go to the mattresses

Donald Trump Jr puzzled the House committee investigating the Jan 6 attack on the Capitol by reporting that he had told Trump’s Chief of Staff that he had to persuade Trump ‘to condemn this sh*t ASAP’ (i.e., the violent taking of the Capitol).  Meadows agreed. Trump Jr went on to say’ this one you go to the mattresses on.’

When asked what this meant he explained that he thought it meant ‘to go all in on something’ and that it came from The Godfather movie.

Various people then leapt in to say that Trump Jr had misunderstood the phrase and that it meant ‘to prepare for war’. Everyone agreed it was a Mafia expression used in The Godfather and then later in The Sopranos.

There are two stories about the origin of this phrase. The first takes us back to the siege of Florence in 1530.  Michelangelo Buonarroti was put in charge of the defences of the city (on the grounds that a good Renaissance man can do everything — paint, sculpt and run a military campaign). He had the bright idea of protecting the beltower of San Miniato al Monte by hanging mattresses all around it to protect it from cannon balls.

The second relates to Mafia clan fights.  When a clan was under attack, they would leave their homes and seek a place of safety in an apartment somewhere. They would install gunmen to protect them and, since these men needed to stay with them day and night, they would bring in mattresses to put on the floor for their use.

Who knows if there is any truth in either of these stories! But the fact remains that the phrase had currency in the Mafia in America and in Italy.

The Godfather citations are:

[Clemenza] That Sonny’s runnin’ wild. He’s thinkin’a going to the mattresses already.

[Sonny] I want Sollozo.  If not, it’s all-out war: we go to the mattresses.

Trump Jr was subjected to a certain amount of social media ridicule for his use of the phrase but I don’t mind it. There are other things I mind about Trump Jr but not that. A paraphrase might be that he was asking Meadows to be willing to go to war on this issue. It is a small figurative leap from the Mafia meaning.

The fact that he used it means that it must have some currency in American English outside Mafia circles, pushed on by The Godfather (which some people know off by heart) and The Sopranos.  I don’t think that, even with this extra push from the committee hearing, it will gain currency in Australian English.  The phrase is too puzzling for us and we don’t have the same sense of familiarity with the Mafia.