Trump and his goons
Some mornings I wake up gripped with anxiety about our eroding democracy. Other mornings, I relish the absurd set of characters that Trumpworld has brought to us.
Trump himself, as a character, is worthy of much rueful contemplation. A salesman who became president by pitching insults and fraudulent promises, given to covering his walls in gold and emblazoning his name on buildings for payment, he is the narcissistic parent whose chaos determines what the entire nation will be talking about that day.
While he appears completely amoral, he does, in fact, use a moral measuring tape on others. Whoever aids his own self-interest is good. Smart, even. Others: sad, pathetic losers who choke like dogs.
Given this, the group he has collected around himself by necessity accept this framing. The people who survive in his inner circle show intense loyalty to him, and are quite remarkably much like Trump himself in their goonish ways. While Trump continues to cause enormous damage to the norms of the US Presidency, watching this parade of goons is at least entertaining, as good as watching a Coen Brothers’ movie in real life. What follows is my attempt to distill the essence of Trumpian Goonery.
Trump’s goons
They are toadies. They are allowed to stay in Trump’s circle because of their fealty to Trump’s interests: above the law, the country, or any other competing values.
At the same time, they are bullies who turn malevolent at the slightest challenge. While they’ve been vassalized by Trump, they go about trying to beat everyone else into submission.
Interestingly, this includes each other. Trump sets up gladiatorial contests among his aides; so they spend an inordinate amount of time bringing each other down.
They lie. I mean, they more than lie. When us mortals lie, we utter untruths. When these people lie, a train of bullshit emerges from an underworld were words mean nothing and are wielded like swords of domination.
They tend to be bad at their jobs. This is a necessary corollary to the bullshit train; if you were wielding words like swords of domination, would you bother to read a textbook? If they are doctors, they are bad at medicine; if lawyers, they only have a sketchy familiarity with the law; if President, they might never have cracked open a policy paper.
They are bombastic mustache-twirlers. If you are serving poor quality meat (see above), you must cover it up with a lot of sauce.
They scorn rules, laws, and norms. Those who run crying into the government’s skirts to enforce laws are losers. Life is a zero-sum game; there is only the law of the jungle. Eat or be eaten. Form packs.
They cause drama wherever they go.
They have bad judgment. They are drawn by Trump’s tawdry flim-flam, which tells you that somewhere deep inside they find it impressive.
They are self-pitying. This, too, is as ordained. If, in your view, people should either bother to subjugate you, or be subjugated themselves, what do you do with the moronic commentators who refuse to play the game and yet refuse to admit that they are beaten? You whine. You don’t get what these people want. No one told you it would be this hard.
Life, to them, is an arena where men ought to whip out their penises and have judges hold up signs to rate them. Since that is not possible, they use other, indirect means to achieve the same goal: who talks louder; pees farther; who sleeps with more, blonder, bustier women; who is more hirsute; produces sexier offspring; who is better at golf; more frightening to babies.
Humor is their Kryptonite. Like the Black Knight from Monty Python and the Holy Grail, they claim to scorn even chopped off limbs as they fight invaders; but put them in a comedy and it discredits them for a generation. If they are a presidential candidate, it appears to discredit them for one election cycle.
Finally, they are cartoon villains. Hollywood, somewhat ridiculously, popularized a set of traits that it assigns to its movie fiends: they gloat and monologue with their lips curled in a sneer; they draw themselves up and theatrically claim to be ‘shocked, shocked!’; they are prone to laughing maniacally while closing their fists saying, ‘soon it will all be mine’. These Trumpian goons, I’m sorry to tell you, are actual cartoon villains.
Here is a roundup of the Trumpian goons. If you are so inclined, pick up a pen and paper, draw a simple column chart, and mark how many of these traits you find in each goon.
Michael Cohen
Michael Cohen achieved minor fame last August, when a CNN clip, in which he tried to intimidate interviewer Brianna Keilar by goonishly saying “Says who?”, played on loop across America. When she supplied some facts instead, he backed down after about five seconds of some intense recalibration.
He is Trump’s long-standing personal lawyer; but thinks of himself as more of a pitbull. In service of Trump, he would “cajole, bully or threaten a lawsuit” while carrying a licensed pistol.
“If somebody does something Mr. Trump doesn’t like, I do everything in my power to resolve it to Mr. Trump’s benefit. If you do something wrong, I’m going to come at you, grab you by the neck and I’m not going to let you go until I’m finished.”
The ‘something wrong’, of course, is defined only as whatever does not benefit Trump. We saw the ‘cajole, bully, threaten’ pattern clearly about a year before his “Says who” interview, when he first emerged into national news in a Daily Beast story about Trump’s alleged rape of his first wife, Ivana Trump.
“You cannot rape your spouse,” he said matter-of-factly to the Daily Beast reporters, “there is very clear case law.” Untrue in NY state since 1984 (remember what I said about the goons being bad at their jobs?).
