I think not.
'Similarities are striking': Analyst links Trump's woes to infamous New York mobster (msn.com)Former President Donald Trump is headed for a legal reckoning like he has never seen before in 2024 as he mounts another bid for the White House, with multiple criminal trials all over the country.
Indeed, wrote analyst Harlan Ullman for United Press International on Wednesday, Trump is in a similar situation to that of an infamous New York mobster.
"The New Yorker of Trump's generation who combined celebrity status with an avalanche of trials was another Don — the Teflon Don and crime boss John Gotti," he wrote.
"Some readers will find the comparisons offensive. But the similarities are striking. If convicted of attempting to subvert an election, as well as failing to safeguard the nation's secrets, are these charges any less serious than those leveled against Gotti?
"Former FBI Director James Comey wrote in his autobiography that Trump operated in ways reminiscent of the mob. Loyalty was paramount. And Trump often operated according to his own rules, often of doubtful legality."
Gotti was an infamous figure in the '80s, as he stood trial for ordering a hit on a fellow crime boss but beat the rap thanks to bribery and witness tampering. He was nicknamed the Teflon Don because the feds had difficulty making anything stick to him.
But ultimately his crimes caught up with him in 1990, after wiretaps in his headquarters at the Ravenite Club caught him freely admitting to wrongdoings, which was used to put him in prison for life.
Trump is not accused of murder, as Gotti was. His alleged crimes range from business fraud, to the deprivation of civil rights, to election racketeering, to the illegal retention of highly classified national defense information at his Mar-a-Lago country club.
For years now, Ullman noted, Trump has been "Teflon-like" in his ability to wriggle out of legal trouble, despite defying the authorities and even court officials at every turn — much like Gotti was. And similarly, he wrote, "If convicted in the classified material trial, Trump will have admitted his own guilt."
Trump bragged to Victoria Gotti about hanging out with her mob boss dad: 'We've been in each other's company' - Raw StoryDonald Trump once told Victoria Gotti, daughter of infamous mafia boss John Gotti, that he and her father had spent time together.
"I know that they knew each other," the Gotti daughter said in an interview with The New York Times published Thursday.
She recounted an interaction she had with Trump when she was working as a columnist at the New York Post. At the time, the real estate mogul asked her to write about a "fiasco" involving one of his casinos in Atlantic City, New Jersey.
"He was upset at how The [New York] Daily News perceived it and wanted to go on the record, so he called me and I went to his office," Gotti told the Times. "I’d seen him in passing and he always was very generous, he’d either pick up a bill or stop at the table. But then he said to me: ‘Your dad and I, we’ve been in each other’s company. We know a lot of the same people.’”
Gotti mentioned the exchange to her father a month later when she was visiting him in prison, the report noted — and said he appeared surprised.
"He looked very kind of perplexed,” she said, “like, ‘Why would anybody even bring that up."
Trump's connections to the mob, both Russian and Italian, have been documented and speculated about since long before he ran for president — and were a source of concern for some in government following his ascendancy to the White House.
"The president has even imported gangster vernacular like 'rat' and 'slime ball' into the Oval Office," the report noted. "All the talk of loyalty oaths and 'flipping' coming out of the West Wing have led many, including James Comey, the former F.B.I. director who helped bring down the mob, to conclude that the place is being run like the Ravenite Social Club."
Read the entire Victoria Gotti interview via the Times.
Toast with a spread of Donald anyone ?
Gr
Equus A
