I guess someone at the beach must have called Mrs Alito the c-word too. The NY Times reports:
Last summer, two years after an upside-down American flag was flown outside the Virginia home of Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr., another provocative symbol was displayed at his vacation house in New Jersey, according to interviews and photographs.
This time, it was the “Appeal to Heaven” flag, which, like the inverted U.S. flag, was carried by rioters at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. Also known as the Pine Tree flag, it dates back to the Revolutionary War, but largely fell into obscurity until recent years and is now a symbol of support for former President Donald J. Trump, for a religious strand of the “Stop the Steal” campaign and for a push to remake American government in Christian terms.
Three photographs obtained by The New York Times, along with accounts from a half-dozen neighbors and passers-by, show that the Appeal to Heaven flag was aloft at the Alito home on Long Beach Island in July and September of 2023. A Google street view image from late August also shows the flag.
The photographs, each taken independently, are from four different dates. It is not clear whether the flag was displayed continuously during those months or how long it was flown overall.
Justice Alito declined to respond to questions about the beach house flag, including what it was intended to convey and how it comported with his obligations as a justice. The court also declined to respond.
What is the “Appeal to Heave” flag? It’s a revolutionary war flag that has been appropriated by the radical right in recent years:
In the 2010s, the flag became appropriated as a religious and political symbol by some conservative, nationalist, and Christian nationalist activists within the United States…In 2021, some Trump supporters carried the flag during the January 6 United States Capitol attack.
By the way, in 2023, Mike Johnson, newly elected Speaker of the United States House of Representatives, hung the flag outside his Congressional office.
No more rainbow colors, damn it! Red, white and blue ONLY for Freedom Summer.
By the way, Florida Freedom extends to your dietary choices as well.
So far this year, lawmakers in Florida and Alabama have made it a criminal act to manufacture and sell lab-grown meat in their states. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) went first, signing a bill earlier this month and warning cellular agriculture companies: “Take your fake lab-grown meat elsewhere … we’re not doing that in the state of Florida.”
It isn’t actually available but damn it, red states are banning it anyway. Apparently, the mere idea of saving the planet and making it possible to not have to actually kill animals for animal protein is oppressive.
What’s interesting to me is how and why the Biden Campaign is waging the fight this time and what it says about their strategy.
Keep Trump on the Defensive and in the News
Since officially kicking off the campaign earlier this year, the Biden Campaign has aggressively pursued every Trump misstatement and misdeed. Their BidenHQ account tweets day and night to lift up everything Trump does — from falling asleep in court to suggesting he wants to repeal the Affordable Care Act.
It is in their strategic interest to focus the electorate on Trump and remind them who he is and what kind of President he was. This is also why Biden is so eager to debate Trump. This election is currently functioning as a referendum on Biden, and they very much need it to become a choice between two candidates.
I have made this point many times in this newsletter, but most voters never see or think about Trump. The only way to learn about the news is to actively seek it out, so it’s in the Biden Campaign’s interest to pour gasoline on the controversies that break out of the political news bubble and go viral on social media.
People Know Less than You Think
It feels like Trump has been in our lives for seven millennia and that everyone knows everything there is to know about him, but some recent polling from Blueprint Research shows that’s not actually the case. As Russell Berman wrote in The Atlantic:
In polling conducted by Blueprint, a Democratic data firm, fewer than half of registered voters under 30 said they had heard some of Trump’s most incendiary quotes, such as when he said there were “very fine people on both sides” demonstrating in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017, or when he told members of the Proud Boys, the far-right militia group, to “stand back and stand by” during a 2020 debate. Just 42 percent of respondents were aware that, during his 2016 campaign, Trump called for “a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States.”
There is a clear upside in highlighting Trump’s comments and contextualizing them against his other misdeeds and cruel words. This is particularly important for Biden who decided to run for President specifically because of what happened in Charlottesville.
Fitting It into the Broader Narrative
Democrats are destined to repeat the mistakes of 2016 and swing at every pitch if we don’t stitch together a broader narrative about Trump. On Monday, he’s a moron; on Tuesday, a criminal; on Wednesday, a feeble old man; and on Thursday, he’s a dangerously powerful dictator. The way Biden responded to the Trump video was a fascinating window into what he views as the best attack against Trump — “He only cares about holding on to power. I care about you.”
