Truman, Trump, and Mafia Candor

Examining the career and origins of Harry S. Truman for clues to where Donald J. Trump got his attitudes – and political and other skills

When Donald Trump is accused of doing something untoward, such as not paying his taxes, he says, “That makes me smart.” Love him or hate him, he may be right. Trump has been equally audacious in how he talks about dealing with organized crime during his business career: He admits it. Repeatedly, including referring to mobsters as “very nice people” on David Letterman’s late-night TV show.

Remembering Harry Truman and his own dealings with shady characters

Trump’s strategy was not unlike that of a predecessor, Harry Truman, who had a similar mafia problem. Truman never said his gangland roots made him “smart,” but blunt talk was part of his playbook. How did Trump and Truman make this work for them?

One of the great myths of damage control (I spent 40 years in the business) is that being open is rewarded. “Get it all out there” is the cliché. The truth is that straight-shooting usually lands you in court. Besides, Americans have a perverse appreciation for scoundrels who can talk their way out of anything (another Trump skill).

There is something social scientists call “narrative fidelity,” which means that if something “rings true” and is consistent with what we have accepted to be true about you, we may be willing to look the other way if we learned something that would otherwise make us shudder.

It was well-known that Truman came from the corrupt Pendergast political machine in Kansas City. It was less appreciated that this was a mafia machine run by the John Lazia Cosa Nostra family. Truman once wrote in his diary:

I had to let a former saloon keeper and murderer, a friend of the Big Boss, steal about $10,000 from the general revenues of the County…to keep the crooks from getting a million or more…I could have had $1,500,000. I haven’t $150. Am I a fool or an ethical giant? I don’t know.

Indeed, while there’s lots of evidence that Truman was spawned from a criminal apparatus, there is no evidence that he ever took a bribe.

Truman made no secrets

Truman openly attended the funeral of his convicted felon mentor, Tom Pendergast, as Vice President despite his boss, Franklin D. Roosevelt’s, worries about his deputy’s links. Truman remained loyal to his Kansas City roots, firing the U.S. attorney who had prosecuted Pendergast, pardoning syndicate operatives in the machine, and paroling midwestern mafiosi who had been convicted of extorting show business unions.

Truman had benefited from rising to the national stage at a time of crisis – a world war, the death of a popular president, the Korean War – and parochial gangster gossip didn’t seem important. It became news a few years later after things had calmed down and the boss of the Kansas City mafia and his deputy were gunned down in the city’s Democratic Party headquarters. One of the hoods, Charles Gargotta, fell to his death in front of a giant photo of President Truman, bleeding out on the floor. This, combined with a scandal involving first lady Bess Truman’s income from her Senate job, contributed to Truman’s decision not to run for reelection in 1952. Despite these things, few of Truman’s biographers explored the mafia roots of his career. Harry Truman and the mafia didn’t register.

Trump? Voters don’t care

Trump’s mob ties, on the other hand, have been explored in depth, but voters don’t care. Trump, as a brash New York developer accommodating mobsters, is faithful to what we’ve long known about him.

One way Trump ensured labor peace as a developer was to compensate mob-controlled companies for construction materials. When building Trump Tower, he opted to use concrete rather than steel framing. Steel is an international industry with many companies vying for contracts. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, there were very few concrete companies operating in Manhattan. These were controlled by the “Concrete Club,” comprised of members of the Genovese, Gambino, Lucchese, and Columbo Cosa Nostra outfits. There is no law against paying certain vendors well. Really well. Even if such a practice could be tied to racketeering, nobody has proven Trump did anything illegal in 45 years.

Trump did the same thing with his Atlantic City casinos. In one case, he purchased a piece of property (through a front) owned by Philadelphia mobster Salvatore Testa. Testa’s property was valued at $195,000. Trump paid $1.1 million. Labor peace just happened to follow – peace that his competitors (especially in Manhattan) didn’t enjoy.

Candor does not pay

The wrong lesson to take from this would be that candor pays. After all, neither Truman nor Trump was fully honest about gangsters. The same Trump who has admitted to having known mobsters sometimes denies it. Trump’s stream-of-consciousness verbal imprecision conveys somehow as honesty. The right lesson is that different leaders can get away with different things depending on their personas and the missions they have been assigned by the electorate, given the challenges the country is facing at that moment.

When Truman was on the rise, few Americans knew about the mafia. They were aware, however, of kamikazes, Nazis, and communists. By the time Trump exploded onto the national political scene, everybody knew about the mob – and many admired the gangster ethic and thought it would be badass to have a rule-breaker-in-chief who made it clear he could handle hoodlums.

Voters identify with one who has faced danger

Having written about organized crime for decades, I am often asked what the fascination is with these criminals. The answer is that we all suffer indignities in life and wish, on a lizard level, we could be immune to being bullied by the universe. Never mind that real gangsters are besieged; the fantasy is that they suffer no abuse.

American voters feel abused. Whether this is justified depends on one’s politics. Nevertheless, it stands to reason that when you believe you are facing danger, you want help from somebody who you feel has looked it in the eye. This helps explain why Truman got a break from scrutiny about his origins and why Trump, who is frequently likened to a mob boss, gets a break from this and everything else.

This article was originally published by RealClearPolitics and made available via RealClearWire.