Behind the Bastards - Part Two: Roy Cohn: The Man Who Made Donald Trump

Episode Date: December 10, 2020

Robert is joined again by Joelle Monique to continue to discuss Roy Cohn. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Listen to The Last Soviet on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome back. We're talking about Roy Cohn. We're talking about Roy Cohn. I don't know how else to lead into this. I'm Robert Evans, podcast bad people talk about him. This is part two, Roy Cohn. He sucked. My guest today is Joel Monique. Joel.

Hi, yes, I'm good. I'm eager to learn more about Roy Cohn and the terribleness that he inflicted on our country. He inflicted nothing but pain. And that's good for him, I guess. So when we last left our dear friend Roy, he had promised to wreck 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 1950s, a retired general, declaring a desire to destroy the branch he served with was not a great long-term career move.

Like in 2020, broadly speaking, Americans are positively inclined towards the army. In the 1950s, it was like a universal thing, right? Like pretty close to it. So, yeah, McCarthy and Cohn had made a tactical error in deciding that they were going to destroy the army. Because the army was a heck of a lot more popular than this. They were like, we could do anything. Yeah, it's like the Beatles declaring they're bigger than Jesus, except for the Beatles actually were bigger than Jesus.

Yeah, statistical events. 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 McCarthyism's predecessor the House Un-American Activities Community the most un-American 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 probably in like the upper quarter or so of our presidents.

And again, he did a lot of horrible things because presidents are a bad thing to have. One of the number of great black marks against his name, maybe even the greatest, although we also have Korea, is that through his silence he allowed McCarthyism to fester and continue. Some scholars claim his neglect was intentional, an indirect approach he used to subtly stymie the senator. Ike, they claim, secretly leveraged his influence to modestly obstruct the red and lavender scare. C.D. Jackson, an Eisenhower 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 McCarthyism, 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 was a Republican and so was Dwight D. Eisenhower. Crushing McCarthy's witch hunt would have cost Ike 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, presidents, not such a good thing to have. Kill the two party system, it's killing us.

Literally destroying us. It's such a problem. Not to be too salacious, 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 shit he wanted to do. And he didn't really care if gay people and leftists were being harassed. And if some innocent, like not innocent, like because the gays and the leftists were innocent, but if some people who were neither of those things got mistakenly drawn into it too,

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. So he just didn't do any, he didn't, he knew it was the wrong thing, what 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. I mean, let's look at the lineage. Not much has changed. Not much has changed.

We had one moderately good person be president and he was not a good president. Sorry, Carter. So the whole hellish circus finally met its end in the spring of 1954 as the army trial drew to a close with the 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 in like the center of the trial being cross-examined by Roy Codde, 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 Cohn 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 aughts.

And now it's like, oh, all our white family members are gay? Well, there's been some changes then. White people are gay? Well, I guess we'll have to deal with that. Yeah. I guess they're people. Yeah. Oh, no. 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 Cohn 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, Cohn 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 in video, you can watch him try to get McCarthy to back down. You can watch him being like, no, no, we got to like, we got to like,

this isn't going to go well for us if we keep pushing this shit. 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? Listen, the 50s love decency.

They love decent people. Oh, no. Yeah, yeah. Now, this was the death knell for McCarthyism. Yeah, the Army put together a dossier on Roy Cohn, 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 and to Congress

and suddenly McCarthy and Cohn were being censured for abusive power. I'm going to quote now from a write-up by the Miller Center. In May, 1954, Ike 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 bold and daring move and it worked. McCarthy, his credibility in tatters and now starved of witnesses, hit a brick wall and his fellow senators turned against him. In early December, 1954, the Senate passed a motion of condemnation in a vote of 67 to 22. McCarthy was ruined and within three years he was dead from alcohol abuse. The era of McCarthyism was over. Ike had helped bring it to a better end.

And again, Ike only gets involved and puts his personal credibility on the line to take out McCarthy when McCarthy makes a mistake that pushes people against him. I mean, yeah, no, it makes sense. Oh, he's already dead. I kill him. Kill him now. Crazy. Yeah, cowardice is the best way to describe it and the fact.

And even that one senator who had the really, he had the piercing line of having no decency. Sir, look in a mirror. If 20% of America's work population had to be interrogated and it took one white dude for you to be like, maybe I should pay attention. You, I don't know how much decency there is in that either. Yeah. Yeah, it's great.

