To Comprehend Trump, Read This [View all]

[Rhiannon12866]

Three books and two magazine articles shed a lot of light on the president's baffling behavior.

It's happening more and more: The phone rings and there's an old acquaintance on the line, often a mainstream Republican, asking, "What's wrong with Donald Trump?"

Instead of ranting in response, as I’d been doing for months, I'm now offering up a reading list. Here it is:

"Citizen Cohn," Nicholas Von Hoffman's biography of Roy Cohn.

"Don't Mess With Roy Cohn," a brilliant Ken Auletta piece in Esquire magazine written almost four decades ago.

"TrumpNation," an investigative biography by my Bloomberg View colleague Timothy L. O'Brien.

"The Art of the Deal," Trump's first book.

Jane Mayer's New Yorker article last year about the remorse felt today by Trump's ghostwriter, Tony Schwartz.

Cohn, the counsel to Senator Joseph McCarthy during the anti-Communist witch hunts of the early 1950s, was Trump's mentor until his death in 1986. After McCarthy fell from power, Cohn became a New York power broker, introducing Trump to politicians and helping him cut deals. Cohn was a shrewd, ruthless bully whose philosophy, Auletta wrote, amounted to this: "Everyone lies, smears, covers up, protects their friends. The rules of the game don't count as much as winning."

Sound familiar?

(Cohn was a liar to the end, dying of AIDS while publicly denying that he was gay.)

Trump adopted his role model's attack-first-and-never-apologize tactics, on contemptible display last week with his vile slur against television anchor Mika Brzezinski. It's easy to envision the embittered president raging late into the night about dishonorable enemies and feeble defenders, asking himself what Roy would do.

Much more: https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-07-02/to-comprehend-trump-read-this