There is a great scene in HBO’s drama about the onset of the AIDS epidemic, Angels In America, where Roy Cohn, played by Al Pacino is told by his doctor he has AIDS. Cohn declares it’s impossible because, afterall, only gays, junkies and hemophiliacs contract AIDS, and he’s none of those. His doctor reminds him he has treated Cohn since 1958, diagnosing all manner of STDs with symptoms that made clear long ago his sexual preferences. Cohn dares him to call him a homosexual, promising to ruin his reputation and practice if he does. Cohn hisses that he is a heterosexual with a taste for boys now and again, and henceforth he has liver cancer, not AIDS. He lectures his disgusted physician that clout defines a man, not sexual preference. His incredulous doctor accedes to the demand, but points out what can’t be denied… whatever the title of his affliction, it’s a killer and Cohn is done, unless his “clout” is substantial enough to get him to the head of a very long line for AZT, the then experimental treatment offering a shred of hope. Pacino is fantastic looking smug, satisfied with the empty victory his bullying just gained him.
Those looking for a near impossible task would conduct a search for a figure in US Post-War history more loathsome than Roy Cohn. Senator Joseph McCarthy’s right hand man, Cohn was singularly responsible for much of McCarthyism’s damage to our civic foundations. He lived the adage that villains do to us only what we allow, as he spent a lifetime making life hard for those unable or unwilling to stand up to his bullying.
Although he was gay, Cohn and McCarthy made closeted men a targeted subset of their anti-Communist inquisition, using sexual preference as a weapon to both coerce cooperation as well as simply a gratuitous means to destroy reputations and careers. To his last day, the widely despised Cohn never offered a sliver of regret for a life spent being a hypocritical pestilence to those forced to share the planet with him. But of all the odious liabilities Cohn foisted on the world while he lived, his most nefarious legacy is our POTUS.
On August 18 of this year, Trump, in one of his hundreds of missives attacking Robert Mueller’s investigation, tweeted his followers the “rigged witch hunt” made “Joseph McCarthy look like a baby.” The irony wasn’t lost in the barrage of responses from the twitter universe. Even Fox Trumpeteer Brit Hume labeled the attack “ridiculous.” Whether Cohn would have embraced having his seditious work with McCarthy emasculated is uncertain; what is clear is the technique was part of his MO, which he taught his protege Donald Trump from the first day he took him under his wing as a client back in 1973. In fact, Trump’s Presidency has been not much more than a living reminder of Cohn’s worst, which Trump embodies in near everything he does.
Never admit a mistake. Never show weakness. Truth is a liability. Hit hard, hit often. Never let an attack go unanswered. Always be dividing and conquering. A sense of shame and a sliver of integrity is the other guy’s problem. Courts are simply a tool to intimidate. Agreements are negotiable at every stage, most importantly when payment is due. Loyalty above all… others’ loyalty. And on and on.
We elected the worst man in our country, who learned at the knee of one of the worst men in our history. Fox/AM admits neither while celebrating both as unappreciated saviors of the wretched core, who are all that count. This Presidency is first and foremost the revenge of Roy Cohn, a middle finger to all who rightly loathed him.
As Cohn dissolved painfully from the virus he refused to admit he contracted, the chickens of his ugly life came home to roost. His infirm condition denying him the energy to keep his pursuers at bay as he had always done, by bullying through the courts and scurrilous innuendo, Cohn was vulnerable to his enemies, and they were numerous. The IRS was moving to freeze his assets. The New York Bar was in the process of disbarring Cohn for a number of infractions. Columnist Jack Anderson actually got a hold of Cohn’s medical records, making clear in print that AIDS, not liver cancer, was responsible for doing Cohn in. It was all falling apart as death neared, and Cohn was not interested in passing with grace, bitterly complaining he was suffering opportunists in between bouts of denial that took issue with the notion he was even sick.
One friend Cohn believed he could count on to the end was his client and young protege, Donald Trump. On everything from prenups to tax abatement to plain old stiffing vendors, Cohn had taught Trump most everything he knew over the last 13 years. Indeed, Trump emerged from the tuteledge the mirror image of Cohn, ever ready to go to court, never concerned about acting despicably, and the best friend a lie could ever have.
Alas, Cohn’s faith in Trump’s loyalty was misplaced. Upon discovering Cohn was suffering from AIDS, the Donald swiftly cut off all contact with his mentor. He would admit to a certain affection for Cohn, but from a comfortable distance, and with nobody mistaking he was reflecting on his tutor of all things nasty from the rear view. As Cohn would surmise in a moment of clarity, his student “pisses ice water.”
So there you have it, the original rat from which our plague mutated. The foundation of our nihilist-in-chief’s wretched take on the world that suffers him. More than 50 years ago Joseph Welch asked Cohn’s boss a simple yet devastating question, one of the most famous inquiries in modern US history… “Have you no sense of decency?!” And while old Joe McCarthy didn’t have anything smart on the tip of his tongue at the time, his young assistant, and the protege he would groom a couple decades later surely would have had emphatic responses… No! We don’t. It is as true now as it was then, and all times in between. BC