So Cohn left the government in 1955, never to return. Stymied from continuing to assault and abuse his political enemies, 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 1953, it was the largest toy manufacturer on the planet. So this is a big old company.

When Roy returned to New York in 1955, 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 during his days at a law firm, he's putting together cash from himself and his other investors and his family money. To buy up 200,000 shares of Lionel bit by bit. And he does it like kind of in secret. By 1959, 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 Cohn somehow does not get what children want. Oh, no. Who'd have thought? Who'd have thought Roy Cohn would not have known what kids wanted in a toy. Yeah. So basically after under several years of Roy Cohn's management, Lionel collapses, leading to Roy's ouster and paving the way for the company to be bought by Neil Young. Wow.

Yeah, the musician Neil Young buys it. He's apparently huge into toy trains. Yeah. Never would have guessed. That part of it like Neil Young taking over is actually a very sweet and a very happy story. So obviously we're not going to talk about it at all because this is my podcast. No, that makes sense. But Neil Young's great.

Throughout the 1960s, 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 that's why his name is that. Like nobody watching the Simpsons today knows about this mobster from like the 60s and 70s. 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 shit you'd expect. Through a confusing set of schemes, he actually came to co-own a huge number of New York City parking lots with the mob. Roy Cohn 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. That's so weird. Okay. It's a weird gig. Is it on the whole lot or is it just the parking spots? Yeah, he owns lots.

Yeah, he owns parking lots that are supposed to be city property, but Roy and the mob are proffering off of them. And memory serves in the 70s, they use those to slowly start building new developments. Yes. 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 this. Yeah, he's getting griftier and griftier as we go.

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... What? Many of his friends later reported that his greatest ambition in life was to die owing the IRS millions and millions of dollars. He simply did not pay taxes. As he grew more successful as a mob lawyer and became partner at his Manhattan law firm, Cohn wrangled the business into paying for his two Rolls Royces, paying for his food, his suits, his vacations, his homes.

Cohn 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 Cohn had no money basically, but the company had a lot of money and the company paid for everything that Cohn had and then wrote off those payments as tax deductible. And so Cohn didn't pay taxes. Listen, I don't have all the numbers before me, but I know a lot of millionaires and billionaires are like living off of that model of lifestyle now. Yeah. Ugh, God. Yeah, it's pretty cool 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, roads and shit. Like Roy Cohn does not give a fuck about any of that. So Cohn 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.k.a. the Catholic Church. So in New York, the mafia and the Catholic Church had the same lawyer and it was Roy Cohn. You gotta love New York, Julie. Yeah, it's pretty great.

Really? Wow. Well, I mean, in the Catholic Church, a 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. It's embarrassing. Yeah.

As the 60s turned to the 70s, Roy 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 judge, he would know, you know, this is an atypical type of judge or this one's.

Yeah. And he's familiar with all the cases. It makes sense. Lean into your strengths to Roy Cohn. 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 20 something at that point. He's 27 when he and McCarthy are like, like finally when their crusade ends. So like he never changes. Like that's kind of the thing about Roy Cohn is he is exactly the same person his entire life, which is remarkable. There's no arc. Like he, he at no point does Roy grow as a human being. Well, when your mom, you know, is taking care of you into your 40s, you have no need to grow.

Yeah. You do think that might have had something to do with it. In 1973, Roy Cohn met the man who would become his moral protege and almost a son to him, Donald J. Trump. They first met. Yeah. Yep. They first met at a nightclub when Trump was in his mid 20s.

The same rough age Roy Cohn 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 blonde Nordic looking young man. If you look at pictures of like Donald Trump when he's in his 20s, like he's a tall blonde Nordic looking man. They're kind of similar looking dudes. So both ugly as fuck. I mean, that's not how Roy Cohn felt about it. Like a lot of people basically will insinuate Cohn had a crush on Donald Trump.

And that may have been the case. Now, when they met, Donald's dad was still alive. Shockingly, Donald Trump's dad didn't die until like 99, I think it was. Like he was alive way longer than he should have been. Yeah. It was creepy at the end. Yeah. 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 own a real estate company that had just gotten exposed for refusing to rent homes to black people. So that's like the first conversation Roy Cohn and Donald Trump has. It's like Donald Trump's like, yeah, the law's up my ass because we won't rent to black people. And Roy Cohn's like, oh, I can help with that. And that's how their relationship starts. I'm going to quote from the Atlantic.

