President Donald Trump’s increasingly obvious age-related health decline, and his adamant refusal to engage with it or admit to it, has an ominous parallel, John Casey wrote for The Daily Beast on Wednesday.
This comes after the president fired off a tirade on his Truth Social platform, claiming The New York Times was “treasonous” for publishing a story about his health concerns.
These kinds of hard-nosed tactics were standard fare for Roy Cohn, the infamous mob lawyer who took Trump under his wing, Casey wrote — both in terms of how he lived, and how he died.
“Cohn … built his career on intimidation, political manipulation, and a scorched-earth approach to the law. His life stands as a stark example of how ruthlessness can win influence in the short term while corroding institutions — and ultimately consuming its practitioners,” wrote Casey. “Everyone knows the obvious parts of the Cohn playbook: attack first, sue always, apologize never. But one of Cohn’s deepest teachings wasn’t about politics. It was about the body. It was about hiding vulnerability at any cost.”
So when Cohn began dying of AIDS, he used those same tactics to hide it, until he no longer could.
“Even as Kaposi’s sarcoma lesions spread across his skin, Cohn caked makeup over his sores and gray pallor. He went on 60 Minutes insisting he had ‘liver cancer,’ a desperate attempt to maintain the illusion of control,” wrote Casey. “This strategy wasn’t privacy; it was all about power. In his worldview, illness meant weakness, and weakness meant forfeiting control. You didn’t admit it. You didn’t hint at it. And you certainly didn’t let journalists see it.”
Trump, in proclaiming his health is “perfect” and accusing journalists of treason for questioning it, is doing the same thing, argued Casey.
“Roy Cohn died insisting on a version of himself that was already collapsing. Even as his illness consumed him, he demanded to be seen as powerful and untouchable. Trump watched that performance up close. He learned that truth is optional, but the illusion must be airtight,” wrote Casey. “And when Trump doesn’t want you to see something, he overkills, overcompensates, and overreacts. That’s when you know something is very, very wrong.”
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