He then references this interesting piece:
TRUMP FOREVER? My new @BW piece on a hidden fear strategists see cropping up among swing voters – that if Trump is reelected, he'll refuse to leave (gift link): https://t.co/vss9tPIgY4
— Joshua Green (JoshuaGreen.bsky.social on 🟦) (@JoshuaGreen) May 21, 2024
A short excerpt follows. (You can use the gift link by clicking on that tweet above to read the whole thing and it’s worth it.)
Seiji Carpenter, vice president at David Binder Research, noticed this fear in early April while conducting focus groups of people who had voted for Biden in 2020 but became disillusioned and were considering switching sides. “We were talking to Latino men and Asian American-Pacific Islander women in battleground states,” Carpenter recalls, “and they went straight to the issue of, what if Trump won’t give up power?”
Carpenter has a decade of experience running focus groups for Democrats, but he’d never encountered this fear in earlier cycles. “It’s not something we’d been testing for,” he says. “But what we’ve seen so far indicates a real concern there.”
Republican strategists have encountered the same thing. “It’s showing up in our focus groups,” says Sarah Longwell, the chief executive officer of Longwell Partners and publisher of the conservative website the Bulwark. “It happened just the other day.”Longwell shared a video of a group of undecided swing-state voters who had been asked if they were worried that Trump might violate the constitutional amendment limiting him to one more term if he wins in November.
“Does anybody think he may not abide by the 22nd Amendment of the Constitution and leave office after the 2028 election? Anyone worried about that?” the moderator asked.In response, seven of the eight participants raised a hand. A Pennsylvania man worried that Trump might go further and try to institute a dynasty. “I wouldn’t put it past him, now that he owns the RNC,” the man said, “to say, ‘Don Jr. is going to do the next term, and he’ll get two. And then Barron will get two.’ And we’ll just have some fake monarchy.”
As far-fetched as it may sound, the prospect of Trump overriding or simply ignoring the constitutional provision that limits a president to serving two terms seems to be pushing some undecided voters toward Biden, despite significant reservations about the incumbent’s age, turmoil in the Middle East and high inflation. Now strategists in both parties are probing to see how widely this sentiment has spread, particularly among the undecided voters likely to sway the election.
He’s said repeatedly that he thinks he should have more than two terms. Just last weekend at the NRA convention he talked about it again:
“You know, FDR 16 years — almost 16 years — he was four terms. I don’t know, are we going to be considered three-term? Or two-term?”
“Three!” shouted some convention attendees,
Green notes:
The fear that Trump might do something unprecedented to undermine democracy is a new variable in an otherwise familiar race between two unpopular candidates who’ve faced off before. Several political professionals who talk to voters for a living say they’ve detected a fundamental shift in the way people view Trump’s motivations and intentions as compared with other politicians.
“Typically, when we raise concerns about a candidate’s agenda, people are skeptical and want to do their own research first or think it’s an attack,” says Carpenter, the focus group director. “With Trump, that’s not true. Voters believe that he would try to remove term limits, and they’re nervous about what’s possible.”
This would explain why the Biden campaign is hitting the “Trump only cares about power” message. It rings true.
Nothing he said was untrue. It’s all factual. But the Republicans are so deep into the cult of Donald Trump that they now panic at the mere idea of someone saying them on the record.
Are there any limits to what they’ll do for him now?
McGovern: I was admonished for stating that the former president is on trial in a court of law. It's the truth. Is it unparliamentary to state a fact? pic.twitter.com/31dClGDzsn
It’s only noon but I’m already drinking. I think I’ll just keep going. Maybe until November:
Nearly three in five Americans wrongly believe the US is in an economic recession, and the majority blame the Biden administration, according to a Harris poll conducted exclusively for the Guardian. The survey found persistent pessimism about the economy as election day draws closer.