What a romantic, 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, Cohn 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 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 Cohn held a press conference announcing a hundred million dollar countersuit against the government. It was almost immediately dismissed, but that was not the point. Cohn 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 as shit.

You see the same tactic at play in Trump today, here's where he learns it, Roy Cohn teaches him this shit. So the legal battle with Cohn and Trump versus the government went on for almost two years, and it did not end in a victory for Roy Cohn 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 counterattacking, raising phony charges, admitting no wrong, Trump paid careful attention. Roger Stone was another one of Roy Cohn's friends and protégés, and he was interviewed for the documentary, Where's My Roy Cohn? 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. I'm so upset that it works, truly, is what my problem is. It's disastrously successful.

Now, the Atlantic would go on to sum up Roy's style this way. Cohn and Trump embody the mafia style in American politics. I don't mean the Sopranos. I mean the cold will to power that carries a threat of murder without shame. It's worth noting that the two people interviewed in Where's My Roy Cohn describe Cohn with the word evil. Again, that's just the guy he is. Everyone knew it, Trump knew it, and Trump loved it. When we talk about evil on this show, on Behind the Bastards, we're usually talking about someone with a significant body count. If we're talking about kills that Roy ordered, he's stuck at maybe two, 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 circumstances. One example would be the guy who sold Roy and the mob those parking lots, because, again, 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. I don't know if Roy had anything to do with that, but I don't know that he didn't. It was a signature mob style of murder at the time, was just shoot him in the back of their trunk and then close it, walk away. Then there was the case of Roy's yacht. I say Roy's yacht, but it was really owned by Cohn's law firm, least from a shell company called Pied Piper Yacht Charters, which I think Roy also had some sort of interest in. Not Pied Piper. Oh, no. Pied 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 22, 1973. On that night, the 97-foot yacht, which was officially named Defiance, sunk off the Florida coast. It was insured, and Roy made $200,000 off of the yacht's demise. Defiance? Can we go? It sure was. Defiance of the IRS, I bet. Yeah. Oh, boy.

You can't see it, listeners, but all of us just made a face like, ugh. Now, it was handy that the yacht sunk because by 1973, 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. They were actually going to schedule the boat and sell it for scrap, but the fact that it sank meant that Cohn got a hell of a lot more money for it because it was insured for the full value of a functional yacht. And yeah, so the guy who had been the captain of the boat refuses to pilot it because it's in such bad shape. So Cohn, he resigns, and then Cohn hires another captain to replace him.

And the captain he picks is a convicted felon in three states. Yeah, not maybe the best guy to pilot your boat. Now, before the journey started, 21-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, L.T. 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' body. L.T. Martinson went to his grave believing that Roy Cohn had deliberately scheduled the boat killing his son to make $200,000. 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. A. I didn't own the boat. B. I didn't get the insurance. C. The statement is an outrageous falsehood. Four. How am I going to get angry at 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 or it was my boat, even though I never met a son, never heard of a son, never hired a son, never saw his son in my entire life, and never had any insurance coming 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 sorryer for him, for what happened. Now, that's Roy's response. 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 $200,000 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 dispersed to pay off the yacht's mortgage. Another $15,875 went to Cone's law firm for legal fees.

Another $7,100 went to the law firm as reimbursement for personal property lost on the boat. And $7,950 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 Pied Piper. I didn't get any money from the boat sinking. Well, yeah, I mean, I got that money from the boat sinking. I got $7,000 and my law firm made several thousands.

Yeah, and my law firm got thousands and 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 bajillion shady things. Like this could have been your ills in the hole. It's so good. Yeah.

And that poor dad. Oh yeah. No, he's, I mean, his life is ruined because his son is 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 doubt 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 Cone. 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 shit 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 1970s, 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-mix concrete dries quickly, which can leave developers vulnerable to expensive workers' slowdowns, a common tactic from mob-controlled construction sites. While other developers were urging the FBI to take down the mafia, Trump bought its concrete at artificially high prices. According to Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist David K. Johnston, who's known and covered Trump for 30 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 union's 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 coffers, 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 Cone's connection, is able to set up an arrangement with the mob 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. During the summer of 2020, some Americans suspected that the FBI had secretly infiltrated the racial justice demonstrations. And you know what? They were right. I'm Trevor Aronson, and I'm hosting a new podcast series, Alphabet Boys. As the FBI sometimes, you gotta grab the little guy to go after the big guy. Each season will take you inside an undercover investigation. In the first season of Alphabet Boys,

we're revealing how the FBI spied on protesters in Denver. At the center of this story is a raspy-voiced, cigar-smoking man who drives a silver hearse. And inside his hearse was like a lot of guns. He's a shark, and not in the good and bad-ass way. He's a nasty shark. He was just waiting for me to set the date, the time, and then for sure he was trying to get it to happen.

