In some ways, Americans have known their president, Donald Trump, for decades as the one-time real estate developer who later became a licensing agent for the Trump name, a brand identified with ostentatious extremes, wealth and bankruptcy, multiple marriages and rumors of affairs.

But that was before we knew Donald Trump on a daily basis as the Tweeter-in-Chief, the narcissus in the White House, and the Deciderer unbound by facts or truths.

It was well before we knew his management style is unique in our national experience. Trump is, from his earliest background in Queens, always the local boy made good in a world where mobsters were more admired than educators. And Trump’s management style is, we now know, more Tony Soprano than Abraham Lincoln, more thuggish than thoughtful, more bullying than responsible.

Our president manages the presidency like Tony S., seeing the White House as more the backroom behind the grocery store, where, sitting at his desk, he runs his empire with his “made” followers and rubs out anyone who stands against him.

Cross Tony, er, “Fat Donnie,” A.K.A. “Hands Donnie,” and he sends out his hit men to silence you. If you are a U.S. senator, like Jeff Flake, who calls Fat Donnie unfit to serve, you tell Flake you will kick him out of the Senate next time he runs — so Flake decides not to run.

If you are an FBI Director who refuses to take a blood loyalty pledge to never go after Hands Donnie’s made men, then he fires you and tells everyone you made him do it.

If you are a nutcase dictator with nuclear weapons, like Kim Jong Un, Fat Donnie threatens you with his bigger nukes, demonstrating the willingness to blow up our allies to win a food fight with an unstable personality.

None of this bothers Fat Donnie in the least, as this is always the way he has run his business. Now, he just has a few more worker bees doing his bidding. And, like all mob bosses, Fat Donnie knows you can only really trust blood, family. Anybody else, you will have to sooner or later knock around, as Trump does with his White House/grocery store backroom employees.

Get a little bit too much publicity, Hands Donnie will tweet that you are a borderline character that he barely needs around, like Rex Tiller, A.K.A. Secretary of State. Now, when Tiller speaks for America, Fat Donnie says, “I’m the only one that matters.”

Get a few interviews as Trump’s brain and you find yourself like Steve Bannon, fired, then banished, then told you “lost your mind,” in the tweet of the day. Does Fat Donnie ever turn on those around him? Wrong question. Right question? Does Hands Donnie ever not turn on those around him?

Ask Jeff Sessions, A.K.A., U.S. attorney general, who Trump has done everything but de-pants publically for not promising to never make the President subject to law, if Fat Donnie comes after you sooner or later? Sessions did everything but pray to Fat Donnie and he still got face slapped over and over by the gangster president.

Fat Donnie needs a lot fewer employees than any President before him, because, as he often says, he is, “very, very smart” and, “knows more than our generals.” So, who needs the State Department when Fat Donnie makes all the decisions? Who needs the EPA when Fat Donnie wants no regulations bothering business from corrupting the planet? Who needs foreign aid to Pakistan, when you own no property and have none under development in Pakistan?

But, to credit this president, he knows who he respects. Putin runs Russia the good old-fashioned way, killing his opponents, de-certifying them from running against him for office, and using his mob to run Russia.

You think Fat Donnie has any criticism over that leadership style?

Nope, not a word. Just admiration.

 

Jim Crawford is a retired educator and political enthusiast living here in the Tri-State.