Week Four: The President Summons the Ghost of Roy Cohn
His mentor’s bruising style is one Trump studied well. This will be its ultimate test.
Donald Trump, who was taught the martial arts of verbal combat by Roy Cohn
.. Trump has only become more Cohnian in his persona.
- He rains his fury down on his opponents, just like Cohn.
- He breaks rules and bullies all who get in his way.
- He does whatever it takes to win.
When Trump’s mouth forms the words, it’s really Cohn speaking from the grave.
.. First he denounces Comey as a
- leaker, then a coward,
- then a liar and finally
- a witch-hunt-leading man of bad character.
More of the same arrived when Trump confidant Chris Ruddy of Newsmax took to the airwaves to assert that the president had been musing about firing special prosecutor Robert Mueller
.. As anybody who has read crime procedurals knows, obstruction of justice prosecutions, like conspiracy charges, are the sabers that prosecutors rattle to panic the target of an investigation when they’re having trouble making a “real” case stick.
.. According to Trump, the real Russia scandal is the Clinton family’s Russia dealings, tweeting that Hillary Clinton is the real justice obstructer! This tack, too, is Cohnian. Trump has applied the boomerang to the word “obstructionist”: When tossed in his direction he merely redirects it to strike his political opponents
.. Likewise, he’s not conflicted by the many connections his people have with Russia. It is the investigators who are “very bad and conflicted people,”
.. Cohn acolytes like Trump learned the value of
- raising disagreements to disputes,
- disputes to legal threats,
- threats to lawsuits, and
- lawsuits to war, and
- war to burned-earth siege
.. Cohn also taught Trump to
- shrug off IRS audits,
- deadbeat his personal debtors,
- lie whenever expedient, and
- file complicated, retaliatory lawsuits to pour sand in the gears of his opponents
“Cohn’s philosophy shaped the real estate mogul’s worldview and the belligerent public persona visible in Trump’s presidential campaign.”
.. Cohn was “a formidable adversary not because he’s a brilliant lawyer but because he will stop at nothing.”
.. Observing no limits has been Trump’s operational philosophy
.. McCarthy didn’t debate his opponents, he defamed them and branded them as illegitimate, a lesson Trump has applied to every crisis of his presidency, ripping judges as “so-called” and the press as “fake.”
.. Trump knows only one method of conflict resolution, the one his mentor taught.