The McCarthy Era's Operative Handed His Playbook to Trump
Roy Cohn was not an aberration of the McCarthy era but a product of the paranoia that seizes American democracy every few decades — and the playbook did not die with him. It carried through to today via Trump.
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Cohn's three rules became Trump's rules
Bird says Cohn's rules became Trump's rules: never admit error, deny and deny again, and when accused, stall and stall again. That is exactly what Cohn did when he was indicted three times in the 1960s — delay the trial as long as possible, deny the charges, name and attack the judge. He was a habitual rule-breaker his whole life; rules were for little people, not for him. Trump later copied the playbook wholesale: stiffing vendors, using delay tactics to cut bills to ten cents on the dollar, and paying very little tax through assorted avoidance schemes.
— Kai BirdHe beat the charges on luck as much as tactics
Bird and his wife and co-author Susan Goldmark argue in the book that Cohn was partly just lucky. In one trial, a juror's father suddenly died and the judge was forced to declare a mistrial; in another, Cohn's own lawyer suffered a heart attack in court, collapsing just as he was about to deliver the summation. Cohn said on the spot, "Judge, I'll do the summation myself," and got two days, seven hours total, to defend himself — and because he had not taken the witness stand, he could not be cross-examined. The jury acquitted him 12 to 0, and some jurors were said to have been moved to tears by him.
— Kai BirdDon't tell me the law, tell me the judge
Another of Cohn's rules was "don't tell me the law, tell me the judge" — he knew which judge favored him and which judge could be manipulated. His father, Albert Cohn, was a Bronx judge appointed by the Roosevelt administration, and from childhood he was introduced by his father to lawyers and judges of every kind. After becoming a lawyer at 20, he cultivated judges into friends, in a highly transactional way: do someone a favor first, then knock on the door for the return. Trump went further on this rule — as president he appointed judges and Supreme Court justices, some of whom later ruled on his own cases. Bird calls this Cohn's most insidious and longest-lasting legacy: he was a lawyer, but he did not care about the law at all. He practiced law by telephone, avoiding leaving any notes or records, and he taught this to Trump.
— Kai BirdIn four phone calls, Trump kept praising Cohn
Bird conducted four phone interviews with Trump, each about 10 minutes, and they were very strange. The first was a cold call; Trump picked up and said "Hello?" with no idea who Bird was. Bird said he was writing a Cohn biography, and Trump said, "Oh, great, great, he was a wonderful man, a good lawyer, we won a lot of cases together," gushing about Cohn, genuinely missing him. Bird believes they really were friends. Trump is utterly unashamed of his association with Cohn, which Bird finds baffling — the book's sordid episodes are backed by 1,300 footnotes, so how could anyone read it and not feel shame.
— Kai BirdCohn was McCarthy's brain
Bird says McCarthy was politically an empty shell, not a true ideological believer, who stumbled into this anti-communist witch hunt by accident. But Cohn joined with zeal and professional skill and became McCarthy's brain — McCarthy was by then a functional alcoholic, and Cohn was effectively steering him. They successfully mounted a political offensive against the freshly installed Eisenhower administration: Cohn was hired in early 1953 and began attacking Eisenhower himself, a Republican president, on the grounds that he was not Republican enough, not anti-communist enough. Cohn was brutal and unrelenting in interrogating witnesses, publicly asking male government employees about their sexual orientation and whether they had had relations with men, destroying the lives of hundreds if not thousands of people.
— Kai BirdTrump knew Cohn was gay
Bird says Trump certainly knew Cohn was gay. After Studio 54 opened in '77, Cohn often brought Trump along in the 1970s; in the 1980s Cohn was more open, surrounded at his law firm by a group of young gay men. Once Cohn called Trump to plead for a boyfriend who was dying of AIDS, asking whether he could stay at a Trump hotel; Trump arranged it, the man stayed three or four months, and after he died Trump sent Cohn a bill. Bird sees a connection between Cohn's closeted state and the McCarthy-era persecution of gay people, and Trump's anti-DEI, anti-LGBTQ line today.
