The ‘F-ck You, Pay Me’ Presidency

In the recent Time magazine cover story on the first 100 days of Donald Trump’s second term, a presidential aide explained the president’s revenge strategy: “Look, either we come after you, we shut you down, or you’re going to help me out.”

There’s a famous scene in Goodfellas that explains this mob boss mentality. In voiceover from Ray Liotta’s wiseguy Henry Hill, we learn that the New York Mafia don Paulie tells anyone who owes him fealty, or really anything, “Fuck you, pay me” — or else. Unfortunately, Trump appears to be running the federal government with this same goon-like approach. Even worse, it’s working — way too well. 

When the president essentially said to Disney and Meta, Nice companies you got there, ABC and Facebook, it would be a shame if something happened to them, millions of dollars in settlements were soon dished out to Trump’s presidential library fund. (What books would be on the shelves of a Trump library, besides The Art of the Deal, are anyone’s guess.)

Allegedly fierce law firms like Paul Weiss, Kirkland & Ellis, and Skadden Arps also bent the knee and capitulated, to the tune of hundreds of millions of billable legal hours. Columbia University soon followed suit to avoid the president’s wrath (and preserve $400 million in funding). “I’ve gotta be doing something right, because I’ve had a lot of law firms give me a lot of money,” Trump gloated to Time.

Both houses of the GOP-controlled Congress have backed down, too, refusing to stand up to Trump’s ruinous tariff policies that threaten to plunge us into a worldwide recession. A glum and shaken Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski recently admitted to her constituents that she and her colleagues “are all afraid,” and warned that “retaliation is real.” House Speaker Mike Johnson, a noted profile in courage, told Time: “President Trump is the most powerful force in politics in the modern era. Everybody wants to be on this train — and not in front of it.”  

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Well, not everyone. Harvard has fought back against Trump’s relentless bullying, filing a federal lawsuit accusing the administration of violating its First Amendment rights. A group of law firms have banded together to sue, protests have broken out in every state led by coalitions like 50501, and an anti-Elon Musk campaign and boycott have helped tank Tesla’s stock amid the so-called Department of Government Efficiency’s devastating budget cuts. Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez have been barnstorming the country on an anti-oligarchy tour, speaking to massive crowds in places like Salt Lake City, no less. 

Trump’s current poll numbers are historically dismal, with a majority of respondents disapproving of his actions just four months into this term. Yet, the president in the Time interview expresses only triumph and ego. He even pushes back on the bedrock idea that the United States is a nation ruled by laws, not men. “We are a government where men are involved in the process of law, and ideally, you’re going to have honest men like me,” Trump told Time. This is the road to autocracy masked as Trumpian exceptionalism. 

Trump likes to compare himself to Al Capone, Scarface himself. Like Capone did to Chicago during Prohibition, Trump threatens multiple pillars of our society — corporate America, universities, Congress — and through his ongoing campaign of fear, he’s reaped millions. Turns out, the most powerful man in the world can be an effective shakedown artist.  

Despite his fantasies though, the mob boss Trump more closely resembles is John Gotti. The “Dapper Don” and Trump rose up in the Seventies and Eighties in New York City. They were both from the outer boroughs — impressively coiffed, garish, brash invaders who dominated the tabloids with their exploits. Gotti, the most notorious mobster of his day, ruled by fear, intimidation, and murder. He was from the Goodfellas school of gangster, too. So naturally, one of his crime family underlings is now a MAGA politician in New Jersey. The “fuck you, pay me” ethos is an ugly and abiding side of the American way. Gotti and the Goodfellas crew got theirs in the end. Trump is another matter. His uncanny luck, political cunning, influence, and power have managed to keep him above the law — with no end in sight.