The Godfather Presidency

Forget the comparisons to fascists and autocrats. The most accurate model for understanding Donald Trump is the Mob-adjacent, politically connected underbelly of 1970s and '80s New York real estate

- By SAM TANENHAUS Illustrations by THE RED DRESS

It was March 27, two thirds of the way through President Donald Trump's first 100 days of chaos, and Maryland congressman Jamie Raskin's office was abuzz. Less than an hour before, the White House had announced that one of Raskin's antagonists in the House, Elise Stefanik, who represents a district in the far northeast of New York State, would not be Trump's ambassador to the United Nations.

The reason was not that Trump had developed misgivings. On the contrary, Stefanik is one of his pet legislators, a former detractor turned loyalist. Nor was there any doubt of her making it through confirmation hearings. In a season of improbable appointments, some of them verging on the surreal, Stefanik, with a degree from Harvard and a firm command of policy, was the rare Trump appointee who might actually be up to the job.

No, the trouble was the Republicans' tissue-thin majority. If Stefanik left the House, with tight off-year elections coming in closely contested districts, the GOP margin might shrink to four or even less. So Trump, in a bind, came up with a new UN appointment—Mike Waltz, the national security adviser few in the White House inner circle seemed to like—and Stefanik would have to stay put in the House. Instead of going to the UN and its luxurious apartment 37 floors up in midtown Manhattan, she'd be part of the increasingly robotic team in the capital, while also making visits back to the Adirondacks to deal—or not deal—with constituents like the ones who had angrily converged on the town library in Glens Falls to voice their complaints about the new administration to an empty chair and a poster of their absent legislator, Stefanik.