To anyone familiar with the life and times of Donald Trump, there was nothing surprising in the tone of his July 25 conversation with the new president of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelensky. Trump spoke in the oblique yet perfectly clear language of a Mafia don who knows what he wants and how to enforce his will.
The dialogue between the two presidents, as seen in a transcript released this week, sounds like a scene from ‘The Godfather” or a wiretap of the office of Trump’s late attorney Roy M. Cohn, who represented the infamous mob bosses Carmine Galante, Anthony “Fat Tony” Salerno, and John Gotti. (For details, see the excellent new film Where’s My Roy Cohn? whose title is a Trump quote.)
The transcript opens with Zelensky flattering Trump obsequiously and at great length — as every head of state is now instructed to do — before hinting that he is “almost ready” to receive new Javelin missiles to defend his country from Russian invaders.
View the complete September 25 article by Joe Conason on the National Memo website here.