The Mafia State: Extortion and Abuse of Power
Ukraine and the common thread between Trump's domestic and international actions.
Same Newsletter. New headline and image. The important points were getting lost in the snarkiness. Thanks to Substack, I can edit my own stuff post publication!
“Nice country you have there, Volodymyr. Shame if anything happened to it.” The leaders of the Trump Crime Family and the PayPal Mafia have joined forces. Now they are shaking down Ukraine for “a cut of the business” with Putin as the “muscle.” Here is how the mafia analogy makes this situation make sense.
Fruitful Metaphors
We call Trump names and try to associate him with negative words, but “bumper sticker” phrases only ring true if they trigger what already lives in people’s minds.
“Trump Administration = Mafia State” is what we call a “rich cognitive metaphor.” It allows us to create narratives that make sense of what is happening and convey deeply held moral judgment, narratives which we can then “activate” in people’s brains with a few well-placed words.
We use metaphors to explain, but also to understand. When you find the right metaphor, it doesn’t only give you a quick and simple way to convey meaning to others. Cognitive metaphors are also fruitful, they offer you ways to branch out: to explore and make sense of different aspects of what you are observing.
In August of 2023, I wrote a newsletter using the “Donald Trump = Mafia Boss” analogy in reference to framing the dialogue around his court cases. As Trump’s criminality expands with his newly acquired power, this metaphor bears truckloads of fruit for making sense of his current behavior, particularly in terms of his relationships with the appropriately named “PayPal Mafia” and Vladimir Putin, who runs Russia as a “Mafia state.”
Trump’s actions as president make more sense if you know that he was the protégé of the legendary Roy Cohn, mafia lawyer and fixer, and Nixon advisor, who taught him that government and the law are not limits, but tools to be coopted and abused, to crush your enemies and obtain personal wealth and power.
Metaphors can also contain “behavioral expectations” that lead people to automatically and subconsciously visualize how they are supposed to act in a familiar set of circumstances. In other words, we all know how this movie ends: the people being terrorized by the criminal gang must join forces, stand up to the bad guys, and drive them out of town.
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Extortion
Trump is like a mob “enforcer” who firebombs a business or two before he even starts shaking people down, just so people know he means business. His threats toward Canada, Mexico and Greenland are performances of power: demonstrations of his willingness to cause harm in defiance of logic or reason.
Trump to Ukraine: “Your money or your life.”
Trump’s discussions with Putin and start of negotiations with Russia without including Ukraine or Europe violate every principle of international law and basic human decency. We should be helping Ukraine in every way we can. Instead, Trump is making significant concessions to Putin on Ukraine’s behalf, while shaking down Ukraine for what essentially amounts to a part-ownership of its country’s business.
From the U.K. Telegraph courtesy of L O L G O P:
SAY THIS
Trump is running what amounts to a protection racket against America’s allies. The people of Ukraine are putting their lives on the line to protect their freedom and ours, and Trump is shaking them down for protection money, using Russia as the muscle to extort Ukraine to surrender its natural resources and its independence and become an economic colony of the United States.
Putin gets to keep territory that it gained through violence and the desperately needed lifting of economic sanctions. The PayPal Mafia gets the rare earth minerals it needs to expand its tech empire.
If there ever were a good reason to call and email your elected officials AND your local and national news outlets and demand that they hold hearings / investigate and inform the American people about a story, this would be it.
There is a clear pattern here. Other actions by Trump also make sense if looked at in terms of extortion:
Trump is extorting Panama into accepting and holding hundreds of migrants from U.S. with threats of taking over the Panama Canal.
Trump is extorting New York Mayor Eric Adams to allow ICE free reign to arrest immigrants in New York City, by suspending his criminal convictions and holding the threat of resuming them over his head, in a well-document quid-pro-quo.
Trump is extorting Republicans in Congress to confirm his nominees, ignore his and Musk’s illegal actions, and support his immigration crack-down, by threatening to have Elon Musk fund primary opponents. Some even expressed fear for the safety of their families.
Trump and Musk are extorting employees of the executive branch into allowing Musk and his henchboys to illegally access government systems and private personal information, and unconstitutionally impound government funding, by threatening to fire them (illegally). Those who resist are physically removed by armed private security guards.
Trump may be soliciting bribes from national news networks by suing them for libel (suits he would definitely lose in court) and then settling out of court for millions of dollars. Meta is facing an anti-trust case, and Paramount (CBS) is seeking approval for a merger. The only question is, is this straight bribery or is he extorting payoffs with the threat of unfavorable outcomes?
SAY THIS
We, the people, did not authorize Trump, or any president, to abuse the power of the United States government to terrorize Americans into compliance, extort payments from businesses, or shake down our friends and allies. All power is granted to leaders by their people: it is both limited and conditional, to be used for the people and never against them. This is why we have civil liberties, separation of powers, and the rule of law, and why we use international institutions to cooperate with other nations to advance the freedom and security of our peoples.
This is also why we must stop allowing corporation and billionaires to grow so big and accumulate so much wealth that they can buy and corrupt governments for their own purposes.
The PayPal Mafia
The “PayPal Mafia” is the nickname of a group of former PayPal founders that includes Elon Musk, Peter Theil (owner of J.D. Vance) and David Sacks (Trump’s Crypto and A.I. Czar).
Musk’s wholesale demolition of the federal government is exactly what you would expect when a crime family, tired of being investigated, gets their brother (slightly daft and emotionally unstable) elected Mayor. They close the office that investigates public corruption, fire everybody in the Sheriff’s office and replace them with their henchmen, and turn all the city contracts over to “the family.” It’s all corruption and graft.
Trump, Theil, and Sacks also suffer from white christian techno-fascist dystopian fantasies, but that’s a topic for another newsletter.
