Trump said to have urgently asked biographer if mobster he insulted was 'still in jail'
Former President Donald Trump's partnership with the mob in his early days of business were legion, said biographer Tim O'Brien on MSNBC's "Deadline: White House" — but deep down, even as Trump looked up to crime bosses, he was very scared of them.
This conversation came during an analysis of the former president's hush money trial in Manhattan, where a full jury has been selected as of Thursday evening.
"Donald Trump's first partners in Atlantic City, Ken Shapiro, a bag man for the Philadelphia mob, and a labor racketeer named Danny Sullivan," said O'Brien. "Those were his two partners in Atlantic City. When Trump Tower got built, 80 percent of Trump Tower was built with concrete at a time when all the skyscrapers in Manhattan had long since converted to building their high-rises out of steel."
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"Why?" asked anchor Nicolle Wallace.
"Well, I mean, you know, I suspect because he was getting a sweetheart deal from the mob, and why he needed to get concrete and it was very mobbed up," said O'Brien. "He built a very palatial apartment. When Donald and I talked about this down in Mar-a-Lago, he said, you know, I went to John Cody and I told him what's what and that guy never, ever messed with me because he knew who he was dealing with. And then he pauses and he says, he's still in jail, right? It finally dawned on Mr. Tough Guy that John Cody isn't somebody he'd want to tangle with in public, and he'd want to make sure he's still in jail because Donald Trump, like every classic bully — if you push back, it's often masking infantile weaknesses."
"He's not a tough person when you scratch past the surface, but he fetishizes mobsters," O'Brien added. "When we talked in the top of the hour, he wanted to model himself on John Gotti. That's how you should roll. He compared himself to Al Capone. He has a juvenile and dangerous fixation on how mobsters are to be honored, and he models himself on that."
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