Kai Bird and Susan Goldmark have written a book that Trumpworld would rather you didn’t read. Released on Tuesday, American Scoundrel is a fast-paced, unsettling biography of Roy Cohn, the New York mob lawyer whose remarkable life traced, as the book’s subtitle puts it, a “Dark Journey from Joe McCarthy to Donald Trump.”
“I told my publicist to reach out to any of the Fox News hosts and reporters, to Joe Rogan, Steve Bannon,” Bird said. “We haven’t heard a word, except from Joe Rogan. He said he looked at the galleys, and he got back to my publicist and said, ‘I’m not interested.’ I’m kind of surprised. This is a serious biography of the president’s mentor, whom he publicly admires and says he still misses.”
From the mid-70s to the mid-80s, Cohn guided Trump through the ruthless world of New York real estate. Everything brutal about Trump, in business and politics, he probably picked up from Cohn. How to profit from ties to organized crime? Check. How to stay one step ahead of the law? Check. How to lie without remorse and never admit fault or defeat? Check.
No wonder that in 2017, amid a scandal over ties to Russia that his aides couldn’t handle, Trump famously demanded: “Where’s my Roy Cohn?”
Trump does know about American Scoundrel, because Bird called him four times on his personal number.
“The interviews were eight, nine, 10 minutes,” Bird said. “He told some stories. They were useful to me. I asked, ‘Well, how did you first meet Roy Cohn?’ And I was expecting what he had said before in The Art of the Deal and in interviews, but instead he flipped the story completely upside down. Instead of him going up to the older man, recognizing the powerful lawyer sitting at a nearby table at Le Club in Manhattan [in 1973], he said, ‘Oh, Roy Cohn recognized me. I was making a name for myself as a young developer in Manhattan.'”
Another lesson from Cohn: tell the story however the hell you want.
Describing his final Trump call, Bird said: “It’s so weird. You cold-call him, and he picks up. This time, instead of politely listening to my questions, he says, ‘Oh, I can’t do this. I don’t have time for this. You shouldn’t be using this number. I’m the president. I have Russia calling. I have China calling.’ And I say, ‘OK, I understand, Mr President, but I just have two questions.’
“And I ask, ‘Did you know that Roy Cohn in 1976 voted for Jimmy Carter?’ And he says, ‘Ah, that’s unbelievable. Why would he do that?’ And I said, ‘Well, Roy was kind of fed up and impatient with the old guard Republican party symbolized by Gerald Ford, and he thought Jimmy Carter was a fresh face.’ And Trump said, ‘Oh, I can understand that. That makes sense.’ You know his frustrations with the Republican party establishment. So that must have resonated with him.
“Then I said, ‘Well, Cohn quickly got disillusioned with Carter, particularly over the Panama canal treaty, and of course Trump jumped in and said, ‘Yeah, that was a terrible deal. What a terrible deal!’ He’s trying to get off the phone, and I say, ‘Well, I just want you to know this book is coming out in the autumn, and he says, ‘Oh, terrific, maybe I can promote it. Anything I promote goes to number one.’ And then there’s a pause, and he says, ‘Of course, it would have to be fair.'”
American Scoundrel is certainly fair. Bird won a Pulitzer Prize for American Prometheus, a biography of the nuclear scientist J Robert Oppenheimer co-written with Martin J Sherwin and the basis for Christopher Nolan’s Oscar-winning biopic. Bird’s last subject was Carter. Cohn kept coming up, so Bird and Goldmark (his wife, “director of research” and “muse”) got to work. Then Trump was re-elected. Cohn was relevant again.
“At 27, Cohn was on the cover of Time magazine,” Bird said, pointing to a rise that saw Cohn graduate from Columbia Law School at 20, prosecute Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, executed for spying for Russia, then becomeRepublican Senator Joe McCarthy’s aide during the Red Scare—the harsh 1950s crackdown on liberals and gay people—was Roy Cohn. Bird noted, “Joe McCarthy is a much simpler and less driven figure than Roy Cohn. McCarthy was a populist senator from Wisconsin just looking to make headlines, and he kind of stumbled onto the communist-in-government idea.”
Cohn, on the other hand, was “the ideologue. He’s the Svengali, the real brain, who tells Joe McCarthy how to exploit this issue. He runs the hearings, actually interrogates the witnesses, and is driven by a firm belief that internal communism threatens the nation. As a Jewish American—and this is key to his identity, I think—he also wants to prove his own loyalty, to show that not all Jews are left-wing.”
