Part Two: Roy Cohn: The Man Who Made Donald Trump

the army. Now, I don't know if you're aware of this, but Americans today are broadly fond of the army, and since the President of the United States was in the nineteen fifties, a retired general declaring a desire to destroy the branch he served with was not a great long term career move. Like, broadly speaking, Americans are positively inclined towards the army. UH. In the nineteen fifties, it was

like a universal thing, right, like pretty pretty close to it. UM. So yeah, McCarthy and Cohn had made a tactical error in deciding that they were going to destroy the army. UM because the Army was for the Bridges. They were like, we could do anything. Yeah, it's like the Beatles declaring they're bigger than Jesus, except for the Beatles. Actually, we're bigger than Jesus. Um statistical thing, yeah, statistical facts. Yeah.

So Americans had actually been pretty mixed on McCarthy and his tactics In the years leading up to the Army trial. Journalists and intellectuals had sharply criticized what seemed to be and was a thoroughly undemocratic thing. Eisenhower himself had called McCarthy ms predecessor the House Unamerican Activities Community, the most

Unamerican thing in the country. Many in the nation were thus baffled when Ike let Senator McCarthy go on for years without serious opposition, even by the low standards of US presidents, Eisenhower is proba probably in like like the upper quarter or so of of of our presidents. And again he did a lot of horrible things, because presidents are a bad thing to have. UM. One of the number of great black marks against his name, maybe even

the greatest, although you know we also have Korea. UM, is that through his silence he allowed McCarthyism to fester and continue. Some scholars claim his neglect was intentional and indirect approach. He used to subtly stymy the Senator ike, they claim secretly leveraged his influence to modestly obstruct the Red and Lavender scare. C. D. Jackson, and Eisenhower's speechwriter,

tried to convince his boss to take action. He later claimed the President read my text with great irritation, slammed it back at me, and said he would not refer to McCarthy personally. I will not get into the gutter with that guy, And I think the defenses of Eisenhower here are bullshit. The only way to defeat a cancer like McCarthy ism, which is based on bigotry and fear, would have been for the most admired man in the country to stand up and call it what it was.

The reality of the situation is that Senator McCarthy he was a Republican, and so was Dwight D. Eisenhower. Crushing McCarthy's witch hunt would have cost political capital, and he needed party unity to accomplish things that meant more to him than the suffering of tens of thousands of citizens in short, the presidents not such a good thing to have kill the two party system. It's killing us mhm h,

literally destroying us. Yeah, it's such a problem. Not to be too selacious, but do you think they also had

blackmail on him on Eisenhower? I doubt it. I honestly think this is perfectly explicable from Eisenhower just not wanting to deal with something that would have been nasty like he had politically, like he had ship he wanted to do UM, and he didn't really care if gay people and leftists were being harassed UM and if some innocent like not innocent, because the gays and the leftist were innocent, but if some people who were neither of those things

got mistakenly drawn into two he just didn't care because it was more important for him to do the things that he wanted to do with the political capital that

he had. UM. So he just didn't do anything. He didn't He knew it was the wrong thing what I McCarthy was doing, and he clearly disliked McCarthy, but he didn't care to stop it because that would have meant sacrificing something else he wanted, you know, because again, good people don't become the president, and Eisenhower is in this period of time about the best person we get as president. Still not a very good man. Let's look at the lineage.

Not much changed. Not much has changed. We had one moderately good person be president and he was not a good president. Sorry carter Um. So the whole hellish circus finally met its end in the spring of nineteen fifty four. Is the Army Trial drew to a close with a cross examination of a young lawyer for the Army. Now, this man was a fresh faced, earnest young person serving

in uniform. He was the kind of person Americans love. Right, You've got this like young educated army man, like sitting like handsome, sitting on in like the center of the trial, being cross exam and by Roy Code, who is a monster. Now the trial was televised and it was one of the first mass TV events in world history. Twenty million Americans got to watch this kid, who is basically like the avatar of their beloved military and of white innocence,

get torn apart by Roy Cone and Joe McCarthy. It was nothing that Roy and Joe hadn't done to hundreds of people before, but because the victim was a friendly, young white man. The cruelty suddenly mattered to Americans, like, that is exactly what happens, is they pick on a nice white boy on television and that destroys their careers. I mean, that's how we got all of our gay legal legislation in the early offs. And uh now it's like, oh, our white family members are gay. Well, changes that white

people are gay? Well, I guess we'll have to deal with that. Yeah, I guess there are people. Yeah. So it it also mattered that a man with some sort of moral character happened to be taking part in the hearings, and that man was Joseph Welch, the Army special counsel he had hired, the young lawyer that McCarthy and Cone were badgering, and eventually he got fed up enough to tell them. Until this moment, Senator, I think I never

really gauged your cruelty or recklessness. Now, Cone was savvy enough to see the room's response to this, and to realize that he was on television and realize how bad this looked, and he desperately You can watch again, this is all on video. You can watch him try to get McCarthy to back down. You can watch him being like, no, no, we gotta like, we gotta like, this isn't gonna go well for us to get pushing this ship. Um but tail gunner Joe would not have any of that bullshit.

He continued pressing the young lawyer until Welch told him, let us not assassinate this lad further. Senator, You've done enough. Have you no decency sir? At long last? Have you no sense of decency? Uh? Listen, the fifties love decency, They love decent people. Oh yeah, up. Now this was

the death knell for McCarthy, is um yeah. The Army put together a dossier and Roy Cone which listed all of the ways he had threatened and intimidated witnesses in order to get his boyfriend light duty and better assignments. The White House leaked this to the press into Congress, and suddenly McCarthy and Cone were being cinsured for abuse of power. I'm gonna quote now from a write up

by the Miller Center in May nineteen fifty four. I simply said that administration officials and all executive branch employees would ignore any call from McCarthy to testify Eisenhower explained his action, declaring that it is essential to efficient and effective administration that employees of the executive branch be in a position to be completely candid and advising with each other on official matters without those conversations being subject to

congressional scrutiny. Now this was a a bold and daring move, and it worked. McCarthy his credibility in tatters and now starved witnesses hit a brick wall, and his fellow senators turned against him. In early December nineteen fifty four, the Senate passed emotion of condemnation in a vote of sixty seven to twenty two. McCarthy was ruined, and within three years he was dead from alcohol abuse. The era of McCarthyism was over. I could help to bring it to

a better end. And again I only gets involved and puts his personal credibility on the line to take out McCarthy. When McCarthy makes a mistake that that pushes people against him. I mean, yeah, no, it makes sense. Oh he's already dead. I kill him, kill him now, crazy, I know, I yeah. Cowardice is the best way to describe it. And the fact and even that one senator who had to really, he had the piercing line of have you no decency? Sir?

