To write about Donald Trump is a risky endeavor. If one writes too critically about the former president, they are perceived as a “Trump critic,” as someone who irrationally and instinctively loathes him. By contrast, if one writes too effusively about Trump, they are branded an acolyte or sycophant and their words are mere hagiography. I don’t wish to do either. Instead, I want to write about Trump from a place of dispassionate interest. He’s a candidate for the oval office, after all. I don’t want to criticize or lionize. I want to observe.
To listen to a Trump speech at one of his rallies is to listen to them all. He goes over the same points, the same list of grievances, the same list of accomplishments. He talks about Biden, of course. He grumbles about inflation and the border and boasts of how great the economy was during his administration. Then there are the odd things—the bizarre talking points that he insists on repeating at many of his rallies. For instance, while recounting his negotiations with the president of Mexico, he often goes on a rambling digression about how handsome the Mexican president’s representative was. At one point, Trump likened the representative’s debonair appearance to that of Cary Grant’s.
But the most striking feature of Trump’s speeches—a feature that recurs at every appearance—is his invocation of Al Capone.
At his rally in Philadelphia on Saturday, Trump referenced Al Capone after mentioning his own prosecutions:
“I got more prosecutions than the great Alphonse Capone. You ever hear of Scarface? Oh, my parents are looking down. How did this happen to my son?”
On Saturday, Trump also addressed the audience at the Faith and Freedom Conference in Washington, where he said, “The weaponization of law enforcement is the greatest threat to freedom in America today, I think. And nobody knows it better than me. Look at the way I’ve been weaponized. I mean, they’ve weaponized me at a level that the late great Al Capone, right? I tell it all the time. Scarface, he didn’t go through what I went through. Of course, they were afraid to do it. They said, ‘well, let’s leave him alone.’”
At this point, Trump looked into the crowd and pointed at one of his supporters.
“He would take that gentleman, that handsome gentleman right there, he’d have a dinner. If Alphonse Capone didn’t like him, your family would never see you again, sir. They’d say, ‘what happened to him?’ ‘He’s a part of a foundation under a nice high rise that’s going up some place.’”
I think it’s interesting that Trump doesn’t just refer to the gangster as Al Capone. In both instances, he insists on calling him “the great” Al Capone. At another rally in Detroit, Trump evoked the same image of a Capone victim buried under a building. As before, Trump prefaced the Capone reference by lamenting his own indictments.
“I got indicted more than the legendary Alphonse Capone. Has anyone heard of Alphonse Capone? Has anyone heard of Alphonse Capone? Scarface. He was so mean that if he had dinner with a person and if he didn’t like him, he would kill the person. They would never find him again.”
Trump then slipped MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell into the scenario.
“[Capone] wouldn’t like Mike. You know why? He’d say, ‘those ads, they are driving me crazy. Let’s get rid of this guy.’ He couldn’t stand those ads. Al Capone would take Mike out in two minutes. Mike’s beautiful new wife was there. ‘What the hell happened to my husband?’ You’d never be found. He’d be buried under the World Trade Center.’
After this digression, Trump returned to his main theme.
“But think of it, Alphonse Capone. Scarface. He was the meanest of them all. He had a scar that went from here to here. Scarface. The meanest, the toughest, I got indicted more than he did and I did nothing wrong.”
The Capone analogy injects some levity into Trump’s harangue. It’s humorous, and it tempers his bitterness about the indictments. You could almost hear the complaint in Larry David’s voice. The analogy is also an effective piece of rhetoric. Capone was such an outrageously terrible person, and he was treated more gently than me. It paints a stark picture. But I think that Trump’s repeated mentioning of Capone has less to do with his desire to illustrate the inequity of the justice system and more to do with his desire to liken himself, albeit indirectly, to the mobster.
For Trump, a mob boss possibly represents a kind of ideal of toughness. In his interactions with other countries, Trump certainly adopted a quasi-mobster persona. He threatened and antagonized enemies. During his first UN address, he warned that he might be forced to “totally destroy” North Korea. And under Trump’s direction, the US retaliated against the Assad regime for using chemical weapons on its people. Although his retaliation was largely ineffective and therefore symbolic, it served to emphasize his difference from Obama, who failed to respond meaningfully to the regime’s use of chemical weapons on innocent civilians.
Trump might also be drawn to mob bosses because mob bosses expect—and usually receive—absolute loyalty. If his former chief of staff John Kelly is to be believed, Trump once expressed a desire for his generals to conduct themselves like the “German generals in World War II.”
But even if this anecdote isn’t true—there is no love lost between Trump and Kelly—the former president’s own words amply reveal the premium he puts on loyalty. Trump, as I’m sure you all recall, once said, “I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody, and I wouldn’t lose any voters.”
Indeed, it’s because of loyalty that Trump appointed Jeff Sessions as his first attorney general. When other mainstream Republicans like Lindsey Graham were still calling Trump a “bigot,” Sessions was already espousing his candidacy. And as a result, Trump tapped him to be attorney general, not because he was ideally suited for the job, but because he was loyal.
I have a feeling that Trump will determine his VP pick based on a similar calculus.
Trump also has a tendency to speak like a mobster. For instance, after he won the primary in Iowa, he addressed his crowd of supporters and spoke about the crime ravaging different communities in America.
“In Iowa, you don’t know what that means, but I’ll tell you. This is a different place. You don’t know about crime. You don’t know about getting mugged and getting whacked.”
Would any other politician think to use the word “whacked” to describe murder? “Whacked” is a mobster’s word. It belongs to the mobster’s idiom. He didn’t say killed or murdered or any of the more staid ways of referring to homicide. He used whacked. And he used it after winning the primary in Iowa, where his victory broke records.
Is it any surprise, then, that he mentions Al Capone so often? Is it any wonder that he refers to him as “great” or “legendary?”
Tonight is the first presidential debate. Will the great Alphonse Capone be mentioned? We will have to wait and see.
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