Kai Mark & Susan Goldmark On The Man Who Shaped Trump
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Who was Roy Cohn and why is he considered a pivotal figure in Donald Trump’s rise?
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Now, two movies I'm going to reference before we talk to the author of a terrific new biography. Those movies are Oppenheimer and The Apprentice. Now, as it happens, our guest wrote the book American Prometheus, co-authored it, and that was the book on which Oppenheimer was based, starring Killian Murphy. You may also remember The Apprentice, the movie about Donald Trump in the 1970s and 1980s. And in it there was a terrific performance by Jeremy Strong from Succession as an individual called Roy Cohen. And Roy Cohen is the guy who is the center of this terrific book, American Scoundrel, that has been written by Kai Byrd. And with him as well is his researcher and wife on the book, Susan Goldmark. You're both very welcome to The Last Word.
Well, thank you for having us. Thank you.
This character, Roy Cohn, is an absolutely extraordinary individual that you've written about, a scoundrel, as you say. And I'll get to his relationship with Donald Trump in a moment. But it goes back way further because even before he was the chief aide to Senator Joe McCarthy for his 1950s witch hunt of apparent communists, tell us about how he was the prosecutor. computer who sent a couple Julius and Ethel Rosenberg to the electric chair.
Yes, Roy was Roy Cohn was only uh right out of law school. He was in his early twenties and he became an assistant prosecutor on this famous Rosenberg atomic spy case, and he was relentless and
How did Roy Cohn’s role in the Rosenberg espionage trial launch his career as a political fixer?
He he was the kind of lawyer who always broke the rules. So uh during the Rosenberg case he had ex parte conversations with Judge Irving Kaufman, who was pr the presiding judge. And Roy just, you know, uh he He guided the judge and uh was relentless in in bringing a prosecution and And persuading the judge to inflict the death penalty, sending not only Julius but also Ethel, the daughter the mother of two young boys, to the electric chair. And that was that gave his first sort of that His first sort of public Renown was coming from that Rosenberg case.
And it should be noted that his father, Roy's father, was responsible for Irving Kaufman getting a judgeship. So that helped in terms of his influence on the judge.
And just let people know what the Rosenbergs had done, which in the minds of the courts and this judge justified a death sentence.
Well, the charge was that they had passed atomic secrets. Through uh Ethel Rosenberg's brother David Greenglass, who was a machinist in Los Alamos. But historians now realize that the information that was passed to the Rosenbergs and then was passed on to the Soviet intelligence was was very rudimentary, very basic, uh not of any c real consequence, particularly compared to the spying of Klaus Fuchs, the British German physicist who was in Los Alamos and was very, very much privy to atomic secrets. But nevertheless, this was the the trial and the charges and they were sent to the electric chair.
And released uh released Soviet documents basically show that Ethel was not involved. So uh she was not the person who was typing up
What was Roy Cohn’s influence on Senator Joe McCarthy’s anti‑communist witch hunts?
uh documents. There's no evidence and so she was sent to the The electric chair. Um Unnecessarily. And in a very tragic way.
And then Kai bring us on to working with Senator Joe McCarthy, and I think everyone's still familiar with the McCarthyite era where alleged communists were hunted down, but could it be that in many respects, although McCarthy might have been the public face of that era, that Roy Cohn was very much the man who was driving the agenda?
Yeah, Senator Joe McCarthy was kind of an empty vessel ideologically. He was simply uh a senator from Wisconsin looking to generate some publicity and he latched onto this this investigation of communists in the US government. Um but Br Roy Cohn, the who whom he hired as his chief counsel for his subcommittee uh was the real brains behind the investigation, the witch hunt. Uh and Roy was driven ideologically, but also um he was just he was relentless and very efficient and a terrific interrogator.
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
Who was Roy Cohn and why is he considered a pivotal figure in Donald Trump’s rise?
0:00–1:52
2
How did Roy Cohn’s role in the Rosenberg espionage trial launch his career as a political fixer?
1:52–4:02
3
What was Roy Cohn’s influence on Senator Joe McCarthy’s anti‑communist witch hunts?
4:02–5:48
4
How did Cohn’s connections with the New York mafia shape his power and later political work?
5:48–7:22
5
In what ways did Roy Cohn become the behind‑the‑scenes adviser to Nixon, Reagan, and Rupert Murdoch?
7:22–9:11
6
How did Roy Cohn first meet Donald Trump and what legal advantages did he provide for Trump’s real‑estate empire?
9:11–11:08
7
Which of Trump’s political tactics and personality traits can be traced back to Roy Cohn’s mentorship?
11:08–12:54
8
What legacy did Roy Cohn leave behind in modern American politics and how does the book *American Scoundrel* explore it?
12:54–14:45
Speakers
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