Look in a mirror. If of America's work population had to be interrogated, and it took one white dude for you to be like, oh maybe I should pay attention. Uh you, I don't know how much decency there Isn't that either? Yeah? Yeah, it's great. So Con left the government in nineteen fifty five, never to return. Stymied from continuing to assault and abuse his political letemies, he decided to go after the next best thing, acquiring the wealth

necessary to keep fucking with people now. The best way he could think to do this was with what was effectively one of the family businesses, the Lionel Corporation. By nineteen fifty three, it was the largest toy manufacturer on the planet. So there there's a big old company. When Roy returned to New York in nineteen fifty five, he

decided to take it over. Now, he worked at a law firm by day, which was a job that his dad got for him, and he organized like, basically put while he's working in during his days at the law firm, he's putting together cash from himself and his other investors in his family money to buy up two hundred thousand shares of Lionel bit by bit, and he does it like kind of in secret. By nineteen fifty nine, he had enough to make up a controlling interest in the company.

Roy took charge of the Lionel Corporation, and of course he proved to be absolutely terrible at the job of managing a toy company. Roy Cone somehow does not get what children want. Um, yeah, I know he would have. Who would have thought roy Cone would not have known what kids wanted in a toy Yeah. So basically, after under several years of roy Cone's management, Loyal collapses, leading to Roy's ouster and paving the way for the company to be bought by Neil Young. Um. Yeah, the musician

Neil Young buys it. He's apparently huge into toy trains. Yeah, never went a guest. Mhm. That part of it, like Neil Young taking over, is actually a very suite and a very happy story. So obviously we're not going to talk about it at all because this is my podcast, but Neil Young is great. Throughout the nineteen sixties, Roy developed his career as a lawyer for the powerful and incredibly fucking shady. He had a particular fondness for working

for the mob. Among his clients was a guy named fat Tony Salerno, who, by the way, the Simpsons fat Tony is based off of the real mobster fat Tony Salerno. Yeah, that's why they that's why his name is that. Like nobody watching the today knows about this mobster from like the sixties and seventies, But yeah, fat Tony Salerno ran the biggest numbers racket in New York City, alongside prostitution and loan sharking and all of the normal mob ship

you'd expect. Through a confused, using set of schemes, he actually came to co own a huge number of New York City parking lots with the mob. Roy Kone did so, like Roy is the Mob's lawyer, and he winds up basically, there's all these parking lots that are supposed to be owned by the City of New York, but like one of the city employees basically allows Roy and the Mob to control them, and so Roy co owns a bunch of like paid parking spaces with the Mafia in New

York City. It's a weird gag lot or is it just the parking spots. Yeah, he owns lots. Yeah, he owns parking lots that that are supposed to be city property. But Roy and the Mob are profiting off of them and memory serves in the seventies, they use those to slowly start building new developments. Although, yeah, yeah, you got I think Roy was probably involved in some of that.

Although it's the kind of thing where like nobody's writing down Roy's exact involvement, and this is a cash business, so like he's not paying taxes on any of Yeah, it's super illegal, is the core of this. Yeah. If there was one thing that Roy hated more than communists, it was the concept of paying taxes. Many of his friends later reported that his Many of his friends later reported that his greatest ambition in life was to die owing the I R S millions and millions of dollars um.

He simply did not pay taxes. As he grew more successful as a mob lawyer and became partner at his Manhattan law firm, Cone wrangled the business into paying for his two roles, Royces, paying for his food, his suits, his vacations, his homes. Cone would loudly explain to anyone who listened that he avoided making any more money than absolutely necessary. Business expenses were tax deductible for the company and not income for him, even if they went to

buying him whatever he wanted to happen to one. So Cone had no money basically, but the company had a lot of money, and the company paid for everything that Cone had and then wrote off those payments his tax deductible, and so Cone didn't pay taxes. Listen, I don't have all the numbers before me, but I know a lot of millionaires and billionaires were like living off of that

model of lifestyle. Now, yeah, god, yeah, it's pretty cool that he that he that he works this out and very telling of like the kind of guy that he is. Because again, Roy doesn't think he has any responsibility to like society or to like the country, to making like you know, Rhodes and ship like Roy Roy Cone does not give a funk about any of that. So Cone broadened his practice from the mafia to other wealthy and powerful men who you know, wanted to get out of

the law one way or the other. A big part of his clientele were wealthy men who wanted to divorce their wives without losing any of their money. He also started representing the Archdiocese of New York, a KA the Catholic Church. So in New York, the mafia and the Catholic Church had the same lawyer, and it was roy Coe. You gotta love New York. Yeah, it's pretty great. Wow. Well, I mean in the Catholic Church, bunch of Italian men

with a lot of money who commit crimes. The Mob a bunch of Italian men with a lot of money who commit crimes. I guess the only difference is that the Mob includes more Sicilians. It's good stuff. Yeah. As the sixties turned to the seventies, Royce started defending wealthy people charged with cocaine possession. He was an expert wielder of the legal cudgel. Roy was known to brag, my tough front is my biggest asset. I don't write polite letters. I don't like to plea bargain. I like to fight.