When that didn’t work, he switched tactics. His fulmination at the reporters is worth quoting in full, and I hope the Coen brothers are taking notes:
“I will make sure that you and I meet one day while we’re in the courthouse. And I will take you for every penny you still don’t have. And I will come after your Daily Beast and everybody else that you possibly know. So I’m warning you, tread very fucking lightly, because what I’m going to do to you is going to be fucking disgusting. You understand me? You write a story that has Mr. Trump’s name in it, with the word ‘rape,’ and I’m going to mess your life up… for as long as you’re on this frickin’ planet… you’re going to have judgments against you, so much money, you’ll never know how to get out from underneath it.”
Marc Kasowitz
Another personal attorney, he sadly flamed out not long after his introduction on the national stage as Trump’s outside counsel for Russia-related matters.
Silver-haired, bespectacled, with a refined mouth, he appeared more like a tailor for dandies from the last century than a goon (picture him with a measuring tape draped around his shoulders). However, the scrutiny he received due to his high profile assignment as revealed his essential gooniness.
The first clue was that he had represented Trump in some of his most threatening and ultimately pointless lawsuits.
The next clue was the statement he released after fired FBI director Comey’s Senate testimony which was riddled with typos (‘Predisent’) and misstatements of the law (for instance, that Comey violated executive privilege by volunteering his discussions with Trump). Remember what I said about the goons being bad at their jobs?
Next, we heard that Kasowitz had boasted to friends that he had had a role in the firing of US attorney Preet Bharara in March earlier this year — saying to Trump, “this guy is going to get you.” As this might count as evidence for an obstruction case someday, it was a stupid move.
Then ProPublica dropped the mother lode: a long, deeply-reported story on Kasowitz’s difficulties getting a security clearance due to alcoholism. Only two days later, we learned that the ProPublica story had led to Kasowitz tussling with a stranger who emailed him to say, “resign now.” Kasowitz’s series of emails back to the stranger are worth quoting:
“I’m on you now. You are fucking with me now Let’s see who you are Watch your back , bitch….Call me. Don’t be afraid, you piece of shit. Stand up. If you don’t call, you’re just afraid….I already know where you live, I’m on you. You might as well call me. You will see me. I promise. Bro.”
And just like that, he was off the case.
Ty Cobb
Another Trump personal lawyer, another set of ill-judged communications with random strangers. Ty Cobb, from the respectable Hogan Lovells law firm, was brought in as an antidote to Kasowitz’s troubles. Reporters spoke highly of his competence and sobriety. I learned to ignore the evidence of gooniness staring at me in the face — his remarkable mustache, so twirled that he ought to be a mascot for Monopoly — and bit my tongue each time I saw it.
Then came a remarkable set of late-night messages.
Natasha Bertrand, Business Insider reporter, set it off by her reporting on what special counsel Mueller might find significant about Trump’s initial draft of the letter firing Comey, rejected by White House Counsel McGahn.
“Are you on drugs?” came the response from Ty Cobb, objecting to the notion that there may be anything incriminating in the letter.
Just a couple days later, a complete stranger, the owner of a DC ramen restaurant, emailed him out of the blue to call him a monster. They had a robust communication. Among other things, Ty Cobb informed this stranger about his finances, and that he believes himself and Gen. Kelly to be the only adults in the White House. Another stranger received a response calling her IQ into question.
When these emails were inevitably published (also by Natasha Bertrand in Business Insider), Ty Cobb offered an apology of sorts, saying that he was catfished — but this is incorrect, since none of his interlocutors pretended to be anything other than who they were.
But here is the most remarkable thing. Then, he was catfished.
Sebastian Gorka
Dr. Sebastian Gorka (PhD) was a fixture on cable news for a while, defending the President on every front, before he was fired by Gen. Kelly. If you felt sure in your bones that you knew this guy from somewhere, it is because you did. He is the movie villain cast in every B-grade spy thriller. He is the sneering, British-accented gloater whose every syllable drips with condescension as he explains at great length how he’s about to cut the rope that will release the sharks. He explains why, too. It is because you made the mistake of tussling with him, and you utterly deserve what you’re about to get.
“The era of the pajama boys is over, the alpha males are back,” he declared after Trump won the election. He expected to be part of the administration as a counterterrorism expert on the strength of his association with Breitbart. But his appointment, when it came, alarmed the real experts so much that they publicly questioned his credentials.
Gorka did not take this insult lying down. A secretly-recorded phone-call that he made to a fervent critic of his, Michael Smith II, a terrorism analyst, is worth listening to in full. Not for Gorka’s arguments, which are basically, garbage, but for his speech patterns that display just a terrific amount of gooniness. Listen for how he drags out certain words and ca-re-ful-ly en-un-cia-tes them as though he is speaking to an imbecile.
