Saturday, November 7, 2015

Donald Trump's Roy Cohn-McCarthyism Historical Connection Revisited

During the 1970's, 2016 Republican party presidential candidate Donald Trump, coincidentally, apparently retained the former right-wing chief counsel to U.S. Senator Joe McCarthy and McCarthy's U.S. Senate investigative committee that violated the civil liberties of many U.S. citizens during the 1950's McCarthy Era, Roy Cohn, to be his lawyer. And, coincidentally, Donald Trump's lawyer during the 1970's, Roy Cohn, was also apparently an adviser, historically, to both former Democratic New York City Comptroller and former Democratic New York City Mayor Abe Beame and former Brooklyn Democratic Party Boss and machine-politician Meade Esposito. As the 1992 book by former Village Voice reporter Wayne Barrett, Trump: The Deals and The Downfall, recalled:

"...In Manhattan, he [Donald Trump]...met the man who, after Fred [Trump II], would become the most important influence on his early career, Roy Cohn. Infamous for his 1950's role as chief counsel to Senator Joe McCarthy,...Cohn was by the early seventies a walking advertisement for every form of graft, the best-known fixer in New York...

"The son of a Bronx judge, Cohn was reared in the clubhouse culture of the city, attending dinner parties as a teenager with Carmine DeSapio, Ed Flynn, and the other Democratic bosses who ruled New York. He had also met Abe Beame in his father's house, and over the years became an adviser to both Beame and new Brooklyn Democratic Chairman Meade Esposito...

"In the spring of 1974, soon after [former Democratic NYC Mayor] Beame's inaugural, both Cohn and the Trumps had tables at the Brooklyn Democratic Party's annual dinner at the Waldorf--a ballroom filled with a dozen indicted, soon-to-be-indicted, or convicted public and party officials...

"It was only a few months after Beame won the mayoral runoff that Donald [Trump] first retained Cohn...

"...Roy Cohn...became Donald [Trump]'s mentor, his constant adviser on every significant aspect of his business and personal life...Many of those with public and private power who met young Donald [Trump]...were introduced to him by Cohn...Cohn...literally adopted Donald [Trump]. He began to see Trump as potentially his most successful protege' and instrument...Cohn would ultimately be disbarred for stealing from other clients..."

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