Roy Cohn, the man who taught Donald Trump all about manipulating the media, was born on this day in 1927.
Cohn would eventually die of AIDS–denying he had the disease until the end.
” …the essence of Cohn’s influence on Trump was the triad: “Roy was a master of situational immorality . . . . He worked with a three-dimensional strategy, which was: 1. Never settle, never surrender. 2. Counter-attack, counter-sue immediately. 3. No matter what happens, no matter how deeply into the muck you get, claim victory and never admit defeat.” As columnist Liz Smith once observed, ‘Donald lost his moral compass when he made an alliance with Roy Cohn,’ said Vanity Fair.
The AIDS Memorial remembers Cohn below.
“In December 1985, I went to have coffee with #RoyCohn (February 20, 1927 – August 2, 1986) in a penthouse overlooking the Breakers hotel in Palm Beach. We talked about the latest society divorces for a few minutes until his young companion, Peter Fraser, went inside. Then I asked the question:
“They say you have AIDS. Is it true?”
“Who the hell is ‘they,’ and how would ‘they’ know?” Roy said, his anger apparent even in his feeble voice. “It’s a smear campaign.”
He pursed his thin lips into a devil‑baiting smile.
“Of course,” he added, “I have been a high‑risk candidate.” He insisted that his ailment was liver cancer and that it was in remission.
Everyone who spent time with Roy knew that the stories of his engagements to Barbara Walters and other women were fiction. I had watched him attend family reunions with a series of younger male companions, who were introduced as “office managers” from his firm but whom one of my relatives always referred to as Roy’s tricks.
In the early 1980s, Roy introduced a man named Russell Eldridge as his secretary. Soon I learned that Russell had become very sick. Roy put him up in a quiet, private suite at the Barbizon Plaza, overlooking Central Park. When Russell died, Roy was heartbroken. Later, I gathered that Russell had died of AIDS.
I first met Peter Fraser three years ago. Peter had blondish hair and a model’s sinewy body. He was 25 and half Roy’s age. Roy spared me the “office manager” introductions. He met Roy at a party in Mexico, and soon after that he moved into the 33 room town house in Manhattan.
Like others in the family, I knew something was wrong, but I wasn’t sure what. Susan Bell would say only that Roy was in the hospital and visitors weren’t allowed.
He died on a Saturday, a slow news day, which guaranteed editors’ attention. And he died in the morning, allowing the papers plenty of time to put together big spreads for the Sunday editions. Every story mentioned AIDS.
Ironically, the Post, always his staunch defender, doesn’t publish on Sundays” — excerpt from
‘Roy Cohn’s Last Days’ (@vanityfair August, 1987)
by David Lloyd Marcus
