob lawyer), was happy to help him create an armature for systematized criminality.
The Trump Organization is indistinguishable from that of any other Mafia famiglia. All Mafia organizational charts looks something like this:
- Don (the Boss)
- Consiglieri (typically an attorney of questionable character)
- Underboss (often a male relative of the Boss who is being groomed to one day assume command of the criminal enterprise)
- Capos (ranking “made” members of the crime family, not necessarily biologically related to the Boss, who function as ersatz military captains who direct other soldiers)
- Soldiers (“made men” who are the lowest ranking members of the crime family and who actively engage not only in carrying out the criminal activities of the family but in covering them up by taking a vow of silence, or “Omerta”)
- Associates (part of the crew who are not “made men” but whose crimes are mafia-adjacent and take place under the auspices of the Boss, to whom they are required to pay financial tribute, or, alternatively, pay “protection” to avoid being savaged and destroyed)
Using the preceding organizational chart as a basis for comparison, the Trump crime family, now that it has re-entered the political realm, can be described as follows:
- Don: Kingpin Donald
- Consiglieri: the reprehensible Pam Bondi, assisted by Trump’s former criminal defense attorneys, who gladly jumped into the void left by previous shysters Michael Cohen and Rudy Giuliani.
- Underboss: perhaps Trump’s middle son Eric, but only because he presents as slightly less stupid than Don Junior. On the other hand, Trump’s favorite son-in-law, Jared Kushner, might be standing in the wings with a set of brass knuckles, waiting for the right moment to dispose of Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum.
- Capos: every current agency head and cabinet member, all of whom are riding herd on dozens of illegal enterprises.
- Soldiers: the entirely subservient Republican congressional conference.
- Associates: the United Arab Emirates, the dictator of Serbia, cryptocurrency dealers, law firms, Columbia University, the Republican National Committee, Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, the CBS news division, the ABC news division, and heaven knows who else. One assumes that the list of those willing and able to pay tribute and/or protection is virtually endless.
The system of checks and balances that formerly existed to prevent any one branch of government from destroying the republic is now a quaint relic of the past, since when the foot soldiers of democracy decline to support and defend the Constitution of the United States and capitulate, instead, to an unrepentant racketeer, the rule of law is dead.
We are now living within a political culture that is entirely of the Trump famiglia, by the Trump famiglia, and for the Trump famiglia. Our country is being run by hundreds of thugs whose only task is to destroy democracy in support of the biggest criminals ever to occupy space in the White House, which should probably be rebranded now to more clearly reflect the Boss’s priorities:
