In the film The Apprentice, directed by Ali Abbassi, he is supposed to be a secondary character. But in reality, he is the protagonist in the rise of Donald Trump. Heir to a vast real estate empire, Trump turned to entertainment and then politics, thanks to the advice of his mentor. A formidable and feared lawyer and prosecutor, Roy Cohn, like an evil pygmalion, shaped Trump, giving him the keys to the supreme office.
It’s often said that any individual is the sum of the five people he or she comes into contact with most on a daily basis.
Although Roy Cohn died in August 1986, it is undeniable that he played a major role in Donald Trump’s transformation into a real estate bulldozer in the late 1970s and mid-1980s. A transformation that would enable the politician with the blonde quiff to become the 45th President of the United States on November 9, 2016. The soundtrack to the film Air Force One by multi-award-winning composer Jerry Goldsmith (1997).
For the lawyer turned personal legal advisor to Donald Trump and his father not only terrorized the barons of New York politics: he also theorized the thinking on which the ex-president of the United States is based.
Disciple of McCarthyism
Trump’s sulphurous lawyer, Roy Cohn, was born in New York’s Bronx district in 1927, to a judge father and an intrusive mother. With the help of Favor Bank (a local influence peddling scheme), his father, a Bronx judge, made it to the New York Supreme Court. In the wake of the 1929 stock market crash,his visiting uncle was incarcerated for bank fraud in the notorious Sing Sing prison, located north of the city along the Hudson River.
With a law degree from Columbia University, Roy Cohn soon became anassistant U.S. attorney. He was not even 20 when he succeeded in securing the conviction and execution of the Rosenbergs in 1951, on suspicion of being Soviet spies. Determined to send Ethel Rosenberg to the electric chair along with her husband Julius, he convinced the latter’s brother, Paul Greenglass, to retract his statement and even used an illicit audio recording to obtain the death penalty for the couple.
But his real claim to fame came when he became the lead attorney – some in the media would even say “the brains” – of the infamous Wisconsin senator, Joseph McCarty. McCarty, determined to fight the Soviet enemy on American soil, embarked on a veritable purge against real or alleged government “communist sympathizers ”, right down to the biggest Hollywood studios.
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Featured Photo: © Herman Hiller/World Telegram & Sun
