By Maureen Dowd
Opinion Columnist
Big
Tommy D’Alesandro Jr. talked with President John Kennedy in the White
House in 1961 after being sworn in to serve on a federal board. In the
background are his wife and their daughter, Nancy.CreditWilliam Allen/Associated Press
Image
WASHINGTON
— Two men, sons of immigrants, rising to be the head of their own
empires, powerful forces in their ethnic communities. Both dapper and
mustachioed with commanding personalities. And both wielding a potent
influence on the children who learned at their knees and followed them
into the family businesses.
But
here’s the difference: Big Tommy D’Alesandro Jr. taught little Nancy how
to count. Fred Trump taught Donald, from the time he was a baby, that
he didn’t have to count — or be accountable; Daddy’s money made him and
buoyed him.
Fred, a dictatorial builder in Brooklyn and Queens from German stock, and Big Tommy,
a charming Maryland congressman and mayor of Baltimore from Italian
stock, are long gone. But their roles in shaping Donald and Nancy remain
vivid, bleeding into our punishing, pressing national debate over
immigration, a government shutdown and that inescapable and vexing Wall.
Donald Trump joined Mayor Ed Koch and Gov. Hugh Carey in 1978 at a ceremony for the launch of construction on a new hotel.CreditAssociated Press
Image
At this fraught moment when the pain of the shutdown is kicking in,
President Trump and Speaker Pelosi offer very different visions —
shaped by their parents — of what it means to be an American.
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When
Trump gave his Oval Office address, the framed photo of his dad was
peering over his shoulder. In her House speaker’s office in the Capitol,
Pelosi prominently displays a photo of herself at 7, holding the Bible
as her father is sworn in as Baltimore mayor in 1947.
D’Alesandro
was a loyal New Deal Democrat, just as Pelosi — the first daughter to
follow her father into Congress — is a resolute liberal. She grew up in a
house with portraits of F.D.R. and Truman.
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Donald
Trump spent most of his life as a political opportunist, learning from
his dad that real estate developers must lubricate both sides of the
aisle. Trump was once friendly with Pelosi, sending her a note in 2007
when she won the speaker job the first time — with a boost from his
$20,000 donation to the party — calling her “the best.” (Unlike with
“Cryin’ Chuck,” Trump has not gone for the jugular with a nasty nickname
for Pelosi.)
In her memoir, Pelosi
recalled that her Catholic parents “raised me to be holy.” She told me,
“My mother and my father instilled in us, public service is a noble
calling” and to “never measure a person by how much money they had.”
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constant stream of strangers lined up at their house in Baltimore’s
Little Italy, seeking food and help. One of Pelosi’s most arresting
memories, she told CNN’s Dana Bash, was giving immigrants who came to the door advice on how to get into the projects or to the hospital.
Alexandra, Pelosi’s documentarian daughter,
recounts this anecdote: Her son, Thomas — who was named after Big Tommy
and who stood at the speaker’s side as she reclaimed her gavel — wanted
an Xbox in 2017, so he set up a lemonade stand in Manhattan and raked
in $1,000.
His grandmother sat him down and asked, “That’s going to the victims of Hurricane Harvey, right?”
He
set up the stand again the next year and was once more schooled by his
grandmother asking, “That’s going to the victims of the California
wildfires, right?”
Contrast that with
Don Jr.’s uncharitable message on Instagram on Tuesday: “You know why
you can enjoy a day at the zoo? Because walls work.”
Where
the D’Alesandros saw the downtrodden and immigrants as people to weave
into the American dream, the Trumps saw suckers to squeeze.
According to The Times’s blockbuster tax investigation,
Fred lavished Donald with three trust funds and $10,000 Christmas
checks. When Donald was 8, he was already a millionaire, thanks to his
tax-scamming father. Fred Trump was hauled before a congressional panel
investigating whether he had looted government money through fraud. (One
congressman said the patriarch’s chicanery made him “nauseous.”)
By
the time Donald was 27, he had fully absorbed Trump family values, a
callous inversion of noblesse oblige: He and his father were getting
sued by the Justice Department for refusing to rent to blacks. As Woody
Guthrie, who lived in a Fred Trump complex near Coney Island, wrote in a song,
“I suppose/Old Man Trump knows/just how much/racial hate/he stirred
up/in the bloodpot of human hearts.” Not quite the same as “This Land Is
Your Land.”
Fred’s favorite parlor
trick was calculating big numbers in his head. But when Howard Stern had
Donald, Ivanka and Don Jr. on his show in 2006 and asked them a
multiplication question, they were all stumped.
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Over
the years, Fred funneled tens of millions of dollars to clean up
Donald’s messes. The father even gave the son $3.5 million in chips to
save an Atlantic City casino. By the time he was in his 40s, Donnie’s
allowance was more than $5 million annually. No wonder he’s still an
infant.
When Trump said he could
“relate” to federal workers who are now going without pay, it may have
been the most audacious lie he told all week. He may know what it’s like
to go from bankruptcy to bankruptcy — though always with a paternal
safety net — but he has no idea of what it’s like to live paycheck to
paycheck, much less none at all.
As
Pelosi told reporters: “He thinks maybe they could just ask their father
for more money. But they can’t.” She also leveled the barb on Trump in
person.
Pelosi deploys what she calls
her “mother of five” voice on our tantrum-prone president, perhaps in
an effort to reparent him. But how do you discipline the world’s
brattiest 72-year-old?
I invite you to follow me on Twitter (@MaureenDowd) and join me on Facebook.
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A version of this article appears in print on , on Page SR9 of the New York edition with the headline: Nancy Spanks The First Brat. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe
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