In the Church of MAGA, if Trump is the anointed son, then Roy Cohn is without question the Father.
Roy Cohn was a famous New York lawyer, who gained notoriety during the Red Scare of the 1950’s as a lead counsel during the McCarthy senate hearings. Despite being a closeted homosexual, Cohn helped McCarthy destroy the lives of many “Communist sympathizers”, which included targeted attacks on people in government with suspected homosexual tendencies. He moved on from this life-wrecking enterprise to be a highly successful lawyer for mafia figures as well as a host of celebs and NYC power brokers. His strong-arm, mob tactics and larger-than-life persona earned him a legal reputation as the ultimate, heartless hitman. “You knew when you were in Cohn’s presence that you were in the presence of pure evil,” said lawyer Victor A. Kovner.
Cohn’s strategy was deceptively simple:
Do whatever it takes to win.
Attack. Delay. Deflect. Deny. Distract. Lie.
By the early 1970’s, Cohn became a mentor and “best friend” to a young real estate developer named Donald John Trump.
In 1973, the U.S. Justice Department sued Trump for violating the Fair Housing Act and discriminating against African American tenants. The federal government had gathered a mountain of damning evidence against the 27-year old tycoon and it appeared to be a pretty open and shut case. Deeply concerned, Trump called upon his new friend for legal advice. Cohn devised a trademark strategy for him: Countersue the US government for 100 million dollars. The double-down bluff paid off. The case eventually settled out of court– with no admission of guilt required of Trump. The lying and deflection worked like a charm, Trump got to brag about “defeating the corrupt system” and continue to brand himself as a winner.
According to Cohn, in his early years Trump would call his mentor 15-20 times a day, for advice on everything. With a shared penchant for grandstanding and hedonism, the power duo were inseparable until the mid 80’s, until it was revealed that Cohn was dying of AIDS.
The Cohn Method served Trump well for half a century, making him impervious to hundreds of lawsuits in the cutthroat world of casinos and urban real estate development. No one who saw the cheeky playboy on 80’s morning talk shows, could’ve possibly imagined that this “playbook for psychopaths” would gift Trump with a secure firewall shield, all the way to the White House and beyond.
Attack. Delay. Deflect. Deny. Distract. Lie.
As Trump now faces four indictments in his post-presidency, the Cohn playbook has perhaps never been more obvious or more diligently relied upon.
One consistent counterattack of Trump has been to label the nation, that he claims to be so patriotic about, a horror show.
Hyperbole and insults are nothing new in American politics, but it doesn’t take a political scientist to see that this is different. His accusers aren’t just wrong or misguided, they are corrupt and broken at their very core. And not only so, the entire nation that employs them is “third world”.
It’s an outrageous and patently immoral strategy. But it’s been repeatedly tested by a man much smarter than DJT. And damned if it doesn’t work.
Somewhere from the bowels of a deep ring in Dante’s inferno, Cohn is smiling up at his protégé.
The nation doesn’t need to move back in a better direction.
No.
“Everything” about the country is ruined, Trump claims, a trope he used in the 2016 presidential election and one which he has revived with even more intensity and hostility in 2023–as each indictment has unceremoniously been handed down to him.
In the fields of this cult of personality, followers have harnessed themselves to Trump’s clumsy doomsday yolk and seem more than happy to do all the Don’s legwork for him. But the distracting diatribe has a much more utilitarian purpose in the billionaire’s game— he’s trying to save his own neck.
In his speeches over the past year, Trump has improvised on the Cohn strategy by marrying it with a powerful, emotional appeal tool of the Evangelical Church — the altar call.
The altar call, or the penitent form as it was originally called, is the point at the end of the pastor’s sermon where the musicians come on stage and start playing in the background while the pastor compels sinners to the altar for deeper consecration. It’s a technique that began with evangelist William Booth in the 19th century, and has become such an ingrained part of Protestant culture, that when Trump co-opts it now in a political rally, the faithful are instantly moist with ardor.
With every head bowed and every eye closed, and the Qanon anthem playing ever so gently in the background, Trump intones: The America that we once knew is now dirty, vermin-infested, and overcrowded. The entire system is a shambles after a mere two and half years without me at the helm. Which is why, nothing they are telling you about my crimes can be trusted.