And he was also famous for saying that all he cared about in a case it didn't matter, Like he didn't care about the evidence, he didn't care about the charges. He just cared about who the judge was. Because his job in any court case was to was to manipulate

the judge. Nothing else mattered. Yeah, I think so if we go back to episode one where we were talking about his childhood and growing up with all of those, he would know, you know, this is an a typical type of judge or this one's Yeah, and he's familiar with all the cases. It makes sense lean into your strengths, Roy Cone. Why not? Yeah, Yeah, it's I mean, it's totally like he's he's very consistently the man he is

his entire life. He's like twenty something at that point, he's twenty seven when he and McCarthy are like like finally when their crusade ends, so like he never changes. Like That's the kind of the thing about Roy Cone is he is exactly the same person his entire life, which is remarkable. There's no arc like he at no point does Roy grow as a human being. Well, when your mom, you know, is taking care of you into

your forties, you have no need to grow. Yeah, you do think that might have had something to do with it. In nineteen seventy three, Roy Cone met the man who would become his moral protege and almost a son to him, Donald J. Trump. They first met. Yeah, they first met at a nightclub when Trump was in his mid pointies, the same rough age Roy Cone and his boyfriend Shine were when they started working for McCarthy. And a number of people have pointed out that Donald Trump and David

Shine both look a lot alike. Shine was like a tall, on Nordic looking young man. If you look at pictures of like Donald Trump when he's in his twenties, like he's a tall, blonde, Nordic looking man. They're kind of similar looking dudes. Umu as. I mean, that's not how Roy Cone felt about it. Like a lot of people basically will insinuate Cone had a crush on Donald Trump. Um and that may have been the case. Uh. Now, when they met, Donald's dad was still alive. Shockingly, Donald

Trump's dad didn't dine to nine. I think it was like he was alive way longer than he should have been. Yeah, so it wouldn't be at the end, Yeah, it was. It was bad now. Yeah, so Donald is the heir of a massive fortune when they meet, and he's already in trouble in the law too, because he's his dad and he owned a real estate company that had just gotten exposed for refusing to rent homes to black people. UM. So that's like the first conversation Roy Cone and Donald

Trump has. It's like Donald Trump's like, yeah, the law is up my ask because we won't rent to black people. And Roy Cone's like, oh, I can help with that. Um. And that's how their relationship starts. I'm gonna quote from The Atlantic Beautiful start it is. It's gorgeous. Trump recognized a man after his own self image, a ruthless player

who knew how to win. In the film, Cone remembers Trump saying, I've spent two days with these establishment law firms and they're all telling us give up, do this sign a decree or and all that. I followed your career and you seem you're a little bit crazy like I am, and you stand up to the establishment. Can I come see you. Donald asked for Roy's advice, and Roy told him very simply tell them to go to hell and fight the thing in court. They did exactly that.

Trump and Cone held a press conference announcing a hundred million dollar countersuit against the government. It was almost immediately dismissed, but that was not the point. Con understood the media from his childhood writing a gossip column and his time leaking stories to the press on behalf of the FBI. Roy knew that Americans never read below the headline when they're looking at a newspaper, so nobody would find out

that the suit got dismissed. All they remember was the headline that Trump had countersued the government for a hundred million dollars, which must mean that Trump had some reasonable reason to be angry at the government, that they wronged him too. And then suddenly you've complicated something that's actually very simple. Trump and his dad are racist to ship. Um. You see the same tactic at play in Trump today. Here's where he learns it. Roy Cone teaches him this ship.

So the legal battle with Cone and Trump versus the government went on for almost two years, and it did not end in a victory for roy Cone or Donald Trump in the traditional legal sense of the word, but both still considered it a win from the Atlantic. They won the case by not losing, by counter attacking, raising

phony charges, admitting no wrong Trump paid careful attention. Roger Stone was another one of roy Cone's friends and protegees, and he was interviewed for the documentary Where's My Roy Cone? His comments in that film can be assumed to double as Donald Trump's comments on the same matter. Roy would always be for an offensive strategy. These were the rules of war. You don't fight on the other guy's ground. You define what the debate is going to be about.

I think Trump would learn that from Roy. I learned that from Roy. It's very upset that it works. It's it's disastrously successful. Now The Atlantic would go on to some up Roy's style this way Conan Trump embody the mafia style and American politics. I don't mean the sopranos. I mean the cold will to power that carries a threat of murder without shame. And it's worth noting that the two people interviewed and Where's My Roy Cone described Cone with the word evil, so like again that that's

just the guy he is. Everyone knew it, Trump knew it, and Trump loved it. And when we talk about evil on this show on Behind the Bastards, were usually talking about someone with a significant body count. And if we're talking about kills that Roy ordered, he's he's stuck it maybe too Julius and Ethel Rosenberg. But like most mob lawyers, Roy had a funny way of having enemies or former

friends wind up dying under mysterious circumstance. This one example would be the guy who sold Roy and the Mob those parking lots, because again he was doing he was giving them those lots illegally, and there was an investigation into him, and then he turned up dead in the trunk of a car, um Like. I don't know if Roy had anything to do with that, but I don't

know that he didn't. Then there was a signature Mob style of at the time was just shoot him in the back of their trunk and then close it walk away, yep, yep. And yeah. Then there was the case of Roy's yacht. I say Roy's yacht, but it was really owned by Cones law firm least from Michelle company called Pied Piper Yacht Charters, which I think Roy also had some sort of interest in. Everyone hid Piper, Yeah, Pie Piper Yacht Charters. Sure. I feel like Epstein is really just right about to

just be like hello. A lot of people were taking notes on Roy, so everyone knew the yacht as Roy's yacht until June twenty, nineteen seventy three. On that night, the ninett yacht, which was officially named Defiance, sunk off the floor to coast. It was insured and Roy made two thousand dollars. It shure was Defiance of the I

R S. I bet yeah you can't. You can't see it, listeners, but all of us just made a face like, Now, it was handy that the yachts sunk, because by nineteen seventy three the Defiance was well past its best days. Her original captain had refused to take the helm on the journey up to New York because the boat was in such bad shape and they were actually going to scuttle the boat and sell it for scrap. But the fact that it's sank meant that Cone got a hell of a lot more money for it because it was

insured for the full value of a functional yacht. Um and yeah, so this the the guy who had been the captain of the boat refuses to pilot it because it's in such bad shape, so Cone fire, He resigns, and then Cone hires another captain to replace him, and the captain he picks as a convicted felon in three states. Um, yeah,

not maybe the best guy to pilot your boat. Now, before the journey started, twenty one year old sailor Charles Martinson told his father that he had a bad feeling about the vessel and he wasn't sure it would make the journey. Sure Enough, a fire broke out and the boat sank with Martinson aboard it, and Martinson died. His father. Lt. Martinson was also a sailor and something about the story that the captain told him about how his son had

died didn't sit right. In July, he succeeded in sitting down with a crew member and secretly taping their conversation. The crew member admitted to suspecting that the boat had been deliberately sabotaged, and furthermore revealed that the FBI had reached out to him about the sinking. Now, the FBI never found anything conclusive, and they decided not to dredge up the boat to do a proper investigation because it would have been expensive, so they left it at the

