A TRUMP/GATSBY TIME CAPSULE FROM 2017/1925 PART 1

IN AN ART DECO APPRECIATION about a week ago, “Art Deco, The Met, The Polish Brigade, Trump Tower and Truth,” February 23, 2017, was cited; and therein resided reference to Sidney Blumenthal’s article “A Short History of the Trump Family,” London Review of Books, February 16, 2017. 

Let’s consider this lengthy (9481-words) article as something of a Trump/Gatsby time capsule, tidbits of which are gleaned here in Parts 1 and 2 today and tomorrow.

Nineteen Eighty-Four? No, Scott Fitzerald’s “Foul Dust.” Sidney Blumenthal described, “A week after the inauguration, Nineteen Eighty-Four and The Origins of Totalitarianism were number one and number 36 respectively on the U.S. Amazon bestseller list, but the true-life Donald J. Trump story has more to do with what Scott Fitzgerald called ‘foul dust’ than with ideas or ideology.”

“Reckoning with Trump,” Blumenthal continued, “means descending into the place that made him. What he represents, above all, is the triumph of an underworld of predators, hustlers, mobsters, clubhouse politicians and tabloid sleaze that festered in a corner of New York City, a vindication of his mentor, the Mafia lawyer Roy Cohn, a figure unknown to the vast majority of enthusiasts who jammed Trump’s rallies and hailed him as the authentic voice of the people.” 

The year 2017, of course, was six years before Trump’s sexual abuse trial (E. Jean Carroll was awarded $5 million), defamation trial (this jury awarded her another $83.3 million), and this month’s federal appeals court upholding the latter. I suspect Ms. Carroll hasn’t seen a nickel as yet.

Trump and The City. “Fred Trump, Donald’s father,” Blumenthal recounted, “was a king of Queens; the Donald became a joker in Manhattan…. his humiliation at his failure ‘to make it there’ is at the heart of his vengeful compulsion to wreak humiliation on those he fears will belittle him. The uncontrollable anger that unleashes a regular flood of insults derives from his profound feeling that he has been, is being and will be diminished. In a constant state of alert and hurt, he victimises others because he burns with the feeling that he is the true victim. Every time his outlandish behaviour turns him into the butt of a joke, especially at the hands of sources associated with New York, from Spy’s jibes to Alec Baldwin’s impersonation on Saturday Night Live, his rage is stoked. Portraying himself as the innocent party he lashes out, a narcissistic reflex but also a tactic he learned from Roy Cohn.”

Roy Marcus Cohn, 1927–1986, American lawyer and prosecutor. He gained fame as prosecutor of the Rosenbergs (1952-1953) and chief counsel, the McCarthy hearings (1954). Image from RedSpruce at English Wikipedia; photo from New York World-Telegram and the Sun staff photographer: Hiller, Herman, photographer.

This Learning Has Paid Off, So Far. A jury of his peers, if indeed he thinks he has any, found Trump guilty on May 30, 2024, of 34 felonies of falsifying business records to conceal payments of hush money concerning porno film actress Stormy Daniels. As of June 11, 2025, Trump lawyers continue to argue his victimhood.

“Trump’s loathing and bullying,” Blumenthal observed, “are among the few things he came by honestly: they were part of his inheritance. Fred Trump was arrested for participating in a violent Ku Klux Klan rally in 1927; he had Mob ties and flagrantly discriminated against blacks when renting out housing. Woody Guthrie, his most famous tenant, wrote about his landlord in the first literary work on a Trump, ‘Old Man Trump’:”

Woodrow Wilson Guthrie, 1912–1967, American singer, songwriter, and composer. Image by Al Aumuller/New York World-Telegram and the Sun via Wikipedia.

“I suppose
Old Man Trump knows
Just how much
Racial hate
he stirred up
In the bloodpot of human hearts
When he drawed
That colour line
Here at his
Eighteen hundred family project.”

Tomorrow in Part 2, we’ll examine Trump’s unfailing kitsch and his affinity to F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Jay Gatsby. ds

© Dennis Simanaitis, SimanaitisSays.com, 2025