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In Trump’s Mafia, Even Goons Can Do Billion-Dollar Shakedowns

Corey Lewandowski is a disposable underling, but he’s protected enough to scorn the law.

Corey Lewandowski speaks at a Donald Trump campaign rally on Monday, Oct. 23, 2023, in Derry, NH.

Donald Trump is besotted by the romance of gangsterism. He’s the kind of viewer who sees classics such as the Godfather movies or Goodfellas not as cautionary tales but as how-to guides. In 1992, Trump hired the famed architect Philip Johnson to tart up the façade of one of his ill-fated New Jersey casinos. Taking a measure of his prospective employer, Johnson remarked that Trump would make “a good mafioso.” Trump took that as a compliment and added his own hyperbolic spin, “one of the best.” 

When running for president in 2015, Trump again confirmed that gangsterism was an ideal. At a rally, he noted that critics objected to his idea of shaking down dependent allies such as South Korea and Germany for protection money in the form of coerced purchases of US arms. Trump’s response was, “Don’t worry about it, okay. The mafia is not so stupid, all right.”

In both the mafia of popular folklore and in Trump’s real-life governing style, there is a strict hierarchy of power. The mob boss and his inner circle sit at the top, forming a tight-knit crime family—the people who are to be protected and kept close at all cost. This is the role played by Trump, his children, and his son-in-law Jared Kushner. The second tier of power is the capos and made men who are guaranteed senior leadership roles; real estate developer and emissary Steve Witkoff currently occupies that role. 

But as with the mob, Trump’s lawless enterprise also requires the services of a lower ring of goons and hoodlums who are more disposable—not enjoying quite the unlimited access to power of the close family and capos but still of service, particularly since they are more willing to do the dirty work of intimidation that is sometimes needed. These are the wiseguys and goodfellas, louts who often get into trouble and need to be kept at a distance but still have their uses. At various times, disreputable figures such as Steve Bannon and the disgraced lawyer Michael Cohen have fulfilled these roles, falling in and out of presidential favor. 

Corey Lewandowski is a classic Trumpian wiseguy, never truly part of the inner core but still kept in the president’s orbit. Lewandowski started as a maverick in New Hampshire’s GOP, a Reaganite turned Tea Party supporter whose bare-knuckle mannerisms ruffled country-club Republicans. With........

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