Trump Is The Godfather: CNN's Cooper Compares Ukraine Phone Call To Mafia Movie

The workings of president Donald Trump's White House have long been compared to that of a lawless Mafia crime family instead of a functioning federal bureaucracy playing by the rules. In this worldview, Trump isn't U.S. president but is, instead, a "capo" or "Don" that demands total fealty from his underlings.

Former FBI director James Comey once compared Trump to a Mafia boss "untethered to truth," in his book, "A Higher Loyalty."

“Holy crap,” wrote Comey “they are trying to make each of us an ‘amica nostra’ – a friend of ours. To draw us in. As crazy as it sounds, I suddenly had the feeling that, in the blink of an eye, the president-elect was trying to make us all part of the same family.”

CNN primary anchor Anderson Cooper has used the Mafia crime family analogy to refer to Trump and his closest White House aides on occasion.

Cooper alluded to Trump as a Mafia boss in his TV news show, "AC 360," in August 2018. So, it's no small wonder Cooper on Wednesday said Trump's call to Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky reminds him of a Mafia movie. "The Godfather" comes to mind.

More specifically, Cooper compared the controversial phone call on July 25 between Trump and Zelensky to a famous scene from "The Godfather," where the late Marlon Brando plays the lead role as Don Vito Corleone.

"I keep coming back to when Marlon Brando in 'The Godfather' sends Tom Hagen out to Hollywood to make a deal that the guy can't refuse," said Cooper.

"What is [Rudy] Giuliani doing running around, creeping around Ukraine, to talk to the president of Ukraine about allegedly about corruption in Ukraine, which is just a ridiculous fig leaf."

A five-page and redacted transcript from this phone call confirmed Trump egged Zelensky to reopen an investigation on his potential 2020 rival, former Vice President Joe Biden and his son, Hunter, who once worked for a Ukrainian corporation.

The transcript also confirms Trump asked Zelensky to work with his personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani, and Attorney General William Barr on the issue.

This saw Cooper compare Giuliani to Robert Duvall's character Tom Hagen, who is the godfather's lawyer and “consigliere” in the timeless Mafia movie. The specific comparison was made when Brando sends Hagen to Los Angeles to persuade the head of a film studio to give his godson a role in a movie. The man refuses the offer.

This scene from "The Godfather" ends when the head of the film studio wakes-up to find the bloody, severed head of his prized stallion atop him on his bed.

The Ukraine phone call scandal has since pushed the Democrat-led House of Representatives to launch an impeachment probe on the president. So far, more than 200 congress members have supported the inquiry.