It’s super odd that anyone still gets their picture taken with disgraced former president Donald Trump. If you want a photo that ages really poorly, just pop down to the mall and get a Glamour Shot. In the end, you’ll get less makeup smeared on your face, inhale marginally less hairspray, and people will ask you why you’re still wearing scrunchies instead of why you continue to fetishize a known insurrectionist who hangs with white supremacists and mobsters.
Speaking of, Donald Trump—who not that long ago supped with virulent antisemites Kanye West and Nick Fuentes (who are approximately as likely to eat your face as their Asiago phyllo puffs)—has just been photographed with notorious former Philadelphia mob boss Joseph “Skinny Joey” Merlino. The photo was taken at the Trump International Golf Club West Palm Beach earlier this month.
Here’s the pic:
Which one is Merlino? Oh, right. He’s the only one with enough moral discernment not to wear one of those fucking hats. The dude on the right, in other words.
Of course, Trump will pretend he doesn’t know this guy, whether he actually does or not. He’s been photographed with numerous business associates, employees, good friends, and (alleged) rape victims he claims he barely knows or can’t place at all. Take, for instance, journalist E. Jean Carroll, who has sued Trump for defamation in connection with an incident in which he allegedly raped her in a department store in the ‘90s. Trump’s brilliant defense is that she’s not his “type.” In fact, he reiterated that claim during a recent deposition for the case—the same deposition in which he misidentified Carroll as his ex-wife, Marla Maples. But don’t fret! He can still tell the difference between an elephant and a camel!
But Skinny Joe? Well, Trump may not have married him, but he’s definitely his “type.”
The Philadelphia Inquirer:
Merlino was convicted in 2001 in a racketeering case and served a decade in federal prison. He had claimed more recently to have left that life behind, moving to Boca Raton in Florida to work as maître d’ at an Italian restaurant named after him.
The restaurant closed after Merlino’s most recent run-in with the feds, which led to a two-year sentence in October 2018 when he pleaded guilty to a gambling-related charge. Merlino, after being sentenced, echoed comments from Trump at the time that were critical of witnesses who cooperate with federal investigators.
“President Trump is right — they’ve got to outlaw the flippers,” said Merlino, who was released from prison in July 2020.
Of course, when Merlino talks about “flippers,” he’s not concerned about financially risky real estate schemes or environmentally fraught snorkeling adventures. He means the kind of flipper you see on The Sopranos. Unless you’ve successfully managed to ice-pick it out of your brain, you’ll recall Trump’s own jaundiced attitude toward snitches—a bias he betrayed during an August 2018 interview with Fox News: “It’s called flipping and it almost ought to be illegal,” Trump said. “I know all about flipping, 30, 40 years I have been watching flippers. Everything is wonderful and then they get 10 years in jail and they flip on whoever the next highest one is or as high as you can go.”
Gee, who hates informants? Mobsters and other high-profile criminals, that’s who. Weird.
Of course, this wasn’t supposed to happen. Trump’s campaign was supposed to be exerting more control over his feral urges, but apparently mafiosi are still slipping through the cracks left and right. You know, like they always have. Back in 2016, before Trump had hired his first White House consigliere, it was clear that he had numerous mob ties—though, fortunately for him, he never communicated with any of these characters through a home-based email server. As far as we know, anyway.
From a May 2016 Politico Magazine story by author and frequent Trump critic David Cay Johnston:
Wayne Barrett, author of a 1992 investigative biography of Trump’s real-estate dealings, has tied Trump to mob and mob-connected men.
No other candidate for the White House this year has anything close to Trump’s record of repeated social and business dealings with mobsters, swindlers, and other crooks. Professor Douglas Brinkley, a presidential historian, said the closest historical example would be President Warren G. Harding and Teapot Dome, a bribery and bid-rigging scandal in which the interior secretary went to prison. But even that has a key difference: Harding’s associates were corrupt but otherwise legitimate businessmen, not mobsters and drug dealers.
This is part of the Donald Trump story that few know. As Barrett wrote in his book, Trump didn’t just do business with mobbed-up concrete companies: he also probably met personally with [mafia underboss Anthony “Fat Tony”] Salerno at the townhouse of notorious New York fixer Roy Cohn, in a meeting recounted by a Cohn staffer who told Barrett she was present. This came at a time when other developers in New York were pleading with the FBI to free them of mob control of the concrete business.
Gee, it might have been cool if more people had known this before Trump, you know, became president. Oh, well. Live and learn—right, New York Times?
Meanwhile, it looks like the persistent rumors about the Trump campaign’s continued existence are actually true, because they issued a statement through a spokesperson—who definitely isn’t John Barron, no matter how much he totally sounds like him: “President Trump takes countless photos with people. That does not mean he knows every single person he comes in contact with.”
Of course he doesn’t. I mean, does he really know anyone when it comes right down to it?
Check out Aldous J. Pennyfarthing’s four-volume Trump-trashing compendium, including the finale, Goodbye, Asshat: 101 Farewell Letters to Donald Trump, at this link. Or, if you prefer a test drive, you can download the epilogue to Goodbye, Asshat for the low, low price of FREE.