Listen to Alphabet Boys on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Lance Bass, and you may know me from a little band called NSYNC. What you may not know is that when I was 23, I traveled to Moscow to train to become the youngest person to go to space. And when I was there, as you can imagine, I heard some pretty wild stories. But there was this one that really stuck with me.

About a Soviet astronaut who found himself stuck in space with no country to bring him down. It's 1991, and that man, Sergei Krekalev, is floating in orbit when he gets a message that down on Earth, his beloved country, the Soviet Union, is falling apart. And now he's left defending the Union's last outpost. This is the crazy story of the 313 days he spent in space. 313 days that changed the world.

Listen to the last Soviet on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. What if I told you that much of the forensic science you see on shows like CSI isn't based on actual science? The problem with forensic science in the criminal legal system today is that it's an awful lot of forensic and not an awful lot of science. And the wrongly convicted pay a horrific price. Two death sentences in a life without parole.

My youngest, I was incarcerated two days after her first birthday. I'm Molly Herman. Join me as we put forensic science on trial to discover what happens when a match isn't a match and when there's no science in CSI. How many people have to be wrongly convicted before they realize that this stuff's all bogus. It's all made up. Listen to CSI on trial on the iHeart radio app,

Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. We are back. We have returned. So, according to a former Cone employee, Trump and Fat Tony Salerno actually met face to face at Cone's townhouse. Now, Trump has denied the meeting ever occurred, but Salerno was later indicted on racketeering charges for an $8 million concrete deal made for a Trump development. So, you tell me.

Right. Now, it sounds shady to me. 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.

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 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, Cone's law firm, there's a number of reasons why. It's not just his connections to the mob. One of them is that Cone's partner in his law firm was the deputy mayor of New York City, who fast-tracked approval for Trump's construction plans. When the building was finished, Cone engineered positive coverage for Trump in the New York Post,

which was owned by one of Cone's clients, a guy you might have heard of named Rupert Murdoch. Oh my God. They're all in bed together. Yeah, so Cone introduces Trump to Rupert Murdoch. That's where that relationship starts, is Roy Cone. What a gross orgy of people. Yeah.

Human filth. Yeah, so Donald Trump got the credit for the feat of construction, of course, or at least he took the credit, and his fame only grew from there. And for his part, Roy Cone 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 30, 40 times a day. Wow. Yeah. 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's surrounded himself with. He sure is. Maddening. So the 1970s were probably Roy Cone's golden era.

He was an infamous regular at Studio 54, the cocaine-drenched nightclub that defined New York culture in the late 70s, or at least the parts of it that involved drugged-up rich people. Cone partied with Andy Warhol in 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 of... What? Yeah. Barbara's been there? Yeah, Barbara. She was one of his closest friends.

Like, they were in a faux relationship for years so that he could have plausible deniability as to being gay. Yeah. Barbara Walters. I mean, girl. Feminist icon Barbara Walters? Everybody loved Roy Cone.

That's the thing people will 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 pointed out is he was really charming.

He's a people person. But that's Barbara. That's Joel and I still are like... Because she's a rich person and rich people are all... Yeah, I know. Part of the same class unless things go bad. Take the joy from our lives, Robert.

Yeah. Do it. But again, this just continues to outline the psychopathy that clearly was Roy Cone. Like, the idea that you could convince all of these people to like you despite the fact that you were so clearly a horrible person in bed with the mob.

An absolute monster. Yeah, I found a story in 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 21. Yeah.

Quote, The restaurant spa 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 8 p.m. Purposely arriving 10 minutes early, he was brusquely led to his usual far nook.

Promptly at 8 p.m., the Duke and Duchess of Windsor entered the room. Ten captains 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. Cone, the captains 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 think Roy's gross, and they give him the bad tables, so he invites the Duke and Duchess of Windsor 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 going to bring. Wow.

