became a personal matter because cohn at the time had a boy crush on a very good-looking army private named g. david shine. unbelievably he calls the secretary of the army and requests a promotion from private to general for his friend g. david shawn and posting in the waldorf astoria hotel. this is not a joke. the army pushed back and said never. cohn said i will wreck the army. that led to the army mccarthy hearings and that s rife with subtext, the good guy george well saying they have no case and pricks the mccarthy era and they engage mccarthy and cohn trying to pop the bubble and bring the heroes down. thank you for a great, great
implicitly defended him no matter what he wanted and is it the same thing that attracted donald trump over the years? joe mccarthy was kind of an empty vessel. he wasn t really the sharpest tool in the drawer and i think and i think he needed someone to manipulate and tell him what to say. the iconic footage of cohn is him whispering in the ear of mccarthy in the senate subcommittee and kind of leading him into these persecuting questionings of usually innocent witnesses. he was a demagogue whisperer and he liked to sort of infect empty vessels and trump was his late-in-life project, his demagogue in the making and he became the apprentice to roy co cohn. one thing that impressed me, and i have seen a lot and this was really good, i liked the
lives. and roy certainly did everything to hide it in any way. it s a different era today, of course, about people who are gay in this country. we have a gay fella running for president, married to another man. we live in a different time. back in the early 50s, here was ray cohn, who was day, leading an investigation into gays in the country and liberals like david wells doing gay-baiting. i never saw that brought out the way you did in the movie talking about fairies and stuff. they were doing the same anti-gay homophobic stuff the right wing would have done. yes, this was the army mccarthy hearings where the army and mccarthy were going after the army. it was a personal affair for cohn. he created this tv spectacle in the early 50s and it really
there s an extraordinary piece of footage in this film from the late 70s where he said donald is a meteor rising from new york city that is going to go on and touch parts of this country and every part of the world. almost nostradamus like he s predicting a trump presidency from the carter era. it s bizarre. he also attacked him as a gay entity that targeted gay men notoriously in the 50s with mccarthy. let s watch. because mccarthy, you think of him in terms of investigating communists but he and cohn also investigated homosexuals. in the 40s and 50s, being gay was such a terrible secret. and that was true for roy. it s hard for people today to imagine the damage keeping that secret did to people and their
mccarthy to his service as mob lawyer that makes for one hell of a story. cohn soared to national prominence as mccarthy s hand maiden, whispering in his ear in a conspiratorial fashion, advising him how to question witnesses before the congressional subcommittee. roy s tactics and approach via mccarthy make him one of the most controversial people in the country. i don t think you understood the question. the question is do you know this man, and i would assume the answer is yes or no. tell us if you know the man before you proceed. do you know this man or don t you? your statement about him has made it difficult for me joining me is filmmaker matt tyrnauer whose new movie where s my roy cohn examines the dark and compelling life of roy cohn. thank you so much for joining us. and here s the question. what attracted joe mccarthy to this guy roy cohn? he trusted him completely,