bottom of the sea with Charles's body. Lt. Martinson went to his grave believing that Roy Cone had deliberately scuttled the boat, killing his son to make two thousand dollars. When an interviewer asked roy about this, His response was interesting and completely characteristic of him. This is Roy. He thinks I murdered his son. Let's look at it this way. Hey, I didn't own the boat. B I didn't get the insurance. See,

the statement is an outrageous falsehood. For how am I going to get angry in a man who lost his son. You've got to feel terrible about it. I'm certainly not going to get into a name calling contest or a criminal lawsuit against a father who lost his son. All I can tell you is that I understand his bitter feelings. And if he read someplace that I gave a party

on the boat, it was my boat. Even though I never met a son, never heard of his son, never hired his son, never saw his son in my entire life, and never had any insurance come to me directly or indirectly. I'm still not a bit angry at a man who reacts emotionally. Wow, when you lose a son, I couldn't be sorrier for him for what happened. Now that's Roy's response. Uh, And it's impossible to prove what happened here one way or the other, but it's fair to say that whether

or not Roy intended to murder that young man. He absolutely orchestrated something shady in regards to the sinking of that boat. All you have to do is follow the money which Esquire did. What of the two thoundred thousand dollar insurance policy? It was paid to a dummy corporation set up by Pied Piper Yacht Charters, owners of the boat, the same company whose escrow account Roy manipulated. According to court papers, part of the insurance money was to spur

Us to pay off the yachts mortgage. Another fifteen thousand, seventy five went to Cohn's law firm for legal fees. Another's seven thousand and one hundred dollars went to the law firm his reimbursement for personal property lost on the boat, and seven thousand fifty dollars was paid to Cone directly for lost property. Confronted with this information, which contradicted his earlier claims, Roy said, simply, this is possible. I'm not sure whether we were paid by the insurance company or

Pipe Piper. I didn't get any money from the boat sinking. Well, yeah, I mean I got that money from the boat sinking. Seven thousand dollars and a half or made some several thousands, and my law firm got thousands of My law firm pays for me. Yes, if you have power, you can just shrug and people will be like, Okay, then I guess we don't know, and they'll walk away. It's incredible that the FBI would not want to investigate this guy who's been a part of jillion shady things like this

could have been the whole Yeah, it's so good. Yeah. And that poor dad, Oh yeah, no, he's I mean, his life is ruined because his son has killed, possibly murdered. Because some people will say that like the kid realized there was a scheme going on and Roy had him killed. I don't know, Like, I don't know if Roy was I kind of out Roy intended for someone to die, But I think Roy had a malicious disregard for whether or not someone died. I will say that's probably true. Yeah.

So this gets me to another important fact about Roy Khone. We are never going to have a full accounting of the extent of this man's crimes. It's impossible because he knew the law, he had powerful friends, and most of the crimes he committed tended to be the kind of shady rich guy crimes that involved secretly buying businesses and manipulating escrow accounts and other things no right minded person understands, which is why wrong minded people like Roy get away

with the ship they get away with. So let's move back to the mob. Roy's mafia connections came in super handy when his new buddy, Donald Trump needed a favor. In the late nineteen seventies, Trump was in the process of constructing a building that is still today the most famous cornerstone of his real estate empire, Fifth Avenue's Trump Tower.

It was to be a huge building, as grand as the narcissistic ambitions of its namesake, and while most skyscrapers of similar size were made from steel, Trump for some reason wanted to build it entirely out of concrete. It was the largest concrete structure in the country for a while now. The problem with making a building of this size out of concrete is that the entire concrete industry in New York, including its labor union, was controlled by

the mafia during this period of time. According to another write up from Esquire, quote ready mixed concrete drives quickly, which can leave developers vulnerable to expensive workers slowdowns, a common tactic from mob controlled construction sites. Will Other developers were urging the FBI to take down the mafia. Trump

bought its concrete and artificially high prices. According to Pulitzer Prize winning journalist David K. Johnston, who's known and covered Trump for thirty years, Trump received in exchange a smoothly operating work site from the construction union. So Trump, through Cone orchestrates a plan where like Number one, the unions

on strike. At this point, people can't really get concrete, and when they do, people like the workers will pour the concrete and then go on strike in order to get more money, a lot of which goes to the mafia's coppers. And because the concrete will be wasted if it's not like worked on while it's still setting like,

it's a great racket. And Trump, basically, because of Cones connection, is able to set up an arrangement with the mob by by which he's the only guy who gets to use concrete effectively in constructing a building during this period of time. You know who doesn't control the entire concrete industry in New York City? Is it your advertisers? Yeah, yep, they don't. They absolutely do not. We are we are back.

We we have returned. So, according to a former Cone employee, Trump and Fat Tony Salerno actually met face to face at Cones town house. Now Trump has denied the meeting ever occurred, but Salerno was later indicted on racketeering charges for an eight million dollar concrete deal made for a Trump development. So you tell me now. The successful construction

of Trump Tower is what first made Trump. The project, which involved tearing down an old hotel that had been at the location and building up something better, had been seen as impossible when Donald announced his plans, in part because the concrete working union was on strike and there were a bunch of logistical hurdles and it was Roy Cone who managed all these hurdles for Trump. Like this

was seen as the reason Trump got famous. Is like everyone was like because of how corrupt the construction industry is, because of the mob, There's no way Donald Trump is going to be able to actually like complete this project. And he does and it impresses everybody. And the reason he does is because Roy Cone fucking knows everybody. And Roy Cone fixes this for Donald. Now, Cones Law firm part. There's a number of reasons why it's not just his

connections to the mob. One of them is that Cohn's partner in his law firm was the Deputy mayor of New York City who fast tracked approval. Yeah, who fast tracked approval for Trump's construction plans. When the was finished, Cone engineered positive coverage for Trump in The New York Post, which was owned by one of Cohen's clients, a guy you might have heard of named Rupert Murdoch. Together, so Trump Cone introduces Trump to Rupert Murdoch. That's where that

relationship starts. Is roy Kone? What of people? Yeah, human filth. Yeah. So Donald Trump got the credit for the feet of construction, of course, or at least he took the credit, and his fame only grew from there. And for his part, Roy kne didn't want credit. What he really wanted was to be needed by powerful people. One of his acquaintances at the time noted that the first thing he Cone said to me was Donald Trump cannot live without me. We speak on the phone sometimes thirty forty times a day.