Because how dare he sit with the tourists. I mean, that's a fucking power move, though. Like, you want to impress people, I'll just have the Duke and fucking Duchess of Windsor and never fuck with me again. Yeah, the man knew had a wheeled power. Yeah. Now, Roy, the man who knew had a wheeled

power, lived with his mother in her home until her death in 1967. The door to his bedroom held a name plate that spelled out Roy in the Disney font. He collected hundreds of stuffed frogs and had weird exotic pets, including at least one llama. He was a strange dude.

Wait, a llama? A llama, yeah, a llama at one point. This man has too much money and time. And a huge stuffed frog collection. A huge stuffed frog collection. Yeah.

What the fuck is a stuffed frog collection? Like plush, like plush frogs, like stuffed animals, but frogs. An emotionally stunted human being. Yeah. He's never left their childhood.

He also used his connections with Studio 54, which gave him an unlimited access to drugs to ensure a constant supply of young men showed up at his door ready to fuck. So basically, he pays a lot of these young boys in 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 protege, 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 illegal lengths to win their cases. In 1964, 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 short cutting the length. Yeah. So a friend of his is trying to get citizenship for this. 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 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 courtroom and adorns the court proceedings, calls them up and administers the oath of citizenship. Oh, my God. That's the kind of shit that Roy Cohn can fix, right? Like when I say he was the best fixer he was.

He was an absolute genius at his evil craft. It is... Yes. That the system can be so easily moved. It's still... I don't know why we live like this.

Yeah. No, because if you are a guy like Roy then 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, Cohn's shenanigans did land him

in constant legal trouble. In 1969, he was arrested for bribing a city appraiser. During his court case, his lawyer suffered a likely faked heart attack and Cohn 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 people. 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 Cohn. 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 Cohn. 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, famed 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 neat things about

this. John Waters, so all of these people like Andy Warhol, Barbara Walters are never, John Waters never falls for it. Because John Waters is a real one. And when people, when Waters his friends would hang out with Roy, he would be like, do not fucking know who

this guy is, like fuck you, you cannot be friends with this guy. Look at a good human work. Yeah, no, John Waters fucking rules. Waters is as good as you would hope he would be. Yeah, and yeah, so John Waters who despised him, he was

horrified that a lot of the younger men didn't know who Roy was and would have sex with him in exchange for drugs and money. And Roy Cohn's landlady at the time, the woman who rents him this house, gives a fascinating interview for the documentary, Bully

Coward Victim. And she notes that Cohn was always surrounded by people, at least two or three, but often more than that. And 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. I mean, listen, when you do a lot of bad things, they're going to haunt you. Now, his landlady also noted that 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. So just a threat. An instant just switch to threats. That's how it works. Yeah. All right. So in 1976, Roy's oldest client, the 84-year-old Louis Rosenstiel,

net worth $75 million, 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, Louis 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 will that would have made Cone a trustee and the executor of Rosenstein's will. That's quite a 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 bottom of the barrel shit, Roy.

What are you doing? He spent his life at the bottom of that barrel. Now, by the close of the 1970s, Roy was at the absolute height of his power, the single most feared lawyer probably in the world. This Esquire profile from 1978

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 response is, what did I do? His standard technique is to dispatch a

threatening letter on behalf of a client. This is now the 11th hour before the monster strikes is how Roy puts it. Roy symbolizes viciousness in protecting a client or going after someone who needs viciousness to right a wrong, says Bill Fugazi. 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 flags. No Mr. Nice Guy. Perspective clients who went to kill their husband, torture a business partner, break the government's legs, hire Roy Cone.

He is a legal executioner, the toughest, meanest, loyalist, vilest 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 7 a.m., 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 50 men call me over the years and ask, we hear Roy Cone is going

to represent my wife. Would you make sure he doesn't rough us up? Says Fugazi. The mere sending of a letter from Roy Cone from 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 pre-emptory phone calls or 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. 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, the producer, he pulled all those same tactics. I'll just call the paper and threaten

them because who's going to want to deal with me? This idea that 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. 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. He's so frightening that after a while you 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? Oh, shit. 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. That was Roy Cone's skill, was scaring the shit out of people.

Intimidation is legit, man. Absolutely. Especially when you're going up against the law, which a lot of people don't have the knowledge of. Yeah. So in 1980, 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 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 pure skeletons. So obviously he can't run for office, but he can help his friends get into office. 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 fuckery. Using his young friend Roger Stone, Cone and his partners 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 Roy Cone because again, if you got the judge, your job, you got a little bit of leverage, don't you? Just a little bit. Yeah.

