Duncan Hunter embraces the smash-mouth tactics Trump learned from Roy Cohn

By James Hohmann
National Political Correspondent
August 23 at 9:58 AM

THE BIG IDEA: “Study the late Joseph McCarthy,” President Trump tweeted on Sunday, “because we are now in [a] period with [Bob] Mueller and his gang that make[s] Joseph McCarthy look like a baby!”

It was an ironic ask considering that Trump’s mentor was Roy Cohn, who served as McCarthy’s hatchet man and chief counsel during the Wisconsin Republican’s red-baiting crusade right up until his censure by the Senate in 1954.

Two decades later, Trump hired Cohn to be his lawyer when the Justice Department sued his family’s real estate business for systemically discriminating against African American tenants. On behalf of Trump and his father, Cohn filed a $100 million countersuit against the federal government, accused the DOJ of using “Gestapo-like tactics” and said the charges were not just “baseless” but “irresponsible.” The attorney even purportedly tried to pressure a senior Justice official to sanction a lower-ranking lawyer who was working on the case. After declaring that he would never settle, Trump eventually settled. The Justice Department later accused him of not living up to all the terms of the agreement.

The parallels between Trump’s first tangle with the Justice Department and his current efforts to undermine the special counsel’s investigation into him, his campaign and his associates are striking. Once again, he’s using the tactics he learned under the tutelage of Cohn, who was his go-to fixer decades before Michael Cohen assumed the same role. Trump has pined for Cohn, someone who never betrayed him, asking associates: “Where’s my Roy Cohn?”

Cohn is long dead, but Trump has been a practicing disciple of his approach to crisis communications for 45 years now. Deny everything. Never apologize. When someone punches, punch back 10 times harder. Attack the messenger. Muddy the water. Accuse others of what you’re accused of. Win at all costs.

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