In reality the man is not a super-villain, but simply a charlatan. His PhD, that he flaunts at every given opportunity while insisting that news organizations call him ‘Doctor’, is fake, received from a Hungarian university that specializes in paid degrees. In fact, he ‘failed upwards’ into Washington, after having been roundly defeated in Hungarian politics, where he has ties with the far right.
His sole qualification appears to be his Islamophobic and pugilistic views about fighting terrorism, which (no surprise) appeal to Trump, but are thoroughly dismissed by real experts. Remember what I said about the goons being bad at their jobs?
Roger Stone
In Get Me Roger Stone, a Netflix documentary about his career in politics, Roger Stone Jr tells a story from his kindergarten days. He took a liking for Kennedy in the Kennedy-Nixon race of 1960, and spread lies about Nixon among his 6-year-old friends to get them to support Kennedy. It worked — and taught him a lesson, he says, about the power of disinformation. Without missing a beat, he adds, “and I’ve never used it since.”
Roger Stone shares many traits with the goons profiled in here. He is amoral, interested in winning above all, and his public discourse is unfailingly threatening and self-aggrandizing. But as the above quote shows, he is the only meta-goon of all the goons. He is self-aware of his reputation as a dirty trickster and wants you to believe it even more than you believe it already. He plays with his reputation. He knows that the audience does not believe that he ‘never used disinformation since’. He knows that the audience knows that he knows. It’s a game. In fact, the entire story is probably apocryphal.
Thus, he is the only goon who is actually good at his job, because he has made being a goon his job. The brand of dirty tricks in politics that he pioneered goes by the technical term of ‘ratfucking’.
It isn’t really fair to peg Roger Stone as one of Trump’s goons. The reality is the opposite: Trump is one of Stone’s goons. Trump in politics is a Roger Stone creation. Stone first identified him and encouraged him to run, back in the 1980s when Trump was nothing but a tabloid personality and brash businessman. He might also have been instrumental in coming up with some of Trump’s best hits: the idea of the wall, and the slogan ‘Make America Great Again’. He also egged on his birtherism.
Despite his flamboyant appearance with his hair plugs, wide-striped suits, and flattened forehead, his influence on American politics has been largely hidden. However, his name crops up in some of the most pivotal moments of the last few decades: whether it is Watergate or the Florida recount after the 2000 elections.
During Trump’s campaign, he claimed to have a backchannel with Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, and appeared to have inside knowledge of when John Podesta’s stolen emails would be released.
With Trump’s Presidency, Stone achieved a victory that he has striven for since 1988. But given that he appears to hold no value except winning, one wonders if he feels a bit hollow. What does a ratfucker do after the rat has been well and truly fucked?
Corey Lewandowski
Lewandowski actually had a middling career in Republican politics before he met Trump. He had worked on a few statewide campaigns, some that won, others that lost; he had built up a reputation as a bomb-thrower with a hot temper.
Now, he will forever be known as the man that Trump’s kids manipulated their father into firing months after he manhandled a reporter.
There is a reason that so many of the goons are mini-Trumps: it is because he seeks them out for their aggressiveness and devotion to winning above all. In return, they give him blind loyalty. Lewandowski is a prime example of both. They met when Trump was just starting out his campaign, in 2014, when Trump offered him the job of running his presidential campaign, far out of the league of anything Lewandowski had done in his career till then. Equally, Trump started off as a pariah and would have had difficulty attracting traditional Republican operatives.
Lewandowski built Trump’s early campaign, eschewing the normal focus on such things as staffing, building infrastructure, and so on (remember what I said about the goons being bad at their jobs?); instead, focusing on massaging the boss’s ego. His motto was to “let Trump be Trump,” which effectively meant covering for Trump’s worst instincts, like for instance attacking a judge with Mexican heritage by saying he wasn’t fit to judge a case involving himself. His blind devotion to the boss was so great that he compared Trump to the winning horse American Pharoah, although Trump hadn’t even won the Republican primary yet. One wonders if there was anything Freudian about that comparison.
Drama follows Trump’s goons wherever they go; Lewandowski created some himself. As soon as Paul Manafort joined the campaign, the two men clashed on their differing visions for how to handle the big guy. In Trump’s circle, people don’t simply ‘clash’ — they hurl thunderbolts at each other, usually through the press. Eventually he crossed the line by leaking goods on Jared Kushner, the American Pharoah’s son-in-law. In no time, he was escorted out of Trump Tower by security.
Anthony Scaramucci ‘The Mooch’
Like the constantly-changing drummer in the band Spinal Tap, Trump’s communications director role cannot seem to stay filled longer than a couple months. We have had Jason Miller, Mike Dubke, Sean Spicer twice, and Hope Hicks in the acting position recently.