The poll highlighted many misconceptions people have about the economy, including:
-55% believe the economy is shrinking, and 56% think the US is experiencing a recession, though the broadest measure of the economy, gross domestic product (GDP), has been growing.
-49% believe the S&P 500 stock market index is down for the year, though the index went up about 24% in 2023 and is up more than 12% this year.
-49% believe that unemployment is at a 50-year high, though the unemployment rate has been under 4%, a near 50-year low.
Many Americans put the blame on Biden for the state of the economy, with 58% of those polled saying the economy is worsening due to mismanagement from the presidential administration.
72% say that inflation is increasing but it’s actually fallen sharply and is now between 3 and 4% a year which is normal. They actually want deflation which would signal something very bad.
Despite previously suggesting the Fed could start lowering rates this year, Fed officials have recently indicated interest rates will remain elevated in the near future. While inflation has eased considerably since its peak in 2022, officials continue to say inflation remains high because it remains above the Fed’s target of 2% a year.
After a tumultuous ride of inflation and high interest rates, voters are uncertain about what’s next. Consumer confidence fell to a six-month low in May.
So even though economic data, like GDP, implies strength in the economy, there’s a stubborn gap between the reality represented in that data – what economists use to gauge the economy’s health – and the emotional reality that underlies how Americans feel about the economy. In the poll, 55% think the economy is only getting worse.
Some have called the phenomenon a “vibecession”, a term first coined by the economics writer Kyla Scanlon to describe the widespread pessimism about the economy that defies statistics that show the economy is actually doing OK.
People said they didn’t believe that the economy is improving although many polls show that when asked about their own finances they say they are doing well. It’s just that everyone else is suffering. I wonder where they got that idea?
And then there’s this:
Something both Republicans and Democrats agree on: they don’t know who to trust when it comes to learning about the economy. In both September and May, a majority of respondents –more than 60% – indicated skepticism over economic news.
The economy continues to present a major challenge to Joe Biden in his re-election bid. Though he has tried to tout “Bidenomics”, or his domestic economy record, including his $1.2tn bipartisan infrastructure bill from 2022, 70% of Republicans and 39% of Democrats seem to think he’s making the economy worse.
40% of Democrats have no idea what they’re talking about either. Oy vey…
There’s a tiny glimmer of good news though:
Republican voters were slightly more optimistic about the lasting impacts of “Bidenomics” than they were in the September Harris poll. Four in 10 Republicans, an 11 percentage-point increase from September, indicated they believe Bidenomics will have a positive lasting impact, while 81% of Democrats said the same. And three-quarters of everyone polled said they support at least one of the key pillars of Bidenomics, which include investments in infrastructure, hi-tech electronics manufacturing, clean-energy facilities and more union jobs.
But don’t get too excited:
“What Americans are saying in this data is: ‘Economists may say things are getting better, but we’re not feeling it where I live,’” said John Gerzema, CEO of the Harris Poll. “Unwinding four years of uncertainty takes time. Leaders have to understand this and bring the public along.”
Actually:
Has anyone talked to all the people who have insisted for years that if only Democrats would adopt more populist economic policies once all the jobs and goods delivered prosperity, voters would surge to the party. Did they not know about vibes???
Frankly, I understand the bad vibes but I don’t think it has anything to do with the economy. In 2020 there was great hope that Biden would win and that this MAGA freakshow would end and we’d go “back to normal.” But Trump refused to go away there has been no accountability for his criminal behavior. His cult following has been ginned up into a frenzy of hate and anger and everyone else is in despair or has checked out for their own sense of well being and the result is that there is an ugly, ugly mood in this country caused by Donald Trump. I think the only vocabulary many people have to express their dissatisfaction is to gripe about the economy, Americans’ common political language.
it's largely forgotten now, but 4 years ago today the Trump White House was heavily hinting that they planned to arrest Obama to distract from their egregious mishandling of covid.
Trump is now a big proponent of total presidential immunity (for him) 👇 https://t.co/1f07Wtl1Xb
On the last day of testimony in Trump’s NY hush money case, a dozen or so grasping Trump sycophants dressed in the official elite MAGA uniforms of a red tie and blue suit (the troops wear the red hats) all gathered in the Manhattan court house to show their solidarity with their Dear Leader. The group included the Texas Lieutenant Governor of Texas Dan Patrick who weirdly excoriated “the ruling class” of which he and Donald Trump are very much members. SNL alum Joe Piscopo showed up as did former White House physician and current oddball congressman Ronny Jackson. Donald Trump Jr was there for the first time as well, apparently inspired to attend as a MAGA follower rather than a family member in support of his father. It’s become a daily self-abnegation ritual for those yearning to be on the inside of Trumpworld and that apparently includes his own son.
If it weren’t for the boring blue suits and red ties, the daily tableau would be more reminiscent of a criminal gang than a political party. The groveling for the attention and approbation of “the Boss”, the willingness to do absolutely anything for him (under threat of ex-communication or worse), the macho posturing and preening for each other and the public all looks like mobbed up behavior. In fact, one member of the group was an ex-con named Chuck Zito, founder of the New York Nomads chapter of the Hell’s Angels, which was linked to the Gambino mafia crime family. He obviously felt quite at home. He showed up two days in a row.
Trump himself has often drawn comparisons of himself to mob bosses, proudly declaring that he’s been indicted more than the “the late, great Alphonse Capone” all over the campaign trail. He often makes a point at his rallies that Capone “was seriously tough” as if to say he’s even tougher. Tim O’Brien, one of his biographers, has said that Trump openly admires figures such as as New York boss John Gotti and he’s actually using some of his tactics in his court cases:
The thing he respected about Gotti was that he … sat there in court and he looked at the jurors and he looked at the judge with a big F-U on his face.
He’s selling that mug shot F-U on t-shirts which the MAGA faithful have turned into their version of the Che Guevara shirt from the 1960s.
Underlying all this is something serious, however. The threats to judges, prosecutors, witnesses and jurors is very real and the courts where Trump is being tried are all having to put in place protections, including a gag order, to keep the former president from threatening all those people. He was sanctioned 10 times for violating that in the NY case until he came up with the novel tactic of having his red-tied capos do the threatening for him. He even got the Speaker of the House to go before the cameras and personally put the judge’s daughter in the cross hairs.
Tuesday marked the end of the presentation of evidence in the Trump hush money trial. All that’s left is the summations, scheduled for next Tuesday and then the deliberations will begin. Trump had boasted repeatedly that he was going to testify but of course he didn’t. He hasn’t explained why just yet but I’m sure he’ll come up with an absurd excuse eventually. In reality even he knew it would have been a terrible idea because it would have required him to studiously prepare and he can’t do that. So he did the next best thing.
Last week he no doubt saw a lawyer by the name of Robert Costello testify before a hastily called hearing before the House Sub-committee on the “Weaponization of the Federal Government” to slam Michael Cohen who was in the midst of a days long examination in Trump’s trial. He claimed that he was Cohen’s attorney for two months and that “virtually every statement he made about me was another lie.”
At the time, most people didn’t believe Costello would be called by the defense because the lawyers knew he would be a terrible witness but after his bravura performance, it’s fair to guess that Trump pushed them to call him. It would be the next best thing to having Trump on the stand himself. Unfortunately for Trump, just like the goombahs in the red-ties, Costello was preening for the boss and Trump couldn’t tell the difference. As with his good friend Giuliani, he’s just an out of his depth tough guy way past his sell-by date. His performance on the stand this week was a disaster.
He insulted the judge and caused a scene, almost getting cited for contempt. He was rude to the prosecutor, ordering her to speak into the microphone as if he was in charge of the court room. The judge even cleared the courtroom briefly to admonish him.
Trump probably thought he did great though, really showed them who was boss but the consensus is that he did very serious damage to the defense with his testimony. Trump’s lawyers had done a pretty good job of dirtying up prosecution witness Michael Cohen over the course of a grueling cross- examination and the prosecution had rested on a bit of a sour note. And then along came Costello to turn the whole thing upside down by making Cohen seem like a nice honest fellow by comparison.
Emails between Costello and Cohen were read aloud to leave the indelible memory in the minds of the jurors that Trump and Giuliani were conspiring with Costello to make sure Cohen didn’t cooperate with the government. There is even an email from Costello to Cohen saying, “Rudy said this communication channel must be maintained…sleep well tonight, you have friends in high places,” and one from Costello to his law partner saying, “Our issue is to get Cohen on the right page without giving the appearance that we are following instructions from Giuliani or the President,” (which they clearly were.) When Cohen didn’t sign on with him right away he told his law partner Cohen was “slow-playing us and the President…What should I say to this asshole? He’s playing with the most powerful man on the planet.” Didn’t he know who he was messing with?
Cohen had testified that he never retained Costello because he didn’t trust him. It turns out he was right. By the end of the cross examination, the prosecution had turned the defense argument that Cohen was just seeking revenge against Trump because he didn’t get a job in the White House to Costello seeking revenge against Cohen for refusing to hire him to defend him and make him valuable to Donald Trump.
Trump the mob boss has always been careful not to put anything in writing and to speak in code to underlings so he never gets caught giving direct orders. Unfortunately, his soldiers aren’t quite as careful. This one got him in real trouble by making it very clear that Donald Trump had leaned on Michael Cohen to keep his mouth shut. Why would an innocent man do such a thing?
Is it possible that the same affinity for conspiracy theories on the right (yes, the left has its own) accompanies the gullibility that makes conservatives fall for grifts?
Charlie Kirk is selling Blackout Coffee, you know, for when “The world is in flames, and Bidenomics is a complete and total disaster,” and the liberal zombie apocalypse comes to turn you gay. There are some brands that cater to lefty sensibilities, writes Ali Breland at The Atlantic. But it’s the expansion of niche products for the conservative paranoid that has caught his attention:
The ads reflect the new paradigm of advertising. In previous decades, ads had to appeal to whole segments of the population—and products were made with that in mind. That some readers of Vanity Fair might want a Givenchy handbag, and some readers of Sports Illustrated might want Callaway golf clubs, was as targeted as ads could get. Now the country has fractured into partisan subgroups, and companies have access to reams of analytics that enable them to target ever more precise demographics. Through shows like Kirk’s, brands such as Blackout Coffee and Patriot Mobile can reach their relatively niche audiences more easily than ever. (Blackout Coffee and Patriot Mobile did not respond to my requests for comment.)
But something else is happening too. Kirk and the rest of the conservative-podcast ecosystem aren’t just selling wares. The ads, with some exceptions, are not like ads for beer or pickup trucks that detract from the action while one watches, say, a football game. Rather, conservative ads are constitutive. They enhance and reinforce the arguments that Kirk and others are already making on their podcasts—that Black people are prone to crime, whiteness is getting excised, abortion is murder, and the United States is unstable and on the verge of collapse. The commercial breaks are the final screws needed to construct a self-contained conservative chamber. Kirk has ensconced himself in a world in which he’ll likely never face external pressures to self-moderate in the way that, say, Rush Limbaugh occasionally did when he went too far beyond the tastes of mainstream advertisers.
I’m not sure the Spocko Method would work on these guys. The advertisers are marketing to the crazies.
When you’re listening to Kirk talk about Blackout Coffee, you can also look down and see the steam coming off your own cup of Blackout Coffee, and relax while its caffeine helps you “be awake not woke.” You can open a new browser tab and check in on your portfolio, whose wealth managers are endorsed by Kirk, and then look at the price of gold and think about your own supply procured from a company that Kirk himself vetted “from top to bottom.” You can even stop listening to Kirk, go out to your backyard, and make a call, knowing that you’re doing so as a freedom-loving conservative with your Patriot Mobile phone plan.
It’s a world as self-contained as a megachurch or a Christian home-school cooperative.
“Rest assured knowing that you’re ready for whatever the globalists throw at us next,” Kirk said at the end of one ad for medical-emergency kits.
The fringe left has it’s share of hucksters, I know too well. But this grifting comes from the top down and become accepted as part of our culture.
Update: Fresh Grift! Right here!
“This sucker is metal, folks.”
