As he squeezes concessions, cash and even part government ownership from some of America’s most prominent entities, President Donald Trump is channeling a deceased union thug to whom he himself often bent a knee.
Trump was 33 in 1979, when John Cody, the mob-linked president of Local 282 of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, called for a citywide strike in New York. The lone job site that remained open was that of Trump Tower. And whatever Cody may have received in return, a beautiful Texas divorcee with whom he was very fond ended up with two triplex apartments directly below Trump’s penthouse.
The divorcee was Austrian-born Verina Hixon. Cody stayed in her new residence often enough to have qualified as Trump’s downstairs neighbor. Cody informed Trump that Hixon wanted a swimming pool in one of her apartments. Trump grumbled at something the architects had not envisioned, but proceeded to make whatever structural alterations were necessary.
As summarized by his son, Michael Cody, the union boss operated with a simple principle.
“It’s, ‘I can say whatever I want and do whatever I want… and you’re gonna have to listen to me, or else there’s consequences,’” the son told the Daily Beast on Wednesday.
That approach to power is all too familiar for people who have been following Trump’s current efforts to implement policy through extortion. But of Trump in those earlier days, Cody’s son said, “I don’t think he was that way before, you know, when he was just starting out, but I think he learned that.”
Michael Cody added, “My father was tough. He was tough and he wasn’t nice. I almost think sometimes Trump got lessons from my father.”
One lesson came when Trump’s then wife, Ivana, hired a painting contractor, apparently for their apartment.
“My father found out,” Michael Cody recalls. “He said, ‘No, no, you don’t do that.’ They had to hire who my father told them to hire.”
Mike Cody recalls the younger Trump as “a guy who would talk tough, but as soon as you confronted him, he would cry like a little girl. He was all talk, no action.”
“My father walked all over him,” the son added. “Any time Trump didn’t do what he was told, my father would shut down his job for the day. No deliveries; 400 guys sitting around.”
Michael says he was with his father one time when Trump called, desperate to have a job reopened. He says Trump ended by telling him, “Whatever you say, John…”
On more than one occasion, the Trump of years past spoke to Cody as many people in the White House speak to President Trump now
“Anything for you.”
Even as Trump submitted, he must have wished he could dominate. And Cody was not the only gangster Trump had to do business with at the nexus of construction and organized crime.
“I think the dealings with wise guys, you know, made him a wannabe,” Michael Cody said. “There’s a lot of wannabes out there, and Trump was one…He’s a wannabe Mafia don.”
The Donald is now bigger than any don, but remains liable to revert to the Trump of old when faced with making good on grand pronouncements. He earned the nickname TACO Trump because he backed off so many tariffs. And he abandoned his insistence on the urgent necessity of a ceasefire in Ukraine after a few minutes with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
“I mean, how much more powerful could a person be?” Mike Cody said of our president. “Why do you always cave in?”
But many entities do cave in to Trump before he can cave in to them. Columbia University double caved, striking a deal on policy with Trump only for him to suddenly say he also wanted $200 million.
When it comes to Harvard University, Trump could have been Gambino crime family boss John Gotti himself as he said he wants more cash from the institution whenever it defies him.
“Every time they fight, they lose another $250 million,” Trump said of Harvard during a White House press conference in May.
Harvard also seems likely to give in.
Others who have caved to Trump demands for policy changes include eight major law firms, among them Skadden, Arps, and Paul, Weiss.
In the corporate realm, Apple CEO Tim Cook agreed to pledged $100 billion in US investments and was as submissive during an Oval Office Office visit with President Trump as young Trump had been with John Cody. And the computer chip company Intel seems ready to go along with a plan to give up 10 % of the company in a business arrangement melding the private sector that seems more in the way of communist China than of capitalist America.
When it comes to all these dealings, Mike Cody offers the advice of someone who sees Trump’s inner wannabe.
“If they show weakness, he’ll pounce on them,” Mike Cody said. “If they stand up, there’s a good chance he’s gonna back off.”
John Cody died of Alzheimer’s disease in 2001, at 79, the same age Trump is now. The son was asked what he thought his father might say now The Donald is bigger than any don in history.
“He’d be calling Trump up, telling him what to do, you know what I mean?” Michael Cody said.
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