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Sep 28, 2026
Few figures have cast a longer — or darker — shadow over modern American political culture than Roy Cohn. Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Kai Bird, coauthor of American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer, talks to legal expert and frequent moderator Richard Salomon about his new biography of Roy Cohn, American Scoundrel: Roy Cohn’s Dark Journey from Joe McCarthy to Donald Trump.
From the 1950s to the 1980s, the many dramas of American political life had one common denominator: Roy Cohn. In his 20s, the infamous young prosecutor sent Julius and Ethel Rosenberg to the electric chair, and as the chief aide to Senator Joe McCarthy became the baby-faced symbol of ruthless communist-hunting. As legal fixer, celebrity, eventual mentor to Donald Trump, and the tragic villain of Tony Kushner’s Pulitzer Prize-winning play Angels in America following his death in 1986 from AIDS-related complications, Cohn left an indelible mark on American public life. Drawing on years of research led by co-author Susan Goldmark, Bird examines the ambition, contradictions, and relentless pursuit of power that defined Cohn’s life, as well as the enduring influence of his tactics on American politics and culture.
What can Cohn’s rise tell us about the America that he helped to shape? In a conversation with Salomon, hear Bird and Goldmark discuss the complicated legacy of a man whose reach extended far beyond his own era.
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