The Origins of the Mar-a-Lago Machine

Donald Trump has always modeled his political identity, consciously or not, after the powerful figures who made up the corrupt landscape of New York City politics in the latter part of the 20th century. Almost all aspects of Trump’s approach to politics, from his bullying style and transactional mindset to his all-consuming need for loyalty, can be traced back to his formative years in New York.   

The president-elect was reared in the city’s notoriously incestuous clubhouse culture, where machine politicians ruled over their fiefdoms while wealthy developers like his father, Fred, turned their “political connections into private profits at public expense,” as Village Voice journalist Wayne Barrett put it in one of the very first exposés on Donald in 1979. It was through his father’s deep ties to the Brooklyn Democratic Party and the Madison Club, which reached the apex of its power in the mid-1970s, that Trump was able to jumpstart his own career as a builder. When the 20something Donald had to impress a potential business partner with his political clout, he arranged an impromptu meeting the very next day with the newly elected Abe Beame (a member of the Madison Club). “Whatever Donald and Fred want, they have my complete backing,” said the 5-foot-2 mayor as he stretched his munchkin arms over the towering Trumps, according to Barrett’s classic book on the subject. Trump’s rise to power was inextricably linked to his father’s political connections, who then became his own as he showered them with campaign contributions and other favors over the years. 

To this day, Trump often looks back with fondness to the seedy cast of characters who dominated New York politics in those years, including his lawyer and mentor Roy Cohn. When Trump first met Cohn in the mid-’70s, as portrayed in the recent biopic ”The Apprentice,” the lawyer had already been indicted multiple times and was a “walking advertisement for every form of graft.” He was also one of the most ruthlessly effective fixers in New York, with a Rolodex of political connections that easily surpassed Fred’s. The Machiavellian lawyer and former Joseph McCarthy henchman took Trump under his wings and taught him how to game the system and ruthlessly exploit the weaknesses of foes, introducing Donald to the “netherworld of sordid quid pro quos.” He also seems to have imparted his complete lack of moral code to the future president. During his first term, Trump would regularly ask “Where’s my Roy Cohn?” whenever a scandal threatened to engulf his presidency. 

Another character Trump has often looked back to over the years is Meade Esposito, the cigar-chomping, mob-connected boss of the Brooklyn Democratic Party from 1969-1984. In a post-presidency interview with Maggie Haberman, Trump admiringly recalled how Esposito “ruled with an iron fist” and was a “very strong leader, to put it mildly.” He also unfavorably compared Senate Majority leader Mitch McConnell to the old boss. “I figured that the Mitch McConnells would be like him, in the sense of strength,” said Trump, who was as disappointed in the Senate leader as he was in his attorney generals.

When he first entered the White House in 2017, advisers said that Trump expected the nation’s capital to operate something like New York City in the old days, with the president “ruling by fiat, exacting tribute and cutting back room deals” (in other words, the president as the chief political boss). Trump’s ignorance of Washington was coupled with a complete lack of institutional support and an almost nonexistent political network in the capital. As a political outsider, he had to rely largely on established Republican networks and organizations to staff his administration, and was predictably left disappointed by his top political appointees, who shuffled in and out of his administration at an unprecedented rate. Throughout his term, Trump would regularly complain of disloyalty — the ultimate offense in Trumpworld. 

This time around, Trump is returning to Washington much better prepared, with his own political machine and a web of organizations that his supporters have spent the past four years devising for this moment. The president-elect has consolidated his control over the Republican Party and established a broad network of loyalists and power brokers who orbit him like the planets circling the sun. In 2016, the Republican establishment was deeply distrustful of the newly elected president; today, Donald Trump is the Republican establishment.

Not surprisingly, he already seems eager to test the limits of his power. Within days of winning the election, Trump called on Senate Republicans to allow for “recess appointments,” which would enable him to bypass the Senate confirmation process altogether for high-level nominees. According to the conservative legal commentator Edward Whelan, Trump’s team is considering a “cockamamie scheme” in which House Speaker Mike Johnson would force an adjournment of both the House and Senate, thus enabling Trump to make his recess appointments. Johnson has already signaled he is open to the plan, saying “there may be a function” for recess appointments. The willingness of congressional Republicans to bend the knee and go along with Trump’s power grab will offer an early indication of just how deferential they will be to the new president.

Trump is also planning to establish dominance over the federal bureaucracy and root out any “disloyal” career employees early on. The president-elect has vowed to reinstate the executive order known as Schedule F, which he signed in 2020 just a few weeks before that year’s election. Schedule F, which Joe Biden later rescinded, would have stripped civil service protections from tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands of nonpartisan public servants and empowered the president to replace them with loyalists, regardless of qualification or merit. If successful, Trump’s assault on the federal workforce could permanently politicize the civil service and restore features of the spoils system that epitomized the machine politics of the 19th century. 

Trump will face far fewer obstacles than he did during his first term. The idea of checks and balances has always been anathema to his vision of politics, and most Republicans increasingly feel the same way. Under Trump’s leadership, the party has become wholly committed to the idea of the “unitary executive,” which was given a massive boost last summer after the Supreme Court ruled that presidents are immune from criminal prosecution as long as they commit illegal acts in an “official” capacity (ratifying Richard Nixon’s once-infamous claim that “when the president does [something illegal], that means it is not illegal.”) With the two other branches of government effectively neutered, the “guardrails” that existed during his first term have been mostly obliterated. 

There is little doubt about what Trump will do with his expansive new powers: like every political boss in the history of this country, he will enrich himself and his friends. The president-elect’s business empire, which is deeply tied to his personal brand and political power, is poised to reap a historic windfall from his second term. “He’s going to be richer and more powerful than ever,” predicted a former colleague shortly after his victory. Trump’s wealthy friends will also do exceedingly well. The transactional politician spent much of his time on the campaign trail demanding money from donors and making sweeping promises to his biggest financial backers in return. Perhaps no one stands to profit more from a second Trump administration than Elon Musk, whose companies have soared in value since his victory (along with his paper net worth, which has reached absurd new heights). The world’s richest man is a walking conflict of interest who has benefited from billions of dollars’ worth in government contracts. He has also had routine run-ins with regulators for everything from labor to safety to environmental violations. Now, he has been appointed to an advisory role on government spending, where he will almost certainly target the same agencies that he has clashed with while boosting his own bottom line. 

Unlike New York’s most famous political machine, Trump’s patronage will extend only to his wealthy and well-connected supporters. For all its faults, Tammany Hall provided real services and means of support to the city’s working-class and immigrant communities; the Mar-a-Lago machine, in contrast, has no real intention of doing anything for the millions of working-class Americans who helped elect Trump. If there is one fundamental lesson that Donald learned from his days in New York City, it’s that in politics — as in all things — there are winners and losers, and the winners are those who can afford to pay. The rest are just suckers.