Wow wow wow. Yeah. It's got to be nice to be needed, you know, especially when you trade in gossip, lies, and destroying other lives. You know, you need people to need you, or people are going to be angry at you. Yep, it's like a wall of humans. He surrounded himself with maddening So the nineteen seventies were probably Roy Cone's golden era.

He was an infamous regular at Studio fifty four, the cocaine drenched nightclub that defined New York culture in the late seventies, or at least the parts of it that involved drugged up rich people. Cone partied with Andy Warhol and an assortment of other famous people who weren't Andy Warhol. He was constantly seen with Barbara Walters, who he was fake engaged to for years in order to have a measure. Yeah Barbara, Yeah, Barbara. She was one of his closest friends.

They basically like they were in a faux relationship for years so that he could have plausible to I idility as to being gay. Yeah, Barbara Walters, I mean girl icon. Everybody loved ry Code, that's the thing. People. Well, also, like he's friends with a bunch of people who he should have hated him because they were like left wing or like they were, you know, progressive or they were gay themselves. Cone is just one thing people point out is he was really charming. He's a people person, that's

but it's Barbara. She's a rich person, and rich people, I know, part of the same class unless things go bad from our lives. Robert. Yeah. But again, this just continues to outline the psychopathy that clearly was Roy Cone. Like, yeah, the idea that you could convince all of these people to like you despite the fact you were so clearly

a horrible person in bed with them. Monster. Yeah. I found a story and yet another Esquire article about Roy Cone that illustrates the kind of socialite that he was and how he exercised his influence. It's a petty tale, but it's a fun one about a restaurant SPA called twenty one that yeah, quote the restaurant's ba of the rich and powerful used to seat Roy Cone in Siberia upstairs in a corner with the tourists. One day, Roy called and made a reservation for four at eight pm,

purposefully arriving ten minutes early. He was brusquely led to his usual far nook promptly at eight pm. The Duke and Duchess of Windsor entered the room. Tin captain stood up, as Roy remembers it, and tried to steer the Duke and Duchess to a choice table. From the corner of the room, Roy waved to his dinner guests. They waved back, pulling away from the captains to join their friend. Please, Mr Khne, the Captain's beseeched him, allow us to give

you a more comfortable table. He wouldn't hear of it. Roy loved it, recalls his boyhood friend William Fugazi. He fixed them. That was his way of showing them. Now he gets the good tables, so they don't. They think Roy's gross and they give him the bad table. So he invites the Duke and Duchess of winds Are over and they have to sit in the shitty table with him. And then after that he always gets the good table because you never know who Roy's gonna bring. Wow, because

the tourists. I mean, that's a fucking power move though, Like you want to impress, I'll just get just have the Duke and fucking Duchess of Windsor come in and like fuck you. I'm Roy Knea. Yeah, the man knew had a wheeld Power. Yeah. Now, Roy the man who Knew how to live Wheeld Power lived with his mother in her home until her death in nineteen sixty seven. The door to his bedroom held a nameplate that spelled

out Roy in the Disney font. He collected hundreds of stuffed frogs and had weird exotic pets, including at least one lama. He was a strange dude lama a llama, Yeah, and a llama at one point, has too much money and and a huge stuffed frog collection. A huge stuffed frog collection. Yeah, like like like stuffed frog collection, like plush like like like like plush frogs like um, like stuffed animals, but from emotionally stunted human beings their childhood.

He also used his connections with Studio fifty four, which gave him an unlimited access to drugs, to ensure a constant supply of young men showed up at his door ready to so basically he pays a lot of these young boys and drugs. He is said to have slept with a new boy each day, and that's probably not an exaggeration. Now. In fairness, Roy was renowned for being

one of the very best friends you could have. Unlike his protegee Donald Trump, roy was capable of deep and abiding loyalty, and when he chose to take someone on as a client, he would go to absurd and often the legal lengths to win their cases. In nineteen sixty four, he was indicted for obstructing justice to get his client off for stock fraud. On one occasion, he helped a friend of his out by talking a judge into administering

the oath of citizenship to another friend, completely shortcutting the length. Yeah, so a friend of his is trying to get citizenship for this um. I think he might have been Cuban for this filmmaker that he wanted to have work on a project with him, and he needed to get the guy's citizenship. And he asks Roy, and Roy just tells him show up at this courtroom in Los Angeles at this time. And like, the guy shows up with the dude who needs citizenship in the back of this courtroom.

The judge sees them at the particular time and a journs the court proceedings, calls them up and administers the oath of citizenship. That's the kind of ship that Roy Cone can fix, right, Like when I say he was the best fixer. He was like an absolute genius at his evil craft. It is yes that the system can be so easily moved. Is still I don't know why

we live like this? Yeah? No, because if you, if you are a guy like Roy kone, none of the none of the bureaucracy exists, because you just call a person and you make it happen, which is why he has the friends he has now. Kne shenanigans did land him in constant legal trouble. In nineteen sixty nine, he was arrested for bribing a city appraiser. During his court case, his lawyer suffered a likely faked heart attack, and Cone

was forced to mount his own defense. He spoke with no notes for seven straight hours, ending on a long monologue about his love for the United States of America. The jury was moved to tears and he was acquitted. Oh come on, play the heart like an instrument. He's amazing, Like he's one of those he's a monster. There is a degree to which you have to respect him because

he was fucking good at what he did. He was the best at being Roy Cone Um, one of his friends later said of Roy, I was surprised at how absolutely shameless he was about who he was. He had almost a kind of delight in being Roy Cone. Underneath the social persona of needing to be liked, there was an absolute menace. And for an example of that kind of menace, there was one year where he rented a vacation house at a Florida beach town fame for being

a haven for gay men. Roy partied and fucked and he wound up at a number of the same gatherings as John Waters, who despised him. And this is one of the things about this John Waters. So all of these people like Andy Warhol, Barbara Walters are happy to be friends with Roy Cone as much of a monster as he was. Walter's never John Waters never falls for it. He because John Waters is a real one. And when people when when Waters his friends would out with Roy

would be like, do not fucking know who this guy is? Like, fuck you, you cannot be friends with this guy. Look at good human work. Yeah, no, John Waters, fucking rules Waters is as good as you would hope he would be, um, yeah and yeah, So Water, John Waters, who despised him and he was heart was horrified that a lot of the younger men didn't know who Roy was and would you know have sex with him in exchange for drugs