Okay. If you were a person who plays by the rules, aren't you supposed to recuse yourself? No, fuck that shit. No, no one does that bullshit. Like, why would you do that shit? But you know who does play by the rules,

Joelle? Whomst? The products and services that support this podcast. I'm so glad. During the summer of 2020, some Americans suspected that the FBI had secretly infiltrated the racial

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So, President Reagan certainly had no issues being seen with infamous Cold Warrior Roy Cohn. The president's men actually threw in his partners after the election and Roy himself threw one of the best attended parties on Inauguration Day. In 1983,

talking about a little quid pro quo here, we were just talking about how Cohn gets a voice and who gets made a judge. In 1983, Ronald Reagan appointed Marianne Trump Berry, Donald Trump's sister, to the U.S. District Court. Okay. Cool.

That's good. Some good shit. In the early 1980s, 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 IRS.

He was in fact under audit for more than 20 years and eventually charged... Jesus! Yeah. They eventually charged him for owing more than $3 million in back taxes. Now, none of this stopped Cohn from living the high life between his firm and his rich friends every need was taken care of.

He was charged readily that he didn't have a bank account because the IRS would immediately seize it. And as Esquire reports, Cohn's refusal to pay didn't just extend to the IRS. From January 1970 to December 1977, no less than 28 judgments were filed against Roy in Manhattan State Supreme Court.

In 14 separate cases, judges ordered him to pay the state of New York a total of $71,392.61. In three separate judgments, he was ordered to pay the city $9,328.10. Dunhill-Taylor's oil credit card companies, a locksmith, a mechanic, a photo offset company,

a stationery store, an office supply company, temporary office workers, travel agencies, and storage companies have all filed claims against Cohn. In seeking payment, these smaller creditors must retain attorneys or bill collectors. It gets pretty expensive, particularly since Roy relishes a fight.

For a relatively small bill, it's often not worth the trouble. Rather than pursue Roy, a Manhattan button store swallowed a $60 bill. Asked about these unpaid bills, Roy says that during his nine-year legal battle in New York, monies 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 going to sue me, but it's going to cost you more money to sue me than to just accept that I'm getting some stuff for free. At what point does it go from being civil to criminal, though? That was theft. He just stole shit when he wanted it.

Yes, absolutely. That's Roy Cohn. He was a tremendous piece of shit. 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 what he wanted and taking it.

And again, people, including very powerful people, royalty, 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 absolutely a power move. It's disgusting. I don't know where you can hear the bend. 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 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 in 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 gay men 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 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. I'm so sorry. The idea that you could just fucking live like a normal life would turn you gay. Yeah. Oh, fuck you, Roy Cohn. Fuck you so hard. Oh, I hope you're rotting 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. Yeah.

Roy's power could not save him from the AIDS epidemic that his good old buddy Ronald Reagan failed completely to control or contain. As we covered in our episode on the Reagan's 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 C. Everett Coop, but he didn't have any credit. Roy Cohn contracted HIV in 1986,

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 in the midst of the plague. 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 judgeship, but didn't mention Roy Cohn at all. Roy was devastated by this. Donald pisses ice water, he said. Oh, oh, for not mentioning you, sir? Okay, there's so many great things.

And for ignoring him, yeah. There's so many great things about, and there's so many great things in their lifetime. So for the last years of his life to be painful, alone, which we already know he didn't like, is so, so wonderful. Yes, it's months.

What's really appropriate is that he has spent his life persecuting gay people as a gay man and denying that he is gay, 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 were always a part of this community, even though you hated it and persecuted it. And 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 can't elevate yourself away

from a fucking virus, you know? Your money could not save you here, although it might have if you had thrown some of it into research and helped 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 play. Yeah, Kushner did a great play about this.

Yeah, it's defying never to end. It's called Angels in America. If you haven't seen it, HBO is 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, fuck that guy and also to feature generations.

Don't be that fucking guy. Don't be that fucking guy because you can't you can't actually fuck over your, as you said, your brothers and sisters and get away with it. You will eventually... It's the same thing that happened to... In some ways, it's the same thing that happened

to Roy's uncle. Your wealth and power will only temporarily elevate you to the ruling class. And as soon as something happens like this, you are just another gay man to them. Are you listening, Candice Owens? Do you hear what we're saying?

