The mafia presidency rules through threats of extortion
The Sunday before the New York City mayoral race, President Donald Trump told New Yorkers he might withhold federal funding if Zohran Mamdani won.
“It’s gonna be hard for me as the president to give a lot of money to New York, because if you have a Communist running New York, all you’re doing is wasting the money you’re sending there,” Trump told CBS’s 60 Minutes. Mamdani responded to Trump’s threat of extortion—vote for my preferred candidate or else—by pointing out that said federal funding was not Trump’s to give. “This funding is not something that Donald Trump is giving us here in New York City,” Mamdani said. “This is something that we are, in fact, owed in New York.”
It was not the first time Trump treated federal funds as his personal property that he could use to extort political opponents or reward political allies. Trump has approved disaster aid for red states and denied it to blue states. In the midst of the government-shutdown fight with Democrats, he is refusing to disburse rainy-day funds for food stamps, saying (falsely) that the lapse will hurt “largely Democrats.” The Trump administration has cut funding for projects in states with Democratic majorities. It is withholding federal funding from colleges and universities that do not submit to ideological control by the federal government over whom they hire, what they teach, and what sort of students they admit, and rewarding those that comply.
Trump supporters who stormed the Capitol on January 6, 2021, in an attempt to overturn the election on Trump’s behalf have received pardons, as have Republican officeholders convicted on corruption charges. Wealthy donors who funneled money to Trump’s family businesses have also been pardoned, such as Changpeng Zhao, the former CEO of the cryptocurrency exchange Binance, who pleaded guilty to fraud charges in 2023. Trump’s selective pardons are balanced out by his selective persecutions. His political opponents, such as New York Attorney General Letitia James and former FBI Director James Comey, have been slapped with flimsy indictments. Cities and states that Trump sees as bastions of his political opposition are subject to occupation by masked federal agents. As soon as Mamdani won, many New Yorkers began bracing for Trump’s retaliation. [Continue reading…]