Trump’s Mobbed Up, McCarthyite Mentor Roy Cohn

Olivia Nuzzi

Donald Trump’s brash and bullying style was learned at the heel of Roy Cohn, one of America’s most infamous lawyers.

They met at Le Club, a private disco on the Upper East Side frequented by Jackie Kennedy, Al Pacino, and Diana Ross, according to Trump: The Saga of America’s Most Powerful Real Estate Baron. Donald Trump, the young developer, quickly amassing a fortune in New York real estate and Roy Cohn, America’s most loathed yet socially successful defense attorney who had vaulted to infamy in the 1950s while serving as legal counsel to Sen. Joseph McCarthy.

The friendship they forged would provide the foundation for Trump's eventual presidential campaign. And in hindsight, it serves as a tool for understanding Donald Trump the Candidate, whose bumper sticker-averse declarations—undocumented Mexican immigrants are “criminals” and “rapists”; Sen. John McCain is “not a war hero”—have both led him to the top of the Republican primary polls and mistakenly convinced many that he is a puzzle unworthy of solving. It may appear that way, but Trump isn’t just spouting off insults like a malfunctioning sprinkler system–he’s mimicking what he learned some 40 years ago.

A longtime friend of Trump’s who was introduced to the candidate by Cohn told me it’s a shame that Cohn’s not alive to see the chaos his protégé has wrought.

“He would have just loved what’s going on right now,” the friend said. “Roy liked upsetting the establishment.”
Roy Marcus Cohn, born in the Bronx in 1927, was the son of Albert Cohn, a judge and prominent Democrat. He graduated from Columbia Law School in 1947, and the day he was admitted to the bar, according to a New York Times obituary, he got a job in the office of the Manhattan United States Attorney thanks to his father’s connections.

He became known for his arrogant courtroom style, notably in the case of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, American citizens convicted of conspiring to give information about the atomic bomb to the Soviet Union. They were executed, and Cohn was promoted to assistant U.S. Attorney.

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http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/07/23/trump-s-mobbed-up-mccarthyite-mentor.html