If You Want to Understand Trump, You Must First Understand His Mentor

Most of us who have amounted to anything have a mentor somewhere in our background. My own was my father, with whom I had a complicated relationship. But he taught me ethics, as well as style and the importance of scale’s contribution to architecture. Of those, ethics stands above the rest as a noun stands above an adjective. I can’t count the times I have been grateful to him for that.

Trump’s mentor was an eventually disbarred attorney named Roy Cohn

It’s important to know something about Cohn, as he is key to nearly every misunderstood action by this former president of the United States. We have had more such presidents than history would care to admit, but in time we came to understand what made the great so rare and the ordinary so…well…ordinary.

Presidents have advisors, we all know that and depending upon our particular party affiliation at the time we tend to find them brilliant or wanting.

Donald Trump was different. Although he had many camp-followers and numberless sycophants…