Send the Trump campaign $100 or more, and you’ll get a worthless “Trump black card.”
One of MSNBC’s commentators remarked Tuesday on the “thugocracy” on display at Donald Trump’s criminal trial. A parade of characters has pilgrimaged to Lower Manhattan to display their fealty to Boss Trump. On the day his defense rested, they included Chuck Zito, former convict and former leader of the New York chapter of the Hells Angels motorcycle gang. Trump likes his “heavies.”
The Hells Angels leader is a very large man wearing a very flamboyant suit with a big, dyed-black pompadour, and huge, gaudy jewelry on very large hands. And he’s sitting next to Boris Epshteyn, who kind of looks like his body double.
And there’s Alan Dershowitz, and there’s other recognizable people. And there’s members of Congress and well-known lawyers. And everybody seems sort of, there is a sort of performative aspect to the way they’re behaving in court. It is very noticeable for those of us who are there observing as journalists. I don’t know if they’re catching the jury’s attention so much. It’s a little, I mean, it’s not a Star Wars bar scene, but it’s a little bit of a cast of characters.
But it was Texas Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick who fronted Tuesday’s red tie brigade formation outside the courthouse. Patrick has been mentioned as a potential attorney general pick in a second Trump administration. However, he could not stick the landing on his “Banana Republic/if it can happen to Trump, it can happen to you” lecture about the ruling class coming down on poor Donald Trump:
Patrick: What happens when the courts come after you because you said something that the ruling class didn’t like? That’s what these other countries are all about. They shut down the ruling class. They want to be sure that anyone who speaks up against ruling class disappears
Reporter. Isn’t the former president a member of the ruling class?
Define irony — a bunch of idiots in matching blue suits and red ties many of whom traveled to Lower Manhattan to stand around idly during work hours on a workday lecturing working journalists about their opposition to the ruling class.
Patrick: What happens when the courts come after you because you said something that the ruling class didn’t like? That’s what these other countries are all about. They shut down the ruling class. They want to be sure that anyone who speaks up against ruling class disappears… pic.twitter.com/YGYXUlr6Q5
Reinforcing the thugocracy theme over the last two days was Robert Costello, Rudy Giuliani’s lawyer and one of only two defense witnesses. Former Trump “fixer,” Michael Cohen (who knows something about being a thug), testified previously that he didn’t trust Costello. Described by Fox News’ Jonathan Turley as a “killshot witness,” Costello’s testimony on Monday did not go as Team Trump planned:
The judge promptly lost his patience with Mr. Costello, a prosecutor turned defense lawyer and a fixture in New York’s legal world. When Mr. Costello scoffed at one of the judge’s rulings — “jeez,” he said, before mumbling a retraction — the judge grew irate.
Excusing the jury, the judge, Juan M. Merchan, lectured Mr. Costello: “If you don’t like my ruling, you don’t say ‘jeez,’ and you don’t say ‘strike it,’ because I’m the only one who can strike testimony in court,” he said, adding, “Are you staring me down?”
He ordered the courtroom cleared, briefly ejecting reporters and other onlookers, while allowing Mr. Trump’s supporters to remain. When those told to leave did so, according to a transcript, he told Mr. Costello that his conduct was “contemptuous” and said, “If you try to stare me down one more time I will remove you from the stand,” adding, to the defense lawyers, “I will strike his testimony, do you hear me?”
Several litigators surveyed by CNN and MSNBC said in all their years they’d never seen a judge order a courtroom cleared. Cross-examination did not go any better on Tuesday. The state’s attorney dismantled Costello’s testimony by reading back his own emails. As Digby put it:
Calling Giuliani’s lawyer Robert Costello to the stand would be legal malpractice if it weren’t for the fact that it was probably because Trump demanded it. The cross examination today was just brutal. Basically the prosecutors just read all of Costello’s emails to Cohen in which he was clearly trying to keep him from turning on Trump when he very briefly became the “back channel” between Rudy Giuliani (Trump) and Cohen. The whole thing sounbds like nothing short of an episode of the Sopranos.
The defense rested without calling Trump. The accused, who for months complained that he’d been muzzled and declared his eagerness to testify in his own defense, was a no-show.
