What Trump's romancing the mob means for the nation

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

By Michelle Goldberg / The New York Times

This week, Breitbart interviewed former Trump official Peter Navarro, one of many criminals in the ex-president’s orbit, from the Miami prison where he is serving four months for contempt of Congress.

While life behind bars is difficult, Navarro boasted that his stint has been smoothed by his ties to Donald Trump, which make him something of a made man. The former president, said Navarro, is beloved not just by the guards, but by the “vast majority” of inmates as well. “If I were a Bidenite, things would be a lot tougher here — and yes, they know exactly who I am and respect the fact that I stood up for a principle and didn’t bow to the government,” he said.

One of the more unsettling things about our politics right now is the Republican Party’s increasingly open embrace of lawlessness. Even as they proclaim Trump’s innocence, Trump and his allies revel in the frisson of criminality. At his rally in the Bronx last month, for example, Trump invited onto the stage two rappers, Sheff G and Sleepy Hallow, who are currently facing charges of conspiracy to commit murder and weapons possession. (They’ve pleaded not guilty.) During Trump’s recent criminal trial, his courtroom entourage included Chuck Zito, who helped found the New York chapter of the Hells Angels motorcycle gang and spent six years in prison on drug conspiracy charges. (The Justice Department has linked his Hells Angels chapter to the Gambino crime family.) Trump, who has his own history of mafia ties, has repeatedly compared himself to Al Capone. MAGA merchants sell T-shirts — and, weirdly, hot sauce — showing Trump as either Vito or Michael Corleone from “The Godfather” movies, with the caption “The Donfather.”

Both liberals and anti-Trump conservatives have sometimes had trouble getting their heads around this phenomenon. Often the go-to move is to point out hypocrisy: so much for law and order! But the disturbing thing about the MAGA movement’s outlaw turn isn’t that it’s failing to live up to its own conservative values. It’s that it’s adopting a sinister set of new, or newly resurrected, ones.

https://www.heraldnet.com/opinion/goldberg-what-trumps-romancing-the-mob-means-for-the-nation/

[intrepidity]

1. Interesting comparison

But there is a flaw, a logical fallacy:

“As in Machiavelli’s thought, the Prince is not only above the law but the source of law and all social and political order, so in the Corleone universe, the Don is ‘responsible’ for his family, a responsibility that authorizes him to do virtually anything except violate the obligations of the family bond,” Francis wrote.

Ask Fredo about crossing that line. Turns out even the "family bond" is not all that sacred. So then, the house of cards falls down.