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The Guardian - US
The Guardian - US
Entertainment
Martin Pengelly in Washington

The man who shaped Trump: book sheds fresh light on ruthless Roy Cohn

Roy Cohn and Donald Trump, in tuxedos, smile and converse at a formal event
Donald Trump with Roy Cohn at Trump Tower in Manhattan in 1983. Photograph: Sonia Moskowitz/Getty Images

Kai Bird and Susan Goldmark have written a book Trumpworld doesn’t want you to read. Published on Tuesday, American Scoundrel is a propulsive, horrifying biography of Roy Cohn, the New York mob lawyer whose extraordinary life charted, as the book’s subtitle has it, a “Dark Journey from Joe McCarthy to Donald Trump”.

“I told my publicist to reach out to any of the Fox News hosts and reporters, to Joe Rogan, Steve Bannon,” Bird said. “We haven’t gotten a peep, other than Joe Rogan. He said he looked at the galleys, and he got back to my publicist and said, ‘I’m not interested.’ I’m kind of surprised. This is a serious biography of the president’s mentor, whom he publicly admires and says he still misses.”

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