Film looks at Trump’s mentor, Roy Cohn
As readers of this column will know, I don’t normally do movie reviews. I get in enough trouble with my weekly political views. I don’t want to risk upsetting moviegoers too.
But this one I can’t resist. There’s a new documentary that came out Friday that you must see. But beware: It will scare the bejeezus out of you.
I saw it at an advance screening. It’s called: “Where’s My Roy Cohn?” It’s a Sony Pictures release, directed by Matt Tyrnauer. It tells the story of attorney Roy Cohn, who has to be one of the most evil men who ever walked the face of the Earth. And it goes a long way in explaining how we got to the dark side of American politics today.
The title “Where’s My Roy Cohn?” is the question President Donald Trump reportedly asked White House aides whenever he was frustrated by thenAttorney General Jeff Sessions’ refusal to automatically do whatever Trump wanted. Trump had learned a different lesson from Cohn: that there are no limits, that anything goes, as long as you win.
For most attorneys, the practice of law is still an honorable profession.
But Cohn used the law to represent every dishonorable cause of his day. As a young New York prosecutor, Cohn first made his mark by helping send Julius and Ethel Rosenberg to the electric chair. He then took his anti-communist zeal to Washington, where he became the hatchet man for Sen. Joe McCarthy’s witch hunt aimed at ferreting out alleged communists in the State Department, Pentagon, and other government agencies.
In addition to pursuing supposed “commies,” Cohn also persuaded McCarthy to expose and drive gay federal employees out of their jobs, even though Cohn was himself a closeted gay and later died of AIDS. Cohn brought David Schine, a fellow investigator for McCarthy, and rumored to have had a sexual relationship with Cohn, on as an unpaid committee consultant and later, during the Army-McCarthy hearings, tried to get even with the Army for drafting Schine and assigning him overseas. In turn, senators accused Cohn of using the hearings to win favorable treatment for a friend in whom he had a “special interest.”
When McCarthy was censured by the Senate for his smear tactics, Cohn moved back to private practice in New York, where he soon became the bridge between the criminal underworld and the legitimate business and political world, representing coldblooded killers like “Fat Tony” Salerno, boss of the Genovese family, New York’s largest crime family, and Paul Castellano, head of the Gambino family, the secondlargest — and, at the same time, a coldblooded young developer named Donald Trump.
It was Cohn who successfully defended Trump when he was sued by the Justice Department for refusing to rent apartments to African Americans. And it was Cohn who represented Trump in building the Trump Tower on Fifth Avenue. As detailed in the documentary, to cut costs Trump hired an inexperienced Syracuse-based window-washing firm to tear down the historic Bonwit Teller building, using a crew of 200 undocumented Polish immigrants, some of whom were never paid. At Cohn’s suggestion, Trump then hired S&A Concrete, a mob front, to pour the building’s foundation.
And throughout their shady business dealings, Cohn taught Trump the lessons he still lives by today: Anything goes. Be willing to say or do anything to win. If all else fails, start blaming and bullying other people. Never say you’re sorry. Never, never apologize. And always attack, attack, attack. That was Cohn’s M.O. in the ’60s. That is Trump’s M.O. today.
More than anyone else, it was Cohn who made Donald Trump. As Director Matt Tyrnauer sums up the central finding of his documentary: “Roy Cohn created a president from beyond the grave. It’s almost an absurd statement to make, but in this case it’s true. With the election of Trump, Cohn goes from being a footnote in American history to being a modern Machiavelli, which is an astonishing phenomenon.”
And that’s what’s so scary about “Where’s My Roy Cohn?” Cohn was eventually disbarred and died in 1986. But you walk out of that documentary and you realize: Roy Cohn isn’t dead. He still lives today — the same amorality, the same cruelty, the same evil. Cohn lives today in the monster he created. Except for the hair color, Trump is Roy Cohn.