It’s important to note the kind of people with which Trump surrounds himself, and who flock to his presence like moths to a flame. As commentators have noted and prosecutors may in their summation, Trump chose these unsavory characters, not prosecutors. And the behaviors he models are spreading through the cult of personality that once was the Republican Party.
As experienced litigators said of Judge Merchan’s clearing the courtroom, I’ve attended Democratic meetings for decades and have never seen anything like this catfight below. (Yes, I know.)
💯% – the GOP has been infiltrated by Democrats – from the bottom to the top! The only way to save the party is if more America First/Trump Republicans become PCs! https://t.co/JIb5BngNQb
I can’t wait for the new movie about Trump and Roy Cohn. Trump has threatened to sue but nobody seems too exercised about that. One of the investors, Dan Snyder owner of the Washington Commanders (formerly the Redskins), has been gnashing his teeth about it, although he doesn’t appear to have any say in the final cut. It’s controversial to say the least.
Anyway, this sounds really interesting. It stars Jeremy Strong, who played Kendall Roy in Succession, as Cohn. Perfect. Here’s a little bit of the review in The Hollywood Reporter:
Beyond the specific portrait of the man identified by his vanity plates as DJT (Sebastian Stan) and the barracuda who took him under his wing, Roy Cohn (Jeremy Strong), the movie takes a broader view of the corruption of the American soul.
It stretches from the crooked end of the Nixon years, a boon for sourness and cynicism, through the Reagan presidency and the ascendancy of corporate greed. That time span consecrated the supremacy of the “winner” and the contemptuous mockery of the “loser,” one of the most obnoxious commonplace denigrations in American life. The chief tenet Trump learns from Cohn takes the distinction one step further, asserting that the world is divided into killers and losers.
Sherman’s script zooms in on Trump when he’s a lieutenant in the employ of his real estate baron father, Fred Trump (Martin Donovan, scary), collecting rent from tenants who obviously loathe the landlord and his policies. The family business is under attack in a civil rights suit alleging violations of the Fair Housing Act, stemming from Trump Sr.’s discriminatory policies against Black prospective tenants. “How can I be racist when I have a Black driver?” bellows Fred.
Donald is eager to get out from under the old man’s shadow. The opening sequence shows him striding through the heart of Manhattan, a less graceful version of Tony Manero in Saturday Night Fever, at a time of rising crime and fiscal disaster, when the town’s reputation had gone from “Fun City” to “Fear City.” His eyes are fixed on the crumbling Commodore Hotel by Grand Central Station, the site of his first luxury development.
Cohn:
The lawyer who proudly sent the Rosenbergs to the electric chair and was a key force in the McCarthy witch hunts is a great role for Strong. He makes the character suitably icy, a fast talker with a withering stare and an almost inhuman intensity. The actor has fun with the hypocrisy of an unapologetic dirty trickster who claims unwavering fidelity to “truth, justice and the American way.” Sherman makes sure we see how the entire Trump playbook was forged out of their alliance.
It’s somewhat predictable that when Cohn early on explains his three cardinal rules, Trump will later claim credit for them as his own credo: 1. Attack. Attack. Attack. 2. Admit nothing. Deny everything. 3. Claim victory and never admit defeat.
While there are faint glimmers of a moral conscience in some of Stan’s early scenes, such concerns are quickly swept aside once Donald starts seeing the results Cohn gets with bullying chicanery. His gaze hardens, along with his lacquered hair, as he begins to construct a persona based on Cohn’s teachings.
It goes into the marriage with Ivana, (which Cohn was against.) There is apparently a rape scene, which was on the record and Trump is reportedly livid about it. Sorry dude — she testified to it in your divorce.
It might be considered a cheap shot to show Trump undergoing liposuction and a hair transplant in queasy detail at a grave moment for someone close to him. But that kind of disconnect from anyone else’s suffering is a key part of the portrait. What Abassi’s film reveals most of all is the extent to which the toxicity that’s now an inescapable part of our contemporary reality was shaped by the unholy alliance between two men half a century ago.
