- The City of Fear: New York vs. the Mafia, the new Netflix documentary miniseries, tells the relationship of the current president of the United States with the world of the New York mafia.
- According to biographer Wayne Barrett, Trump “went to great lengths not to avoid” mafia contacts. Rather, he worked hard “to encourage them.”
- But his business was not limited to the United States. When Trump tried to build a casino in Australia, the authorities blocked his intentions because of his “mafia connections”.
President Donald Trump is always on the hunt for snitches. In fact, it is widely known how quickly the current president of the United States has to carry out retaliation against those he considers disloyal, and he loves to reward his partners when they refuse to testify. As his critics often point out, the president behaves like a mob boss. He even received the support of the former head of the Gambino family, Salvatore “Sammy the bull” Gravano, who said the United States “You don’t need a bookworm as president, you need a mob boss.”
The City of Fear: New York vs. the Mafia, Netflix’s new documentary miniseries, is not about political figures with mafia tendencies, but about the real-life mafia, which wielded enormous power over New York in the 1970s and 1980s, and the efforts of the FBI and from the US attorney’s office (then headed by Rudy Giuliani, who would later become Trump’s attorney) to kill her. The series makes extensive use of secret FBI recordings made by hidden microphones in mob member’s homes, cars and hangouts. Well, in one of the recordings Trump’s name appears in relation to an agreement on construction issues.
As the new Netflix series points out, doing business in many areas of the New York economy when Trump was young meant doing business with the mob. But Trump’s top industries – construction, casinos and luxury real estate issues – were particularly controlled by organized crime. And what seems obvious is that at times he seemed to do more business with the mob than was strictly necessary. According to biographer Wayne Barrett, “tried very hard not to avoid” contacts with the mafia. Rather, he worked hard “to encourage them.”
