Connections

 As a five-time viewer of the entire Sopranos series, I gotta tell ya (looks around) I notice things...

I suspect that Donald J. Trump is a Sopranos fan. He seems to borrow from the series, from time to time. I don't mean just big things like the whole bust out of Tony's old schoolmate, Dave's sporting goods store being basically what Trump is doing to the American economy. That's pretty obvious anyway and any criminal could come up with that. Dave owed like $80 large to Tony and Richie Aprile and so they went partners with Dave so he could pay them back- and then some. They maxed out Dave's credit via the store, buying stuff on his credit that could be sold on the street for profit. Dave eventually figured it, realizing that Tony had planned it from the moment he allowed Dave- a degenerate gambler- to sit in at a high stakes' poker game with Frank Sinatra Jr. and other high-rollers. Tony knew Dave was a loser and would quickly get in way over his head and that Tony would bust out the store. "This is my bread and butter" Tony told Dave, "It's what I do". 

There's that, but there have been other, smaller takeaways from The Sopranos that makes me believe that Trump is a fan. 

Bobby Bacala had the original idea to "build the wall". Tony, Carmella, Bobby and Janice were in upstate New York near the Canadian border, when Bobby revealed that his father had emigrated to Canada, back in the day, because, having done time in Italy, he couldn't emigrate to the US. He then slipped over the border, changed his name, got new papers and became an American. It worked out well for his family, but Bobby said that too many people were coming over now and they should "build a wall". This episode was in the final season, in 2006, years before Trump came on the scene with his wall-building scheme. 

The ear bandage. Earlier in the series, Uncle Junior put out a hit on his nephew, Tony. A couple of black guys bungled the hit though and as Tony fought them off, he got shot in the ear. The damage was a thousand times more severe to Tony's ear than Trump's in his assassination hoax, but the square bandage was worn for the duration of the episode and afterwards- like Trump- the ear had miraculously healed itself. Life does imitate art sometimes. 

Tariffs. Nothing but a street tax imposed by the mob. Little Tuna, the first guy I tended bar with, was a mob bookie. Basically, this meant that he paid a local mobster a percentage of his take for the right to make book, unencumbered by other gangsters who might want to shake him down, Tuna wasn't a gangster himself, but if he had a problem collecting from some guy, they could help him out. Maybe. Depends on who it was. Tariffs are a tax on doing business, a tax that is paid for by the consumer. The money goes to Trump. That's his taste.

The whole Christopher Columbus thing. In the Sopranos, one of the least interesting storylines was when Tony's crew got upset about backlash regarding the Italian explorer, Christopher Columbus. People then and now want to take Columbus Day away just because of a little thing about his *discovery* of America being total fucking bullshit. People- what are you gonna do??!! The crew, of course, was all Italian and they took it personal that civilians would want to shit all over their heritage like that. This anti-Italian sentiment was a recurring theme in the series. Many Italian Americans are offended that society views them as gangsters because of the mafia and movies like "The Godfather" and "Goodfellas". They fucking LOVE the movies, but they take umbrage with the notion that all Italians are criminals and associated with the mafia. Well, that's great. But having grown up in the western suburbs of Chicago, I don't know that I ever met an Italian who didn't want you to think he or she was connected somehow. "I know people who know people..." was something said early and often in my experiences with Italian Americans. Gender, age- didn't matter, they love that image, wear it like a badge.

Trump being mafia-adjacent all his adult life due to his real estate misadventures, he wants that image too. It frightens people. Knowing people who know people, well, that says it all, in some circles at least. Dare I say Trump knows people who know people? Well, he does. I know the same people. They are all characters on The Sopranos. Fuggeddaboudit, Donny, you never had the makings of a varsity athlete.