Matt Tynauer's documentary is a fairly thorough review of Roy Cohn's --a self-hating Jew and self-hating gay man -- strange and powerful career, from prosecuting the Rosenbergs to working for Joe McCarthy to defending John Gotti and Donald Trump (the documentary title comes from Trump's whine after Cohn's death from AIDS in 1986). Much of Trump's behavior is based on Cohn's mentoring: always deny that you are telling lies, always blame somebody else when things go wrong, never settle but if you have to then declare victory.
Tynauer's choices of interviewees is felicitous, especially journalist Ken Auletta, cohort Roger Stone,and Cohn's lover Adam Wallace, and the documentary is enlightening in a scary way for those who are unfamiliar with Cohn and his relationship with McCarthy and Trump. For those of us more familiar with Cohn it would have been nice to go deeper, especially into his many legal troubles and his eventual disbarment, as the clips of Cohn show an impressive ability to dodge questions about everything from his sexuality to his legal history. For those who would like more detail I recommend Nicholas Von Hoffman's Citizen Cohn, though it was written just after Cohn's death in 1986 and doesn't include a great deal about his relationship with Trump.
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