In between, for a span of ten glorious days, from July 21st to July 31st, we had Anthony Scaramucci: The Mooch. It was a tenure — though short — of such landmark intensity that some commentators have taken to calling a span of ten days a ‘Moochspan’.
I mentioned that Trump likes to set up gladiatorial contests among his aides as they try to humiliate each other. The Mooch was brought in specifically for his gladiatorial skills in order to get rid of his old nemesis, Reince Priebus, chief of staff. In fact, he was dubbed the ‘Reince-seeking missile’. If you are confused about why the White House couldn’t just fire Priebus instead of deploying missiles, you are not alone.
Scarramucci came in with spectacular purpose, as befits a missile. He threatened to find and fire every leaker to the press in the White House; every person with iffy loyalty to Trump himself. He announced his intentions as soon as he arrived: “I’m going to fire everybody,” he told the press in the White House driveway.
That would actually make sense, because if one is to believe reporters who cover the Trump administration, absolutely everyone in it leaks, including the President.
His heat-seeking sensors quickly homed in on Reince, whose death-sentence was written on day one, clipped to the back of his appointment letter. On his first official day as White House staffer, the Mooch tweeted out an accusation that Reince had leaked his financial disclosures to the press (which doesn’t make sense, since disclosures are public). This would be small potatoes, except that this was no idle accusation: he tagged the FBI on his tweet, implying that Reince had committed a felony.
The Mooch wasn’t done. The next day, he called up New Yorker reporter Ryan Lizza in what can only be described as a tour-de-force of braggadocio and insults. Among other things, we were told that Reince Priebus (a White House colleague, at the time) was a “fucking paranoid schizophrenic” and that his other White House rival, Steve Bannon, was given to some rather contortionist forms of auto-eroticism.
The next morning, he assured a CNN panel that although usually, a fish stinks from the head, the President himself wasn’t actually stinking; and that Reince and himself were merely like brothers who fought sometimes, much like Cain and Abel.
Within a couple days, Reince was unceremoniously dumped out of the White House, as well as the Presidential motorcade, and left on the tarmac. The missile had hit its target. But that didn’t end the story: it had been a suicide mission. The first order of business for newly appointed chief of staff General Kelly was to get rid of Anthony Scaramucci.
The Mooch had divested from his company in order to join the White House, been divorced by his wife because she did not appreciate his effusive love for Trump, and missed the birth of his child: all for ten days as the White House communications director. Much like the plotting car salesman in the Coen Brothers’ Fargo, he had outsmarted himself.
Omarosa Manigault
The only female goon on my list. As one of the contestants in Season 1 of The Apprentice, she was the master of self-serving lies, incompetence, and discord. She didn’t win, and was instead sent sobbing out of the boardroom by Trump. Despite this, somehow, she discovered that the key to Trump is ass-kissing, and became expert at this; she stayed in his circle all the way to the White House.
She brought with her the goonish skills she displayed in The Apprentice. Accounts of her spat with reporter April Ryan could have been exact transcriptions of many conversations she had with other contestants in the show. Although her title is communications director for Office of Public Liaison, her primary job appears to be to infuriate Trump by snitching on any and everybody that might anger him. If reports are to be believed, she is on her way out.
Felix Sater
The greatest trick that Donald Trump ever pulled was to make you believe he didn’t know Felix Sater. In reality, this Russian-American gangster, FBI-informant, and racketeer has been in Trump’s intimate circle for a decade; and has probably been his liaison into some delicious Russian corrupt dollars. He calls himself “the deal guy”. He recently promised that soon he would be “the most colorful character you ever talked about”. Soon after that, we heard that back in late 2015, he had ominously claimed that he could get Trump elected through his own connections with Putin. Was the revelation of that old email chain the drama he promised? Or more?
Other colorful characters
This account has gotten too long, eyeballs will start to flinch, and we are told to keep things concise for the best read ratios. But the account of colorful characters in Trump’s orbit could stretch much longer if I had the wherewithal.
There’s the long-haired doctor Harold Bornstein, the one who certified candidate Trump’s health by claiming that he would be the healthiest president in history. There’s Rob Goldstone, the colorful music publicist at the center of the now-infamous June 9, 2016 meeting between Donald Trump Jr and Russian government representatives, who helpfully left social media tracks for all his meetings for investigators to dig into. There’s Matthew Calamari, ex-linebacker, who has worked for Trump for 35 years and says he would kill for his boss; but until he is called upon to do so, sets up surveillance to spy on unwitting guests at Trump’s properties. And Sam Nunberg, who once asked a reporter to help him “take Michael Cohen down.”
And finally, there’s Vladimir Putin, who all goons (including Trump) would actually like to be. He’s postulated to be the richest man in the world whose secret dacha was recently revealed; he has left a trail of dead Russians on his way to supreme leadership. While he is a successful goon, he showed the same bad judgment as goons everywhere — he put his faith in Trump.
