This article contains spoilers for The Apprentice.
People have got to know whether or not their president is a crook.
Well, Im not a crook, Nixon stammered.
He then added Ive earned everything Ive got.
He doesnt have the guidebook to become anything more than a boorish hustler.
Still, the performance of the movie belongs to Jeremy Strong as Cohn.
It is moments like that sprinkled throughoutThe Apprenticewhich reveal the movies true aim.
This aspect comes back to the Cohn of it all.
The Rosenbergs were an American couple who operated as spies for the Soviet Union in the 1940s.
Remember Klaus Fuchs in last yearsOppenheimer?
He was the German scientist discovered to be stealing secrets from the Manhattan Project for the Soviet Union.
Well, the Rosenbergs worked with him among others in getting nuclear weapons designs to the Russians.
If you betray her, youre dead to him.
Like Trump, Roy Cohn did not operate on an island.
He never did, and his secretary eventually admitted he just made it up.
Together they inspected potential communists in the government, academia, and the media.
This claim was never proven, but their engineered Lavender Scare led to humiliated and ruined men committing suicide.
All are part of the larger architecture on the American right.
In the film, this is dramatized when Cohn confronts Donald late in the movie.
Cohn opened the keys of New York society, at least among the shameless and crude, to Donald.
And Trump wont even let Cohn touch his arm, in fear of catching disease.
Theyre no longer in favor with the court.
Now theyre used up and on their way out, quite literally in Cohns increasingly sick frailty.
He also never betrayed his own twisted view of loyalty to America.
He smeared Jews even though he was Jewish.
He tarred Democrats even though he was a Democrat.
He persecuted gay people even though he was gay.
Yet throughout his life, he held fast to one certainty: Russia and America were enemies.
But I am equally sure Roy would be appalled by Trumps obsequious devotion to ex-KGB officer Vladimir Putin.
The Apprentice is playing in theaters now.