and money? Um and Roy knes landlady at the time, the woman who rins him this house, gives a fascinating interview for the documentary Bully Coward Victim, and she notes that Cone was always surrounded by people, at least two or three, but often more than that, and she she found it particularly striking that the only time she ever saw him alone is on the occasions that he would go out for a swim. Every other moment of his

life he was surrounded by people. This is a man who almost could not be alone with himself, which I think is important. Um. I mean, listen, you do a lot of bad things. They're gonna hunt you now. His landlady also note that the at the end of his year there, he offered to buy the house from her, and she told him it wasn't for sale, and in her recollection when she said that, his eyes grew very cold, and he told her things that aren't for sale have

a nasty way of getting sold. Oh, threat just switched to threats. That's how it works. Yeah, all right. So in nineteen seventy six, Roy's oldest client, the eighty four year old Lewis Rosen Steel net worth seventy five million dollars, was on his deathbed in a Florida hospital. Being a good and decent man, Roy arrived to help him sign his last will and testament. Of course, Lewis already had a will. Elderly and ill, Roy was able to convince him that the document he was signing would save one

of his ex wives from prison. Instead, it was a revised will that would have made Cone a trustee and the executor of Rosenstein's will. The amended word, Yeah, baby, Yeah, it's great. Now. The amended will was avoided in court, but it gives you an idea of the kind of things that Roy got up to. Oh my word, yeah, stealing from a dying man. Yeah, of course he's going to steal from a dying man. That guy doesn't need it anymore. That's the bottom of the barrel, Ship Roight.

He spent his life at the bottom of that barrel. Now, by the close of the nineteen seventies, Roy was at the absolute height of his power, the single most feared lawyer probably in the world. This Esquire profile from nineteen seventy eight gives you both a rundown of why he was so terrifying and how he was seen by his contemporaries at the apex of his power. I can get attention, no question about it, says Cone. They know my name. The usual responses what did I do? His standard technique

is to dispatch a threatening letter on behalf of a client. Hey, Mr, this is now the eleventh hour before the monster strikes. Is how Roy puts it. Roy symbolizes viciousness and protecting a client or going after someone who needs viciousness to write a wrong says Bill Fugazy. He fights his cases as if they were his own. It is war. If he feels his adversary has been unfair, it is war to the death. No white eggs, no Mr. Nice guy. Prospective clients who went to kill their husband, torture a

business partner, break the government's legs, higher Roy Cone. He is a legal executioner, the toughest, meanest, loyalist, violist, and one of the most brilliant lawyers in America. He is not a very nice man. Once, when a husband tried to pull a fast one and ordered two moving trucks to sneak up to collect furniture at seven am. His hysterical wife called Roy. What should I do? She screamed, Sit tight. He calmed her, I'll call the cops. He

had the husband thrown in jail. I must have had fifty men call me over the years and asked, we hear Roy Cone is going to represent my wife. Would you make sure he doesn't rough us up? Says Fugaze. The mere sending of a letter from Roy Cone has saved us a lot of money, says builder Donald Trump. When people know that Roy is involved, they'd rather not

get involved in the lawsuits and everything else that's involved. Publishers, TV networks, editors are accomplished to receiving peremptory phone calls, are threatening letters from Cone, and cringe at the court costs of taking him on. What's really incredible is that he sort of has created the modern wealthy douche. Like if you if you think about all the stuff that happened early on with me too and the director who I will not name, but you know who he is. Producer. Sorry, Um,

he pulled all those same tactics. I'll just I'll just call the paper and threaten them because who's gonna want to deal with me? And this idea that just if I can exhaust you legally, not just with my words but also with my financial capital, you just have to bow out. That is so insidious. And I'm not going to say he's the first person to do it, but he was the best and maybe the first person to

get that good at it. Like he's so frightening that after a while he doesn't even really have to argue cases. You just are told that roy Cone is involved, and you settle because you do not want to fucking step into the ring with roy Cone. Right, ships and people, like some other lawyers who were contemporaries of his will argue like he wasn't actually a good lawyer, He was just good at being frightening, Like that's that was roy Cone's like skill was scaring the ship out of people.

Timidation is legit, man, absolutely, especially when you're going up against the law, which a lot of people don't have, you know, an intrinsic knowledge of. Yeah. So in nineteen eighty, Roy Cone got involved in national politics in a way he really hadn't before. Cone had, of course considered running for office, but his more level headed friends had told him that that would be a terrible idea because he

his his closet was nothing but skeletons. It was like one of those monasteries built out of the bones of monks. That's Roy Cone's closet, like just just pure skeletons. So obviously he can't run for office, but he can't help his friends get into office. And one of his friends was another fellow you might have heard of, Ronald Wilson Reagan. Now, when Ronald started his run for the White House, roy knew that he had a chance to seat a president

who was also a personal friend. Cone knew the Reagan's well, and the Reagan's knew Cone as well as anyone ever knew roy Cone. Despite being a registered Democrat, Cone and his partners at the law firm campaigned and raised money for Reagan's campaign. He also engaged in his traditional rat fuccory, using his young friend Roger Stone, come and bribe the Liberal Party, which was a third party at the time, to endorse John B. Anderson as a third party candidate

in the election. The thinking here was that he would

take votes away from Jimmy Carter. Now, when Reagan won the election, the new York Times noted, like lawyer campaigners of all parties before them, the two now have a voice in the appointment of the judges that members of their law firm appear before, and of the United States attorneys who prosecute their clients, which is obviously a dream for Roykone because again, if you if you got the judge his job or the prosecutor, you're going up against

their job. You got a little bit of average, don't you just so just a little bit there are Okay, if you were a person who plays by the rules, aren't you supposed to recuse yourself? No? Funk that ship? No know when no one does that bullshit? Like why would you do that? Ship? But you know who does play by the rules? Joel, who's the products and services that support this podcast? I'm so glad. Yeah, we're back. So President Reagan certainly had no issues being seen with

infamous Cold warrior Roy Cone. The President's men actually threw a party for Cone and his partners after the election, and Roy himself through one of the best attended parties on inauguration Day in nineteen eighty three, talking about a little quid pro quo here we were just talking about how Cone gets a voice and who gets made a judge. In nineteen eight three, Ronald Reagan appointed Mary Anne Trump Barry, Donald Trump's sister to the U. S. District Court. Okay, cool,

that's good. Some good ship. By the early nineteen eighties, some of Roy's lifestyle choices were beginning to catch up with him, namely his choice to never pay taxes. He bragged to one interviewer that, without question, I hold the world's record for having been audited by the I R S. He was in fact under audit for more than twenty years and eventually charged with Yeah. They eventually charged him

to for going more than three million dollars in back taxes. Now, none of this stopped Cone from living the high life. Between his firm and his rich friends, every need was taken care of. Cone even joked readily that he didn't have a bank account because the I R S would

immediately seize it. And as Esquire reports, Cones refusal to pay didn't just extend to the I R S. From January nineteen seventy to December nineteen seventy seven, no less than twenty eight judgments were filed against Roy in Manhattan State Supreme Court. In fourteen separate cases, judges ordered him to pay the State of New York a total of seventy one thousand, three d two dollars and sixty one cents.

