Roy Cohn Still Alive

Suppose that Roy Cohn didn't became HIV positive and subsequently die of AIDS in the 1980s, instead remaining alive to the present. Would Cohn's continued survival (assuming he still remains mentally active and capable) have any larger repercussions on American society, especially in his capacity as legal advisor to Donald Trump?
 

mottajack

Banned
Hell, YES.

You do know that the Atwater- Roger Stone - Manafford mafia are all "baby Cohn" ? That Cohn and Trump were best friends in the world in the New york of the early 80's ? If Cohn was alive, well, he would be DELIGHTED to see Trump president. It would be the crowning achievement of his very own machinations, and one hell of a revenge for... McCarthy he served in the early 50's.

Dear God. Roy Cohn, happiest man in the world.

Roger Stone already did an immense amount of damage IOTL; a living Roy Cohn would wreck America democracy even further.

A pretty nightmarish TL, for sure.
 
Hell, YES.

You do know that the Atwater- Roger Stone - Manafford mafia are all "baby Cohn" ? That Cohn and Trump were best friends in the world in the New york of the early 80's ? If Cohn was alive, well, he would be DELIGHTED to see Trump president. It would be the crowning achievement of his very own machinations, and one hell of a revenge for... McCarthy he served in the early 50's.

Dear God. Roy Cohn, happiest man in the world.

Roger Stone already did an immense amount of damage IOTL; a living Roy Cohn would wreck America democracy even further.

A pretty nightmarish TL, for sure.

Yeah, but then again, he could become arrested sooner or if Trump were to sell him out, Cohn would rat him out.
 
jean Marie Le Pen is 92, too, and as evil as ever. Old age seemingly never affect evil people.

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mottajack

Banned
LMAO i should have said " old age seemingly never affects the evilness of evil people" in the sense of "oh maybe if he grows older he will be less evil" Hell, no !
 
LMAO i should have said " old age seemingly never affects the evilness of evil people" in the sense of "oh maybe if he grows older he will be less evil" Hell, no !
I was thinking that at 92 Cohn would probably not be up for anything thing more than being evil to his caregiver or making evil commentary in writing or on TV
 
I was thinking that at 92 Cohn would probably not be up for anything thing more than being evil to his caregiver or making evil commentary in writing or on TV

I think if you look hard enough, you can find examples of nonagenarians who were still writing and speaking for public consumption, but they are few and far between. George Kennan is the only one coming to mind off the top of my head.

Another thing is that, even in his day, Roy Cohn was not really seen as a good guy: at best, he had the same sort of borderline respectabiility that accrues to Tammany Hall. And by the 1990s, even right-wingers were using phrases like "the new McCarthyism" to describe their left-wing opponents, it being understood that McCarthyism was a bad thing. So it might be pretty difficult to get someone so closely associated with literal McCarthyism into a position of high power.

(And no, Cohn's career as Trump's lawyer doesn't prove that his association with Tailgunner Joe was not a liability: when Cohn was working for him, Trump was known for little outside of New York besides being one of those "famous for being famous" guys, and even in New York, he wasn't exactly a big hero to everyone. So it's not like anyone at the time cared who his lawyer was.)
 
There is one other thing to consider - here you have a for the most part openly gay, die-hard arch Conservative Republican. His sexuality was an open secret in the GOP, and nobody much cared because he was "a man's man", and his politics were good. There's a reason why the man is a villain in many of Broadway's more riske' LGBT fare like Angels in America.

The man's sexuality is actually kind of a fascinating topic. For all the claims he was deeply closeted, again, he was very open about his taste for men, and just as vocal about his disdain for - and mind you, I'm quoting him - "fruits and pixies". I kind of wonder if he might, especially as AIDS impacts the LGBT community the way it did in OTL, might pioneer some kind of drive for "respectability politics" for the LGBT community, or try to peel off a chunk of the LGBT vote for the GOP. Mostly for that aim, I would think, he was a party man through and through.

I mean, you regularly have between 20%-10% percent voting for the GOP who is actively hostile to LGBT issues. I wonder what the impact of having a GOP more open to the more conservative elements of the LGBT community may have on politics or gay rights.
 
