Donald Trump is much taller than Edward G. Robinson was and not as convincingly tough, but how could any movie fan not think of Robinson last week when the Department of Justice indicted Trump on 37 criminal counts?

I’m talking about Little Caesar (1931). In particular, the scene where mob boss Rico Bandello, played by Robinson, voices his last words: “Mother of Mercy, is this the end of Rico?”

As if it were hard for him to believe he could no longer add to his tally of gruesome crimes.

“Trump ain’t Rico,” Swamp Rabbit said. “Rico was an old-fashioned gangster. He didn’t get elected president. He didn’t have an army of fans wearin’ silly red caps. And the cops caught up with him at the end of the movie.”

I noted that Trump’s movie won’t end well either, but he has clung to the top of the dung heap for a long time, thanks in part to early help from the New York and Philly crime families. When “Sammy the Bull” Gravano said “The country doesn’t need a bookworm as president, it needs a mob boss,” he was talking about Trump.

“Rico came from nothing and fought his way up during the Great Depression,” I said. “Trump was born rich and groomed for success in the real estate business, working with mobbed-up construction companies and crooked politicians. His mob connections helped him get into the casino industry. He was just as rotten as Rico but he remained a media darling, even when reporters like David Cay Johnston and Wayne Barrett were exposing him in print.”

Swamp Rabbit sipped a beer and shook his head. “I still say this Trump-Rico connection is a stretch. Trump is a sleazebag but he didn’t shoot nobody, not even on Fifth Avenue.”

“That would have been the least of his crimes,” I said. “Instead he stuck with white-collar crime and helped destroy democracy in America.”