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

Robert is joined again by Joelle Monique to continue to discuss Roy Cohn.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:02):
Welcome back. We're talking about Roy Cone. I don't know
owl's to lead it to this. I'm Robert Evans Podcast,
Bad People talk about Him. This is part two, Roy Cone,
He suck. My guest today is Joel Monique. Joel Hi. Yes,
I'm good. I'm eager to more learn more about Roy

(00:23):
Cone and the terribleness that he inflicted on our country. Yeah,
he is. He He inflicted nothing but pain. Um, 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

(00:44):
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.

(01:06):
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.

(01:32):
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

(01:53):
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,

(02:16):
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

(02:37):
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

(03:00):
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,

(03:21):
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

(03:43):
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

(04:07):
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

(04:28):
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

(04:49):
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

(05:09):
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

(05:31):
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

(05:55):
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

(06:18):
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.

(06:39):
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

(07:02):
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

(07:23):
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,

(07:46):
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

(08:10):
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?

(08:33):
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

(08:53):
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

(09:15):
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

(09:35):
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.

(09:56):
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

(10:17):
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

(10:39):
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

(11:01):
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

(11:24):
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

(11:47):
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,

(12:07):
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

(12:29):
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

(12:50):
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

(13:11):
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

(13:32):
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,

(13:55):
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

(14:18):
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

(14:40):
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

(15:02):
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

(15:22):
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

(15:44):
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

(16:05):
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

(16:26):
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.

(16:49):
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

(17:09):
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.

(17:32):
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

(17:52):
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.

(18:16):
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

(18:39):
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

(19:01):
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

(19:22):
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

(19:43):
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

(20:06):
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.

(20:28):
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

(20:48):
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

(21:11):
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

(21:31):
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,

(21:55):
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

(22:16):
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

(22:37):
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,

(22:58):
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

(23:19):
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

(23:40):
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,

(24:03):
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,

(24:26):
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

(24:47):
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

(25:08):
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

(25:30):
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.

(25:50):
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

(26:12):
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

(26:33):
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

(26:55):
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

(27:16):
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.

(27:41):
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

(28:05):
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

(28:27):
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.

(28:47):
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

(29:15):
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,

(29:36):
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

(29:56):
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.

(30:20):
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.

(30:43):
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

(31:05):
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

(31:26):
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

(31:46):
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

(32:07):
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,

(32:29):
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

(32:50):
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

(33:11):
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

(33:32):
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

(33:53):
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

(34:13):
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,

(34:38):
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

(35:00):
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

(35:20):
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

(35:41):
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,

(36:07):
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

(36:28):
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

(36:49):
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,

(37:12):
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

(37:35):
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

(37:58):
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

(38:20):
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

(38:41):
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,

(39:03):
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

(39:25):
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

(39:48):
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

(40:11):
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

(40:31):
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

(40:52):
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

(41:13):
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

(41:34):
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

(41:56):
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

(42:18):
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,

(42:39):
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

(43:00):
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

(43:22):
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?

(43:45):
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

(44:08):
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,

(44:30):
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.

(44:53):
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

(45:16):
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

(45:36):
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

(45:57):
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

(46:17):
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,

(46:38):
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

(47:00):
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

(47:21):
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

(47:42):
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

(48:05):
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

(48:26):
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

(48:48):
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,

(49:10):
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

(49:31):
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

(49:53):
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

(50:16):
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

(50:39):
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

(51:01):
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

(51:22):
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

(51:44):
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

(52:07):
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

(52:29):
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,

(52:50):
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,

(53:15):
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.

(53:36):
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,

(53:59):
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

(54:22):
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

(54:43):
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.

(55:03):
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

(55:23):
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

(55:47):
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

(56:10):
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.

(56:30):
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

(56:54):
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.

(57:14):
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.

(57:35):
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

(57:56):
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

(58:17):
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

(58:41):
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

(59:02):
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

(59:23):
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

(59:47):
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,

(01:00:10):
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.