The once-great land of the brave is now nothing more than a rogue, ghetto state — a “banana republic”, Trump is proclaiming at rallies and on social media. Trump waxes earnest at these pro-wrestling-meets-tent-revival meetings and describes the horrors of a world without him at the center:
Democratic elections are 100% rigged, the Deep State controls everything, the nation is overrun with terrorists and violent illegal immigrants, political opponents are “human scum”, federal law enforcement is nothing more than a weaponized arm of Leftists and globalists and banana republic communists are trying to take over.
The specific use of the term “banana republic” is calculated in every respect.
For starters, it’s an obvious dog whistle to White Supremacist and Identitarian groups, who have long decried the corrosive, third world influence of a growing immigrant population. “Banana republic” helps MAGA bring into focus that all established and trusted institutions, be they political, legal, law enforcement, military, academic or scientific, have degraded beyond repair and been “weaponized” against Trump.
Shocker: No one told Trump that the actual definition of ‘banana republic’ doesn’t serve any real Republican agenda. But that’s beside the point.
The term dates back to the early 20th century and O. Henry’s short story “The Admiral”. In Henry’s story, the term described a politically unstable country run by a crackpot dictator and the controlling corporate interests of its chief export — bananas.
The great irony about the term, is that American corporations of the early 20th century, like United Fruit Company/Chiquita, literally invented “banana republics” by their exploitation of our smaller third world neighbors in places like Honduras and Costa Rica. Under these exploited republics, millionaires and billionaires got richer on the backs of the poor working class and created a society in which the business interests of dictators and oligarchs controlled everything.
Again the fact that this historical, objective definition doesn’t resemble anything about Trump’s political opponents, is completely irrelevant. What matters now is following the tested Playbook.
Following Trump’s loss in 2020, the term banana republic saw a revival within the MAGA cult, but especially after the August 2022 FBI raid on Mar-a-Lago.
Trump led the charge on his own social media platform Truth Social:
“Nothing like this has ever happened to a President of the United States before. Such an assault could only take place in broken, Third-World Countries. Sadly, America has now become one of those Countries, corrupt at a level not seen before.”
Republican congressman Thomas Massie picked up the meme, in what became a shrill, Republican feedback loop:
“In third world countries and banana republics they prosecute the former presidents/leaders and their staff. Right now, we look beneath them. We are in a race to the bottom.”
Florida governor Rhonda Sanctus also screeched,
“The raid of MAL is another escalation in the weaponization of federal agencies against the Regime’s political opponents, while people like Hunter Biden get treated with kid gloves. Now the Regime is getting another 87k IRS agents to wield against its adversaries? Banana Republic.”
Also, South Miami Senior High’s own Senator Marco Rubio via Twitter:
“What comes around goes around. And here’s what’s gonna happen now — one day they won’t be in power. And whoever is in power, there’s gonna be a lot of pressure on them to do it back to the other side. And now we do become a banana republic.”
The ridiculous trope has officially stuck.
Right Wing outlets have since picked it up and social media content creators have redoubled their efforts to squeeze the idea in, any time the indictments are discussed. It’s a self-replicating political bot, constantly mutating and running interference in the background for a man who is in very serious trouble.
A Cohn-style chess move of dizzying proportions
In the most daring public maneuver I have ever seen Trump make, in June 2023 he told a MAGA congregation that, just like Jesus of Nazareth, he was being INDICTED FOR THEM.
“I’m being indicted for you,” the former president informed the South Dakota faithful. “That’s not part of the job description,” he added, “but I’m being indicted for you.”
Ah, the suffering servant of Isaiah 53. A man of sorrows, acquainted with grief.
I half expected the religious audience in attendance to rush the stage, with stones in their hands. Surely, they weren’t going to sit there and let a vulgar, political charlatan completely whore the idea of vicarious redemption in their own house! Surely this appalling presumption and narcissism would be met with small pause in the MAGA congregation. Surely no one would think a detailed, thorough federal indictment, with reems of physical evidence including an audio recording admitting to the crime and former associates and employees turning evidence against him, is the result of THEIR sins. No one could possibly think Trump’s legal woes were all the result of a third world government gone amok, taking out their political foes for sport. Surely no one who really lives here believes the US is a banana republic.
But I was wrong.
And Father Cohn was right.
.
