Roy Cohn: This unscrupulous lawyer created Donald Trump

WAZ Roy Cohn: This unscrupulous lawyer created Donald Trump Article by Dirk Hautkapp • 1 day • 4 minutes reading time Never justify. Never admit defeat. Deny everything. Always go on the attack. That was the motto of Donald Trump's surrogate father Roy Cohn. The dazzling New York lawyer, who met the then inexperienced son of a real estate entrepreneur in the 1970s, shaped Trump into what he is today: an elbow-wielding right-wing populist who subordinates everything to maintaining power. The Republican presidential candidate wanted to legally prevent a Hollywood film about the two of them, partly because of an ugly rape scene shortly before the election. In vain. On Friday, "The Apprentice" (the same name as Trump's hit TV series) will be released in cinemas in the USA. And so the question is back on the agenda: How much of Roy Cohn, one of the most nefarious figures in recent American history, is in Donald Trump? Roy Cohn worked for dubious mafia figures First of all, a quote from the Washington Post: "Cohn taught Trump how to use power and create fear, with the formula: attack, counterattack, never apologize." When he was in his mid-20s, Cohn became chief of staff to the notorious Republican Senator Joseph McCarthy. His anti-communist agitation, which caused thousands to suffer, give up their careers or end up in prison, represents one of the darkest US chapters of the last century. McCarthy became aware of the eccentric collector of frog dolls because, as an aggressive prosecutor, he helped to get Julius and Ethel Rosenberg sentenced to death in 1953 for spying for the Soviet Union. Cohn also worked for Presidents Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan. Later, with a brilliant network in New York's upper and lower worlds, he took on legal mandates for dubious mafia figures, the local archbishopric, the owners of the legendary "Studio 54" club and Aristotle Onassis in the divorce war against Jackie (Kennedy). How Roy Cohn became Donald Trump's mentor Cohn and Trump's paths crossed under the sign of racism. In the 1970s, Trump's father Fred was sued for a practice in his tenements in Brooklyn and Queens that clearly discriminated against blacks, which could have ruined the company. Donald Trump, then 27, had been entrusted by his father with the clean-up work. Cohn took on the case. His strategy was to launch a countersuit for $100 million. He accused the state of damaging Trump's reputation. The case ended in a settlement - without an admission of guilt. Donald Trump was deeply impressed: "He was mean to others to protect me." The liaison became more. Cohn took "Donnieboy" under his wing, acted as a door opener (for the media tsar Rupert Murdoch), a publicist (gossip stories in the "New York Post") and advisor in all situations. Cohn worked out Trump's marriage contract with his first wife Ivana Winklmayr. Speaking of which: the rape shown in the film "The Apprentice" was first testified to under oath by the later Ivana Trump and later retracted. Trump himself, of course, denied everything. The remnants of the entente with Cohn continue to this day. Trump's universe of alternative facts (vulgo: lies) is largely based on Cohn's advice: "Create your own reality, the truth is flexible." Trump's ex-cabinet warns: His return would be a disaster Another saying also seems to have rubbed off on Trump, who is known for slandering the judiciary that regularly investigates him: "I'm not interested in what the law says, but who the judge is." The magazine "Esquire" once made a fitting statement about this: "Clients who want to murder their husband, torture a business partner or outwit the government hire Roy Cohn, the legal enforcer." This is exactly what the late Donald Trump longed for. A gay Jew who incited hatred against homosexuals and was notorious for anti-Semitic outbursts When the Justice Department under Jeff Sessions in particular was not willing to dance to his tune in his first year in office in 2017, the 45th President of the United States sighed internally: "Where is my Roy Cohn?" Cohn rose to the cultural Olympus through the successful author Tony Kushner. His Broadway blockbuster "Angels in America", premiered just four years after Cohn's death, contains the scene in which the prosecutor says he would have loved to give Ethel Rosenberg the fatal shock himself in the electric chair. "Why? Because I hate traitors and communists. Was it legal? Screw legal. Am I a nice person? Nice sucks." In the mid-1980s, Roy Cohn, who was gay but incited hatred against homosexuals, who was Jewish but notorious for anti-Semitic outbursts, felt the downside of the Faustian pact with "DT". He contracted AIDS and only through his contacts with the Reagans was he able to get into a special program with life-prolonging AZT therapy, which was unaffordable for normal AIDS patients at the time. But Trump - AIDS is not good for reputation and business - kept his distance and years later trashed his mentor, who had claimed up until the end out of shame that it was liver cancer. Shortly before his death in 1986, his mentor Cohn said he could hardly believe his apprentice's cold-bloodedness: "Donald pees ice water." The filmmaker Matt Tyrnauer once described Roy Cohn's influence in a gruesomely beautiful way: "He created a president from the grave."