Yeah. As Cone grew sicker and sicker, Roy finally caught up with him. He was disbarred by the New York Apple at court after being convicted on four different counts of fuckery. In one case, he failed to pay back $100,000 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. Delicious. Oddly enough, the only one of Roy's old friends who didn't totally abandon 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 2nd, 1986 Roy M. Cone died at age 59. The IRS 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. The word is bully, coward,

victim. God damn it, yes. Yes. God, I love my community. What a way to just stick it to somebody. Not only did you die, not only do we understand who you were, but we still included you in our fucking quilt.

You're still one of us. You can't escape that one thing you try to do your whole life. You're going to make sure in death you cannot get out of it. Oh, fuck, 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 really rewarding. 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. 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, right in hell, Roy. Yeah, fuck you, Roy. You gigantic piece of shit. It's terrible. Oh, really bad person. Just a just a monster. A monster, though, as monsters

go, a very fascinating one. We were fascinated by the Hitler's and the Hannibal Lectors of the world because we don't know how you how did this happen? What went wrong? Yeah, I'm just I'm so, so, so happy

that he got what he deserved in the end. And 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? 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 hemopheles started getting AIDS and then people had to deal with it. 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 start to deal with it because, oh, no. Exactly the reason, exactly the reason we have to constantly be in their face about it. We go, no, it's impacting my life now. Yes, deal with it.

Yeah, good stuff. Good stuff. Roy Cohn. Fun story. Yeah, I really do recommend both Bully Coward Victim, the documentary about Roy and where's my Roy Cohn, the other documentary that I'm about to watch both right now.

They're actually both very good. You just look at the man's face. You can, like, it's not, like, you could, if you'd met him on the stream and, like, that is a person I need to stay the fuck away from. Dude, no, clearly, I was looking when we were talking about Donald Trump in his 20s and then we were talking about

David and, like, all of that. I was like, well, what did Roy look like in his 20s? He looked like an old man. Yeah, he looks like a ghoul. He's a golem. He's a monster. Yeah. 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 Sprite guy in his 20 years. No, you were just born an old, crotchety man with hate in your heart and that's sad. Yeah, he's just a bad person. Anyway, Joelle.

Yes. How do you feel about Roy Cohn? Are you changing your mind on that at all? 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 shit and be like, oh, I'm seeing the direct line. I'm seeing the shit we're trying to pull. Roy did that. The extent to which Roy Cohn 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, about, um, like militaries and not like grand strategy, but like actual, like, like tactical level combat. There's this thing called the Oda Loop, which is Observe

Orient Decide Act. And it's an acronym for the series of decisions you go through in, like, a dangerous situation in order to, 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 respond, 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 would use, like, a smoke grenade, stop them

from orienting themselves, stop them from deciding what to do, or stop them from acting. You have to disrupt that Oda 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 why 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 raise 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. 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 Roy Cone level genius, you just can't, it doesn't stand up. Eventually

people are like, okay, but we do need to solve the problem. The whole reason we came here. You eventually run into a problem that you can't defeat that way. Actually, for both Roy Cone and for Donald Trump, it was a virus, right? Roy was the AIDS virus.

You can't attack the AIDS virus. You can't yell at it into submission. You can't scare it. And there's the same thing with the coronavirus. There's only so far lying can get you with a virus. 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 were horrified to try to do anything to stop it. 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. Good stuff. Okay. That was awful. Yeah. Thanks, Robert. Thanks for being on. This has been behind the bastards. Uh, I don't know.

Go, I don't know, light something on fire. Whatever. Be you. Live your truth. Unless you're Roy Cole. And don't do that. Yeah. Uh, all right, we're done. It involves a cigar-smoking mystery man

who drives a silver hearse. And inside his hearse was like a lot of guns. But are federal agents catching bad guys or creating them? He was just waiting for me to set the date, the time and then for sure he was trying to get it to happen. Listen to Alphabet Boys on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,

or wherever you get your podcasts. What if I told you that much of the forensic science you see on shows like CSI isn't based on actual science and the wrongly convicted pay a horrific price? Two death sentences in a life without parole.

My youngest, I was incarcerated two days after her first birthday. Listen to CSI on trial on the I Heart Radio app Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Listen to the last Soviet on the I Heart Radio app,

Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.