Cohn’s right-wing credentials were solid: he was close to Rupert Murdoch, Ronald Reagan, and other major conservative figures.
As the horrors of McCarthyism now echo in Trump’s extra-legal fight against “woke,” so do the mistakes of those inquisitors. The Army-McCarthy hearings, which brought McCarthy down in 1954, started because Cohn tried to keep another young inquisitor, G. David Schine, out of overseas service. Senators hinted that Cohn and Schine were lovers. Cohn was certainly gay but never came out publicly. Bird added, “He was also quite clearly attracted to Donald Trump. When they met, Trump was 27—tall, blond, blue-eyed, and somewhat wealthy. So he was Roy’s type. I don’t think anything sexual happened between them, but there was a dynamic, and a pattern in Roy’s friendships.”
Cohn could be generous. Bird points to Gary Belis, who dated Cohn (25 years older) but didn’t sleep with him and stayed fond of him. Yet that story appears in a chapter called “Predator,” which also includes the horrific tale of Richard Kerr, a Northern Irish boy abused in care and then trafficked worldwide, including to Roy Cohn.
“He could be very charming with someone like Gary Belis and fairly decent,” Bird said. “He courted him, gave him favors as Roy would, but backed off when Gary made clear he couldn’t go that route. Still, Cohn was a sexual addict and had these ‘boy toys’—teen hustlers paid for sex.”
Cohn is an American villain. He appears in Angels in America, Tony Kushner’s stage epic about the AIDS crisis. In 2024, Jeremy Strong played him in The Apprentice, Ali Abbasi’s Trump biopic. Part of his archive is owned by Michael Stipe of REM, who wrote the song “Exhuming McCarthy.”
He died in 1986 at 59 from AIDS. Just as he always denied his sexuality, he denied his final illness, claiming liver cancer even while receiving experimental AIDS treatment thanks to his Washington connections. Shortly before his death, he was disbarred for unethical conduct, though three indictments had failed to bring him down. (He still had 36 character witnesses, including Trump, William F. Buckley Jr., and TV host Barbara Walters, who once served as Cohn’s “beard,” or fake romantic interest.) In his final days, it’s often said Trump abandoned Cohn, prompting him to remark, “Donald pisses ice water.” Bird said, “That’s not entirely true.
“I quote Chris Seymour, the switchboard operator at Cohn’s New York townhouse law firm. He said that when Trump realized Roy was dying of AIDS, he started keeping his distance. He relied on him less as his lawyer, and calls became fewer. But that didn’t mean he cut him off. He did invite him down to his new estate at Mar-a-Lago for a fabulous dinner in March ’86, just five months before he died. It was a touching farewell dinner with many toasts.”
Cohn’s memorial service was held in midtown Manhattan, and a witness saw Trump weeping.
American Scoundrel is out now.
Frequently Asked Questions
Here is a list of FAQs about the new book shedding light on Roy Cohns influence on Donald Trump written in a natural clear tone
General Background
Q Who was Roy Cohn
A Roy Cohn was a notoriously ruthless American lawyer in the mid20th century He first became famous as Senator Joseph McCarthys chief counsel during the communist Red Scare hearings in the 1950s He later became a powerful fixer in New York City known for using aggressive often unethical legal tactics
Q What is the main argument of this new book
A The book argues that Roy Cohn wasnt just a lawyer for Donald Trump but his primary mentor and political father It suggests that Trumps aggressive neverapologize alwaysattack stylewhich he later used in business and politicswas directly modeled on Cohns playbook
Q Why is this book considered new if the CohnTrump relationship is already known
A While the relationship was known this book digs deeper into how Cohn shaped Trumps worldview It uses new interviews personal documents and anecdotes to show the specific lessons Cohn taught Trump moving beyond the general they were friends narrative to show a direct transfer of a ruthless philosophy
Q Is this book an authorized biography
A No it is not authorized by Donald Trump It is an independent journalistic work which means it relies on public records archival material and interviews with people who knew both men
The CohnTrump Relationship
Q How did Roy Cohn and Donald Trump first meet
A They met in the 1970s at a private club in New York City Trump then a young real estate developer was facing a lawsuit from the Justice Department over alleged racial discrimination in his apartments He hired Cohn to fight the case and Cohn won by flipping the narrative and countersuing the government for 100 million
Q What was the most important lesson Cohn taught Trump