In three separate judgments, he was ordered to pay the city nine thousand, three hundred twenty eight dollars and ten cents Dunhill Taylor's Oil, credit card companies, a locksmith, a mechanic, a photo off set company, a stationary store and office supply company, temporary office workers, travel agencies, and storage companies have all filed claims against Cone and seeking payment. These

smaller creditors must retain attorneys or bill collectors. It gets pretty expensive, particularly since roy relish is a fight for a relatively small bill, it's often not worth the trouble. Rather than pursue Roy, a Manhattan Button Stores swallowed a sixty dollar bill. Asked about these unpaid bills, Roy says that during his nine year legal battle in New York, money's and energy were devoted to survival, and there was a total lack of attention to other things, so he

just didn't pay for anything. And he would be like, yeah, you're gonna assume me, But like it's gonna cost you more money to assume me than to just accept that I'm getting some stuff for free. At what point does it go from being civil too criminal though, Like yeah, theft just he just stot ship when he wanted it. Yes, absolutely, that's Roy Cone. He was a tremendous piece of ship. Now, Roy was also infamous among his friends for never ordering dinner,

even when he would take people out to dinner. Instead, he would eat the food from the plates of his guests, grabbing he wanted and taking and again, people, including very powerful people Royalty, were just accepted this, like, this is what happens when you eat with Roy. He's just going to take food off of your plate. And I think that was kind of Roy's point. He's a power moves guy. He's all about power moves and just like sitting down and taking food from someone's plate is that is absolutely

a power move. Is disgusting. I don't know where you go. Then you're sleeping with half of New York weirdo. So power, the kind of power that lets you say, take food off the table of the Duke of windsor like power is what elevated Roy above the other gay men who lived in the United States at the time, including the

ones he's slept with. It's a big part of why he didn't consider himself homosexual because homosexuals in this period, in Roy's eyes, homosexuals are weak, They're downtrodden, They're an oppressed class. And Roy was a powerful man, with a thousand men of influence and wealth at his beck and call whenever he needed them. For years, this separated Roy from the other game, and both in his own head and in the heads of his wealthy and powerful conservative friends. Right,

this is what elevates him. I have elevated myself above the you know, I'm I'm not gay because gay people are weak and oppressed and I am powerful. That's what separates him from them. And because he felt so separated from them, Roy took public positions against gay rights even after the Lavender Scare. When the City of New York proposed legislation that would have provided gay people with protections under the law, Roy fought against it on behalf of

his client, the Catholic Church. He argued that the legislation would dangerously influence young Americans, possibly turning them gay. At one point, Roy was asked by yeah, so sorry. The idea that you could just fucking live like a normal life, which earn you gay. Fuck you Roy homebuck you so hard. Oh, I hope you're writing in hell. At one point, Roy was asked by gay rights activists to represent a teacher

who had been fired for his sexual orientation. He refused, and he told them, I believe homosexuals are a grave threat to our children and have no business polluting the schools of America. Well that's you, you're thinking about yourself. But in the end, Roy's power could not save him from the AIDS epidemic that his good old body Ronald

Reagan failed completely to control, le or contain. As we covered in our episode on the Reagans and AIDS, the disease was initially referred to as the gay plague, and since it only affected homosexuals, it didn't only affect homosexuals, but that's what it was seen as. Right Initially, people thought this is just something that gay people deal with. No one in power really cared about it, with a notable exception of see Everett Coope, the Surgeon General who

gets some credit. Roy Cone contracted HIV and nineteen eighties six, most probably from one of the young men he had brought to him every single day. When it became obvious that Roy was not just sick, but sick with the gay plague, an illness that would irrevocably brand him as a gay man in polite society, Roy turned to his usual tricks. He lied. He claimed he had liver cancer, but the world did not believe him, and the rich and powerful men he'd courted and collected all of his

life abandoned him one by one. Donald Trump stopped taking his calls. When Trump was invited to speak at an event hosted by the White House, he thanked Ronald Reagan for appointing his sister to a judge ship, but didn't mention Roy Cone at all. Roy was devastated by this. Donald pisses ice water. He said, oh, oh, for not

mentioning you, Okay, there's so many and for ignoring him. Yeah, there's so many great things about Like so often people don't get their come up in in their lifetime, you know, So for the last years of his life to be painful alone, which we already know he didn't like, so so wonderful. What's what's really appropriate is that he has spent his life persecuting gay people as a gay man and denying that he is elevating himself above it because

of his power. And finally, this is like what happens to Roy at the end of his life, is proof that, like you know this, you were always a part of this community, even though you hated it and persecuted it, and you you like the fact that, like, finally, something bad was done to them that you couldn't elevate yourself from. You could elevate yourself from the persecution, legally, you could elevate yourself from that, but you aunt elevate yourself away

from from a fucking virus. You know, your money could not save you here, although it might have if you have thrown some of it into research and help protect your brothers and sisters in a very scary time. I will also say that it brings me a lot of joy that Tony Kushner got to explore this in a place because literally, yeah, it's define never to end. It's called Angels in America. If you haven't seen Hbos in a pretty good rendition of it. Nathan Lane recently played

him on Broadway, and it's just wonderful. I think that the gay community gets an opportunity to constantly be like, no, funk that guy, and also to future generations, don't be that fucking guy. Don't be that fucking guy, because you can't. You can't actually funck over your as you said, your brothers and sisters and get away with it like you

will eventually. It's the same thing that happened to It's kind of in a in some ways, it's the same thing that happened to Roy's uncle, like your wealth and power will only temporarily like elevate you to the ruling class. And as soon as something happens like this, like you are ut another gay man to them. Are you listening, Candice Owens? Do you hear what we're saying. Yeah. As Cone grew sicker and sicker, the law finally caught up

