The Revenge of Roy Cohn on Everyone
Let’s say you’re a young, wealthy dilettante who has been trying to win the approval of domineering male figures throughout your lifetime. Raised to privilege, your formative years were spent in a military academy, where physical abuse, mental cruelty and social humiliation were served before breakfast, and if you didn’t want to take it, you’d better be dishing it out. Despite being a star athlete in a military academy, somehow “heel spurs” kept you out of Viet Nam. Instead, you went into business with Daddy, whose approval you never could earn, and ended up being sued right alongside him by the US government, for racist housing practices in New York.
Then, you meet another domineering figure who, on the surface, seems to be the exact opposite of you. You attend the trendy me-first church run by Norman Vincent Peale. He’s a Jew. You cut a wide swath through the young ladies. He cuts a wide swath through the young men. You’re young, tall and a catch. He’s old, short and not-so.
BUT…
He’s a legal shark, who never backs down, preferring to counter-attack, and to continue to attack, no matter the truth of a situation. He’s an anti-Semitic Semite and a homophobic homosexual. He is plugged in to every level of power in New York: political, religious, criminal and social. He’s also plugged into the gossip in all those realms, and loves to prove how plugged-in he is by sharing that gossip. And he’s an expert at slaying a person’s character through innuendo, insinuation, bending of the truth and outright lies, as he displayed to the world during the McCarthy Hearings, back in the Fifties, when he was Drunken Joe McCarthy’s consiglieri and hatchet man.
Right when he needed to, Donald Trump fell in love with Roy Cohn.
Although they eventually lost the federal suit, Cohn so obfuscated the issue with counter-suits and bullshit that the Trumps claimed it as a win. Cohn then became Donald’s entre into Manhattan power, and brokered many of Trump’s signature early deals, including his first iron-clad pre-nup and his first deals with construction-industry mobsters.
Finally, Donald Trump no longer had to seek the approval of the domineering men in his life. With Cohn, he had the respect of one of the most domineering, Machiavellian evil trolls ever to galumph across the American political landscape – and Cohn worked for HIM! If a particular negotiation was not going Donald’s way, he could – and did – pull out a picture of Roy Cohn and threaten, “You could deal with me, or you could deal with him.”
In 1986, after being disbarred for unethical conduct, Cohn died from AIDS. Although he maintained until the end that it was liver cancer, his protégé, Donald, was now as deeply ensconced in NYC gossip as anyone, and the truth was an open secret. So Donald offered the greatest homage to Cohn’s mentorship he ever could: he coldly dumped the dying man as a liability. The student had surpassed the master.
More than anyone in the dysfunctional dystopia Donald Trump has bought, built and stolen to support his addiction to attention, Roy Cohn is responsible for the man we see as the front-runner for the Republican Nomination for President of the United States, who is ascending to his highest eminence ever, while simultaneously being mocked and reviled in a way his mentor would remember well. Wearing a Roy-Cohn-design suit of dynamite, Trump has marched into Republican Valhalla and Götterdämmerunged the place in a political murder-suicide.
If there is a Hell, Roy Cohn is there now… chuckling.
“Trump has marched into Republican Valhalla and Götterdämmerunged the place in a political murder-suicide.”
Beautiful!
1I remember him, along with Tailgunner Joe and a few others of that ilk. What a piece of work he was, and not in Shakespearean terms. That would be way too good for him.
2And on a scale with which Wagner would approve.
3Well done, Primo, well done!
4[Slow clapping] Good work, Primo.
5That’s a wonderful read, daChipster. I do enjoy Primo’s lengthy discourses.
6Primo excellence!
Former President Clinton should receive a copy, lest Donnie Drumpf thinks he can play a game of ‘gotcha’ with the Big Dog.
7Lovely. Thank you. Great Saturday morning read.
8Brilliant! What a way to start my day!
9Cohn was uglier than nine miles of rough road. Drumpf might even be worser.
10Cohn & Drumpf, Has a nice ring to it! For a con man Co.
11A masterpiece.
I well remember Roy Cohn; he was the first person I’d seen who hated (and harmed) others who were the same sexual persuasion as himself. Sadly, he wasn’t (and isn’t) the last.
12Thanks, Primo. I thought I knew all about Cohn, but never connected him with the Donald. Makes perfect sense.
13Cohn is not chuckling; he’s cheering. He’d jumping for joy. He is guffawing in hog-heaven.
14Sorta makes the old blood run cold, doesn’t it?!?
15Yes, Marcia in CO.
16Thanks Primo for a muy bien Saturday morning post!
17Willie Shakespeare summed it up thusly, “The evil that men do lives after them…” In this case, Drumpf and all that he represents.
18It’s not worth completing that quote because there has been no good to be interred with Cohn’s bones.
Birds of a feather flock together.
19For those not familiar with Cohn and Sen. McCarthy, you might check to see if an exceptionally good made for TV movie titled “Citizen Cohn” is available. Watched it years ago and have not forgotten the horror I felt that two such vile people could be so powerful.
20Outstanding! Cohn and Trump—what a perfect fit.
21WONDERFUL
22You have warmed me up on a bitter nasty day that belongs two months ago.
I only regret that this vaulting language and rhetoric would go right over the heads of the Trumpistas, but wow, what a superior essay.
23This is so good, so very, very good. Gracias.
24Sandy, Citizen Cohn is an excellent movie. It stars formerly-wonderful-actor James Woods, who fell in love with Rudy Giuliani while portraying him. I’ve never seen that movie, which I believe is entitled America’s Mayor. Not surprisingly, Rudy has endorsed Trump.
25Letter-perfect!
Shared on the Book Of Faces!
26I had not heard of this until I had read the politico article. Admittedly, I’ve never been that into hearing anything about Trump’s uniformly sordid past. But I was really struck – again! – by the weak-assed vetting the corporate media has done throughout this campaign of the snacilbupeR.
Consider this: How much have you heard about Roy Cohn this election, who actually mentored, molded and manipulated Trump?
And how much did you hear about a mere acquaintance of Obama’s, Saul Alinsky, eight years ago?
27daChipster, why don’t the dnc, dems, point this out? Waiting to see if he gets the nod? Wasted credibility if cruz gets nod? Perhaps the dnc and insider dem elites ain’t that much different in principle from the rethugs except timing in pulling the trigger.
28IMO, if the dems decide to go on the attack, they should make sure they have as much hard evidence to support any allegation vs fox-style Alinsky innuendos.
Do you think that maybe the dems should back off trying to eliminate trump as a candidate because cruz is much more dangerous should he become prez?
Van59, seriously, you could put a picture of Trump on the post office wall and his followers would think it’s great publicity.
29