There is one other thing to consider - here you have a for the most part openly gay, die-hard arch Conservative Republican. His sexuality was an open secret in the GOP, and nobody much cared because he was "a man's man", and his politics were good. There's a reason why the man is a villain in many of Broadway's more riske' LGBT fare like Angels in America.

The man's sexuality is actually kind of a fascinating topic. For all the claims he was deeply closeted, again, he was very open about his taste for men, and just as vocal about his disdain for - and mind you, I'm quoting him - "fruits and pixies". I kind of wonder if he might, especially as AIDS impacts the LGBT community the way it did in OTL, might pioneer some kind of drive for "respectability politics" for the LGBT community, or try to peel off a chunk of the LGBT vote for the GOP. Mostly for that aim, I would think, he was a party man through and through.

I mean, you regularly have between 20%-10% percent voting for the GOP who is actively hostile to LGBT issues. I wonder what the impact of having a GOP more open to the more conservative elements of the LGBT community may have on politics or gay rights.

I can think of a few instances where a low-profile glbqt person was known to have some sort of affiliation with conservative political groups. In the one that comes to mind(from Canada), the woman in question was defended by a right-wing journalist(who had apparently also retained her services as a babysitter) with something like "The difference between her and all those activists you see trying to push their agenda on everyone is that she keeps her sexuality to herself, doesn't make a big deal of it etc." And even then, the journalist didn't actually name the woman, just wrote something like "There has been a lot of controversy about a particular individual who blah blah blah..."

More recently, also in Canada, there was a VERY high-ranking Conservative cabinet-minister, with a burly, macho image, who was widely known(even among the general public) to be gay, but never actually came out publically. And this was in a country where people are supposedly more laidback, don't care about someone's sexual orientation, and even the Conservatives themselves had allegedly made their peace with gay marriage etc.

Long and the short, it's one thing for everyone in Manhattan to know that a local GOP bigwig is gay, and be cool with that. But, as of 2019, I don't think the Republican party on a national level is going to embrace an openly gay man, no matter how much he otherwise claims to despise "fruits and pixies".

I also think it's important to keep in mind what a non-entity Cohn really was outside of NYC. I think the only people who gave him any thought would be political junkies, and people who took some interest in what was happening in New York.

(For the record, the gay cabinet minister mentioned in my earlier example is NOT Jason Kenney, whose professed chastity is ostensibly religious based, albeit subject to widespread innuendo. The guy I'm talking about is someone about whom people would just casually say "Oh yeah, he's gay", with nothing controversial about the assertion at all.)
 
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A living Roy Cohn has absolutely no chance at all in winning or seeing a higher office such as AG. He would be more than likely rejected by Congress, who still has never forgotten his antics working with Tailgunner Joe McCarthy.
 

sprite

Donor
Monthly Donor
He'd be outed (probably by Michelangelo Signorile).

Not good when working for the Religious Right in the eighties.
 
Queen Elizabeth II says hello!

Well, yeah, but I mean, people not consitutionally mandated to continue their careers until death, and whose opinions are read for their own perceived value, not because they're part of ceremonial procedures.

(Though I think the Queen could technically abdicate, but the tradition kind of makes it a taboo.)
 
He'd be outed (probably by Michelangelo Signorile).

Not good when working for the Religious Right in the eighties.

Cohn was also the subject of a smear campaign in NYC, funded by one of his jilted boyfriends, who teamed up with the LaRouchians to produce a local newsletter trashing his character. Not sure if they got into his sexuality, or just his sleazy business practices, or what. I believe it's discussed in the book American Fuhrer, about LaRouche.
 
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Details of the LaRouche anti-Cohn campaign here, starting in the paragraph that begins "A stroke of luck..."

That's from the book I mentioned above, but I can't vouche for the credibility of the website that's archiving it. It seems like maybe an anti-LaRouche site, but with a conspiratorial bent of its own? Not sure.
 
Well, yeah, but I mean, people not consitutionally mandated to continue their careers until death, and whose opinions are read for their own perceived value, not because they're part of ceremonial procedures.

In other words, people like the Queen. As you say, she could abdicate tomorrow if she wanted to - the reason she won't (or at least is almost certain not to) is because of who she is, not because of tradition. Moreover, anyone who doesn't value the opinions of someone with over seven decades political experience at the highest level of government is an idiot.
 
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