with him. He was disbarred by the New York appoll At Court after being convicted on four different counts of facory. In one case, he failed to pay back a hundred thousand dollar loan from a client. Losing his license to practice the law was one thing that hurt Roy more than any other blow ever. Could He learned about the judgment watching the nightly news Oddly enough, the only one of Roy's old friends who didn't totally abandon him in

his hour of need was Ronald Reagan. UM. Now, Reagan did completely cut social ties with him, but he showed some mercy and approved Roy to be added to the testing pool for an experimental AIDS drug. It didn't work, though. On August second, nineteen eight six, Roy mcne died at age fifty nine. The I r S confiscated everything he owned, as he'd wished. Roy died penniless and deeply in debt to the federal government. Roy is not missed by anyone

but Donald Trump, but he is remembered. There is a single square in the AIDS Quilt dedicated to Roy m cone. His epitaph is three words bully, coward, victim, God, damn it. Yes, yes, yes, well god, I love my community. What a way to just stick it to somebody like, not only did you die, not only do we understand who you were, but we still included you in our quilt statements. Yeah, yeah, yeah, you can't escape that one thing you try to do your whole life. We're going to make sure death you

cannot get out of it. Oh funk. That is awesome. That is so awesome. I do not expect a happy ending when we started, but you know, every once in a while, Robert is like, you know what, here's some like sprinkle of joy. Friends. This was happy, rewarding. Yeah. The happy part of the ending is that Roy, unlike what I suspect Roger Stone and to some extent, Donald Trump are going to get away with their crimes. Roy didn't, you know, he's the one who's responsible for them, and

he did. He died not able to It's not that he died, it's that he died unable to pretend that he wasn't what he was and unable to separate himself from the people that he had attacked and harmed his entire life. Well, Rod and hell Roy again, you gigantic piece of ship, really bad person, just a just a monster, A class a monster though as monsters go, a very fascinating one. Yeah. We were fascinated by the Hitlers and the hannibal Lecters of the world because we don't know

how you how did this happen? What quite wrong? And uh yeah, I'm just I'm so so so happy that he got what he deserved in the end. And it's It's fascinating to me because we talked about how you know, the Red Scare and the Lavender Scare were allowed to continue until Roy and McCarthy picked on a young white man right like like and then it fell apart for them.

And it's kind of the case that the AIDS epidemic was allowed to completely rage out of control and no one in power cared until like young white boys who had hemophili started getting AIDS and then people had to

deal with it. Um. It's just I mean that through line is so consistent in American history that like, we will ignore this problem until it affects like fresh faced white boys, and then then we'll start to deal with it because reason exactly the reason we have to constantly be in their face about it because know it's impacting my life. Now, Yes, deal with it. Stuff, good stuff, Roy Cone, fun story. Yeah. I really do recommend both Bully Coward Victim, the documentary about Roy and uh, Where's

My Roy Cone? The other documentary. Now they're they're actually both very good. And Roy is you just look at the man's face, you can like it's not like you could if you met him on the streaming like that is a person, and I need to stay the funk away from No. Clearly, I was looking when we were talking about Donald Trump in his twenties and then we were talking about David and like all of that. I was like, well, what did Roy look like in his twenties?

He looked like an old man. Yeah, he looks like he looks like a ghoul. He's a gollum, he's a monster. You've been through too much, Roy, because you clearly there's no youthfulness in you. There's no none of that, like, oh, young Spryan Guide's twenty here. You know you were just born an old, crotchety man with hate in your heart. And that's sad. Yeah, he's he's just a bad person anyway, Joel, Yes, how do you feel about Roy Cone? No, not at all.

But I do feel enriched by his story. I do feel able to better target some of the assholes that are currently running ship and be like, oh, I'm seeing the direct line, I'm seeing the ship's kind of pool. Did that? The extent to which Roy Cone taught Donald Trump everything he knows and Roger Stone is really remarkable to me because it is and it's an effective strategy. It's one of those things. There's this um if you talk about um like military strait and not like grand

strategy but like actual like like tactical level combat. Here's this thing called the ODA loop, which is observed, orient, decide, act, and it's it's a it's an acronym for the series of decisions you go through in like a dangerous situation. In order to like, like you're being shot at, you have to like see who's shooting at you, orient yourself, figure out like where they are where you are, decide what to do in response, and then do it. And

that's how you respect. Like going through that ODA loop is how you respond effectively to violence. And part of successfully winning combat in that sort of sense is to disrupt the opponent's ODA loop, stop them from either seeing what's happening, which is why you have we use like a smoke grenade, stop them from oriented themselves, stop them from deciding what to do, or stop them from acting. You have to disrupt that ODOR loop. And it's the

same thing in any sort of confrontation. And Roy's strategy and the strategy that Donald Trump picked up from him, is to be constantly disrupting that loop in his opponents that's what You're always on the attack. That's why you never respond to anything they say. That's why you never

answer any of the questions they raised about you. You just keep making more attacks because if they attack you back, they're wanting you to respond, and if you ignore that and just throw another hit out at them, you can disrupt them, get them off balance, and that's how you win. Um, it's very effective. It's effective in the moment, but I think as we're seeing with Donald Trump long term, unless you happen to have like work one level genius, you

just can't. It doesn't stand up like it doesn't eventually people are like, okay, but we do need to solve Yeah, like the reason we came here. You you eventually run into a problem that you can't defeat that way. And actually for both Roy Cohne and for Donald Trump, it was a virus us right, like the AIDS virus, Like you can't you can't attack the AIDS virus like you can't yell at it into submission, you can't scare it. And there's the same thing with the with the coronavirus,

you can't. There's only so far lying can get you. With a virus um, and now I'm thinking about just the role of fear and how just a combination of ignorance and fear has totally warped our country multiple times, like almost systemically throughout its existence. Has been fundamentally changed by the fact that people didn't know enough, and then we're horrified to try to do anything to stop it. I mean, the only reason Trump got in the first time is information and fear and greed on behalf of

the media because he was good for business. Yeah yeah, yeah, stuff, take a nap now that awful. Okay, thanks for being on um. This has been behind the bastards. I don't know, go, I don't know, like something on fire whatever, be you live your truth, so let your roy Cone don't do that. Yeah, all right, we're done.