— Kai BirdCohn's politics was the politics of resentment
Bird traces Cohn's politics in the 1960s and '70s: he resented intellectuals, hated the Ivy League despite being a Columbia graduate, and preferred to hire young lawyers who had not gone to Ivies; he was suspicious of immigrants, anti-black, an isolationist who wanted America first. He opposed affirmative action, seeing it as discrimination against white people. Bird says this politics is exactly what we see in the Trump administration today — the same politics of resentment. And Trump likewise went to an Ivy, likewise came from a wealthy, high-profile family; there are a great many parallels between the two.
— Kai BirdThe Art of the Deal was arranged by Cohn as he was dying
Bird says Cohn did one thing for Trump that has been overlooked: before he died, he went to his old Horace Mann classmate Cy Newhouse, the Condé Nast magazine publisher and Random House owner, and suggested he have a Random House editor sign Trump to write a memoir. That is where The Art of the Deal came from. The book was published after Cohn's death and became a national bestseller, turning a star developer tucked away in New York into a national figure and a famous businessman, which led to the TV show The Apprentice, which led to Trump running for president. Bird says the starting point of that chain is Cohn's relationship with Cy Newhouse.
— Kai BirdOnce Cohn got AIDS, Trump began keeping his distance
Cohn contracted AIDS early in the epidemic. After learning Cohn might die of AIDS, Trump, by all accounts, began keeping his distance, relying less and less on his legal advice and turning to other lawyers, but he never broke with him. Trump also invited Cohn to the newly purchased Florida estate Mar-a-Lago and threw a grand dinner at which many people toasted Cohn. After the dinner, Trump is said to have had staff wash the silverware in hydrogen peroxide.
— Kai BirdMcCarthyism was never defeated
Bird says the core lesson of Cohn's story is that McCarthyism was not defeated, it did not die, it was not a 1950s anomaly. As a historian he came to realize that America is a nation of immigrants, a multicultural nation, a nation with civil liberties and the First Amendment, yet every few decades it goes through a period of paranoia: there was a Red Scare in the 1920s, the McCarthy witch hunt in the early 1950s, and now we are in such a period again. In the 1950s several thousand civil servants lost their jobs because of Cohn and McCarthy, and today's situation is worse — a more serious attack on democracy, a more serious politics of revenge, mass hunting down and deportation of undocumented immigrants.
— Kai BirdIn their own words · checked verbatim
the rules were for the little guy, not for him
Kai Bird2:07
he was a lawyer, but he really didn't care about the law
Kai Bird5:22
he really became Joe McCarthy's brains
Kai Bird12:43
It's the same politics of resentment
Kai Bird17:53
the lesson of Roy Cohn is that McCarthyism was not defeated. It didn't die. It wasn't an aberration in the 1950s
Kai Bird37:45
today, it's become much worse. It's a much more serious assault on our democracy, a much more serious politics of vendetta
Kai Bird38:45
Figures
| Number of times Cohn was indicted by the Justice Department | 3 | 1:04 |
| Year Cohn was disbarred | 1986 | 1:04 |
| Sentence Cohn won for John Gotti | 4 years, of which he served 2 and a half | 23:00 |
| Number of family photos of Cohn in Michael Stipe's collection | 150 | 29:03 |
| Pages in Cohn's unpublished memoir manuscript | 120 | 29:03 |
| Years Cohn did not pay taxes | 20 | 29:03 |
| Time Richard DuPont served in jail for harassing Cohn | about 18 months | 35:35 |
| Number of civil servants who lost their jobs because of Cohn and McCarthy in the 1950s | several thousand | 37:45 |
Glossary
- McCarthyism
- The early-1950s American political persecution and witch hunt carried out in the name of anti-communism.
- closeted
- Concealing one's homosexuality in public.
- disbarred
- Stripped of one's license to practice law because of misconduct.
- Teflon Don
- A nickname for John Gotti, meaning charges could not stick to him and he repeatedly beat them.
- Angels in America
- Tony Kushner's play, in which Cohn is portrayed as closeted.
How to listen
Readers and investors interested in the origins of Trump's political style, the history of the McCarthy era, and American political operative craft.
The closing Dolly Parton music-review segment is unrelated to this episode's subject and can be skipped.