The Russian Mafia State
It is well known that Vladimir Putin runs a “mafia state.” Russia is a full-fledged kleptocracy that has been stripped so bare that there’s not much left to steal, and where anyone who speaks up against you “falls out of a window” or “has an unfortunate plane crash.” All that remains to be figured out is the exact nature of the Trump/Putin relationship. Is Trump is working for Putin or is Putin is working for Trump?
Key Words and Phrases
ABUSE OF POWER, CORRUPTION.
We need the terms “abuse of power” and “corruption” to appear more in the public debate than “fraud” and “waste.”EXTORTION, PROTECTION, RACKET, SHAKEDOWN, “MUSCLE,” THREATS OF VIOLENCE, ECONOMIC or POLITICAL HARM.
MAFIA, ORGANIZED CRIME, CRIME, CRIMINAL. Trump “acting like a” or “playing the role of” a MAFIA DON.
Refer to the war in Ukraine as the UNPROVOKED INVASION of a FREE, INDEPENDENT and DEMOCRATIC NATION (not a “land grab”).
COLLUSION WITH RUSSIA.
BRIBERY, BRIBE, PAYOFF, CONFLICT OF INTEREST, WHITE COLLAR CRIME
FREEDOM, THE RULE OF LAW, THE CONSTITUTION, CIVIL LIBERTIES, SEPARATION OF POWERS, LIMITS OF POWER, CONSENT OF THE GOVERNED.
INTERNATIONAL COOPERATION, FREEDOM, NATIONAL SECURITY
What We Are Fighting FOR
It is important to point out THAT what they're doing is wrong. It is even more important to remind people WHY. Mafia leaders are not “cool.” They are a threat to the freedom of people everywhere.
The victims of extortion rackets are the owners of “mom and pop” stores and restaurants and the residents of communities, all of whom are just trying to live their lives without the boot of organized crime on their necks.
The victims of Trump and Musk’s extortion are virtually everyone, from American public servants to the people of Ukraine, from migrant families to everyone who depends on any form of government program or service, or has private and personal information held in government systems, which is literally every American. Both here and in other countries, all our freedom is being threatened. All our economic stability is being put in jeopardy. All our national security is being put at risk. All of us.
We must fight for freedom and against using the tactics of organized crime, like bribery and extortion, both here and abroad. We must fight against corruption and abuse of power, and for the rule of law and constitutional limits and civil liberties.
We must fight for and defend the “Eliot Nesses,” the Treasury and FBI officers and other patriotic civil servants who fight corruption, defend our government and the rule of law, and put “mobsters” in jail. We may also need to fight for their international counterparts: the U.N., INTERPOL, and the International Criminal Courts (ICC).
We must band together to fight back, and that means join forces with anyone willing to stand up to Trump and Musk, from Republican politicians to foreign countries.
Thanks, as always, for reading and subscribing! I hope you are able to use this in your work and your activism!
In solidarity,
Antonia
NOTES:
Mafia Donald: How to talk about Trump
By Antonia Scatton | Reframing America | Aug. 29, 2023
"Donald Trump is a habitual criminal and crime boss. His whole life has been about the pursuit of money. We can reframe that whole life as evidence, not of his talent, but of his boundless greed and willingness to stop at nothing in his pursuit of personal wealth."
Restoring Sanity: We will prevail. We need to talk like it.
By Antonia Scatton | Reframing America | Feb. 06, 2025
The people who mocked Trump/Russia should be ashamed of themselves
By LOLGOP | The Cause | Feb. 18, 2025
Gangster’s paradise: how organised crime took over Russia
By Mark Galeotti | The Guardian (UK) | Mar. 23, 2018
The Mafia Style in American Politics: Roy Cohn connects the McCarthy era to the age of Trump across more than half a century.
By George Packer | The Atlantic | Oct. 3, 2019
Hegseth makes clear that Trump will sell out Ukraine
By Eliot Wilson | The Hill | Feb. 17, 2025
As Trump ‘Exports’ Deportees, Hundreds Are Trapped in Panama Hotel
By Julie Turkewitz, Hamed Aleaziz, Farnaz Fassihi, and Annie Correal | The New York Times | Feb. 18, 2025
New York governor under pressure to fire Eric Adams after ‘quid pro quo’ with Trump over criminal charges
By Rhian Lubin and Ariana Baio | The Independent (UK) | Feb. 16, 2025
Bribery Worries Shadow Trump, CBS Suit
By Jessica Toonkel | The Wall Street Journal | Feb. 14, 2025
GOP senators terrified of crossing Trump, facing Musk-funded challengers
By Alexander Bolton | The Hill | Feb. 10, 2025
The terrorizing style in American politics
By Philip Bump | The Washington Post | Sept. 14, 2023
Elon Musk’s Business Empire Scores Benefits Under Trump Shake-Up
By Eric Lipton and Kirsten Grind | New York Times | Feb. 11, 2025
The Rise of Kleptocracy: Power and Plunder in Putin’s Russia
By Miriam Lanskoy and Dylan Myles-Primakoff | Journal of Democracy | Jan. 2018
More on the Paypal Mafia:
The ‘PayPal mafia’ comes to Washington
By Jasper Goodman, Lauren Egan, Lisa Kashinsky, Megan Messerly and Ben Johansen | Politico | Dec. 6, 2024
The PayPal Mafia is taking over America’s government
The Economist | Dec. 10, 2024
How the roots of the ‘PayPal mafia’ extend to apartheid South Africa
By Chris McGreal | The Guardian (UK) | Jan. 26, 2025
This is SO HELPFUL. Can't thank you enough.
Calling today about Ukraine and extortion, using your powerful script. Thank you!