The scoundrel of Kai Bird’s meticulous biography of Roy Cohn, the heavy-lidded villain of mid-20th-century America, is as much Donald Trump as Cohn.
Cohn died of AIDS 40 years ago, just after he was disbarred. That’s time enough for him to be fading into footnotes, despite his notoriety in the 1950s as chief counsel to Sen. Joe McCarthy, the Commie hunter.
But Cohn’s legacy lives on in Trump. Lessons learned: Always attack. Never apologize. Deny. Sue. Countersue. If you lose, declare victory. Keep your name in the news. Loyalty yes, integrity, fuggedaboutit.
Trump learned these dark virtues from Cohn along with a New York brassiness that made people overlook venality, a trick akin to The Big Lie. Both men had the attention hunger of psychic vampires.
