DAVID REMNICK
The old-school Mafiosi are fading into the past, pale
imitations of their pharaonic forefathers. As the late Murray Kempton, the
greatest of all New York columnists, once wrote, “Where are the scungilli of
yesteryear?” In the late nineties, federal agents insinuated an informer into
the ranks of the DeCavalcante crime family, of New Jersey, and the resulting
wiretaps and transcriptions revealed a dying language of secrecy, petty
schemes, and blood oaths gone wrong. Sad old veterans of the Punic Wars of
Essex County talked about selling old comic books and Viagra to make money, and
yet they knew that they were losing touch with the new world.
“They make money with the computer,” a gangster named Joseph
(Tin Ear) Sclafani said incredulously about the young. To which another
associate replied, “These [expletive] kids—twenty-five, twenty-six years
old—will teach you things you could not ever believe.”
“You know, I’m computer-phobia,” a DeCavalcante soldier
named Lenny replies.
“That’s the whole thing,” another says. “In this [expletive]
life that we live, every day if you ain’t like a chameleon, if you can’t
change, you’re finished.”
I thought of this exquisite sampling of the DeCavalcante tapes after reading the riveting
serio-comic report in the Washington Post by Adam
Entous describing a meeting in June, 2016, on Capitol Hill, at which Republican
Party leaders, including House Speaker Paul Ryan and Majority Leader Kevin
McCarthy, gathered to talk business. Let’s not be unfair, much less libelous.
It’s not that the members of Congress present were involved in crimes or
illegal activity of any kind; no, it’s that they seem so craven, cynical, and,
ultimately small-time. They have sunk so low that they are willing to get
behind a candidate for whom they clearly have no regard. Because, well, that’s
“this [expletive] life that we live.”
In the transcript published by the Post, McCarthy
speculates that the Russians hacked the Democratic National Committee’s
computers and, in the process, discovered whatever opposition-research
materials the Democrats had gathered on Trump.
“There’s two people I think Putin pays: Rohrabacher and
Trump,” McCarthy said, according to Entous, a superb reporter who heard a tape
recording of the colloquy. “Swear to God.”
Dana Rohrabacher is a Republican from California with a
peculiar amalgam of views: pro-marijuana, dubious about climate change,
pro-torture. For this last position, in 2007, Keith Olbermann awarded him his
periodic “Worst Person in the World” award, on his old MSNBC show. Like
Trump, Rohrabacher has been highly solicitous of Russian President Vladimir
Putin. Last year, Politico ran an article on Rohrabacher called “Putin’s
Favorite Congressman.”
In the Post piece, McCarthy’s remark is met
with laughter, and Ryan cautions his colleagues, “This is an off the record . .
. No leaks! . . . All right?”
And then, amid more laughter, Ryan says, “This is how we
know we’re a real family here.”
“That’s how you know that we’re tight,” Steve Scalise, the
House Majority Whip, says.
“What’s said in the family stays in the family,” Ryan
concludes.
Spokesmen for the various parties at first denied that the
conversation took place. But when the Post apprised them of
the audiotape, they went into an oh-well-it-was-just-a-joke mode. Another
participant, Evan McMullin, an ex-C.I.A. operative, who ran for President last
year as an independent, confirmed to the Post that the
conversation took place. He attended as the policy director of the House
Republican Conference.
In fairness, Entous makes clear in his report that there was
laughter throughout the exchange, and it is entirely possible that McCarthy was
not serious at all about his conjectures. And yet the tape and the transcript
do deepen the impression of blithe hypocrisy when it comes to the business of
electing an obviously erratic man as President. Almost everyone in the room
endorsed Trump. McCarthy was so ardent in his support that Trump referred to
him as “my Kevin.” Ryan made distancing gestures from time to time, expressing
oblique disgust at Trump’s hosannas for Putin and his pussy-grabbing
braggadocio, but those faint stirrings of a moral conscience soon passed, and
his endorsement of Trump before the nominating Convention and his fealty ever
since have been consistent. Ryan—like Senate Majority Leader Mitch
McConnell—could hardly assume a position in immediate opposition to a President
of his Party, and the leaders of the Republicans in Congress decided to muffle
their misgivings and moments of revulsion in service of their conservative
agenda: tax cuts, “repeal and replace,” and a generalized rollback of the Obama
years.
These men must know that they are still defending the
increasingly indefensible: an unstable and incompetent man flailing in the
wind. It’s hardly different at the White House. In the West Wing, senior aides
have become increasingly disgusted by the behavior of the President, as he
spends his days wallowing in fury, self-pity, self-aggrandizement, distraction,
defensiveness, and delusion. During the campaign, President Obama routinely
called Trump “uniquely unfit” to be Commander-in-Chief; now Trump’s aides (some
of them) and Republicans in Congress (some of them) seem to be reaching a
similar conclusion. The political question that may matter most is this: At
what point will private misgivings tip over into a withdrawal of support and a
demand for an end to this prolonged emergency?
Meanwhile, Trump has gone from one graduation
speech to the next, unloading his grievances at the podium. “You have
to put your head down and fight, fight, fight,” he declared to the hopeful
young. “Look at the way I’ve been treated lately, especially by the media. No
politician in history, and I say with surety, has been treated worse, more
unfairly.” Sir Winston could not have said it better.
In both reporting and thinking about the avalanche of
information about the Trump Administration and its congressional supporters, it
is essential to avoid getting ahead of what is known. Jokes–if they were
jokes–are not evidence. Theories are not evidence. What’s needed is the deepest
and most unprejudiced investigation possible of the campaign and this
Presidency’s possible crimes or misdemeanors. Whatever evidence James Comey or
Paul Manafort or Carter Page or anyone else has to provide, it must be heard
and seen.
Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein has announced that
Robert Mueller, the director of the F.B.I. between 2001 and 2013, will be special
counsel in the investigation of Russian involvement in the 2016 election. If
Mueller, who is widely
respected in Washington, can maintain his independence from any meddling,
subtle or broad, by the White House, this will count as a step forward.
What recent weeks have also made clear is that, outside
government, the Fourth Estate has worked hard to put pressure on power, its
most essential role. And a large measure of that pressure has been the result
of the daily battle between the Times and the revitalized
Washington Post. What fresh horror will tomorrow bring?
__
De THE NEW
YORKER, 17/05/2017
Imagen: PHOTOGRAPH BY JABIN BOTSFORD / WASHINGTON POST VIA
GETTY
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