Joseph McCarthy and Roy Cohn (featuring Larry Tye, author of Demagogue)

this episode is brought to you by Our Daily Bread Ministries a global media organization that makes the life-changing wisdom of the Bible understandable and accessible to all visit where you're from.or for more information that's where y.org hey everyone this is a bonus episode while you wait for season 6 to begin it doesn't quite fit into season 5 about the history of fundamental ISM and it's doesn't really fit into season 6 it's just an important story I tried to get today's guest for the show a few years ago and we finally were able to make it happen so I jumped on the chance and season 6 is coming along nicely I've got several episodes locked and I'm in the process of completing several more it's such a complicated story that I want to have a good deal of it completed before I start releasing so I don't fall behind I'll keep you posted also this show usually covers history as it relates to the Christian Church this episode does not have that direct bent but its reverberations are felt in both season 3 and season 6 so it's well worth covering okay here's the bonus so a lot of people Democrats and Republicans were understandably worried about what they thought was not just communist expansion abroad which people thought rightly or wrongly was a threat to an American and Democratic way of life but they were very concerned about whether we had spies in our own government this is Larry Ty my name is Larry Tai I'm an author and I've written books on a range of strange characters ranging from Superman to Bobby Kennedy from the Pullman porters the black men who worked on railroads to Satchel Page and most recently Joe McCarthy that's who we're talking about today Senator Joseph McCarthy one of those rare indiv uals to have his own ISM that's McCarthyism which Larry covers in his book demagogue the Russian Revolution happened in 1917 with the fall of the romanof dynasty from that time on leaders in the United States government watched Russia with suspicion how would communism play out would it be a threat we know now with the benefit of hindsight that it meant the death of millions of people first in Russia then in China and elsewhere it also placed the United States at odds with communist powers in what would become known as the cold war that struggle dragged much of the third world into the conflict as we vied for who would control natural resources in the southern hemisphere there was real worry that Communists would infiltrate the United States people like Harry Truman took that concern uh to a level of imposing the strictest loyalty codes that we had ever had for government workers where essentially it was almost assumed that you were guilty of disloyalty unless you could prove your loyalty and in Congress that took the form of the house on American Activities Committee which well before Joe McCarthy had been going after what they thought were communist spies and which in their case sometimes proved to be true there were actual Spies Like K CLA fuches who stole nuclear secrets from the Manhattan Project and gave them to the Soviets or the controversial Julius and Ethel Rosenberg who were put to death for smuggling government secrets house on American Activities Committee was formed in 1938 before World War II began and before the Soviets became our allies they found spies the names of whom wouldn't mean much to listeners today but they were people ranging from senior people in the White House to people um throughout the government and as Joe McCarthy understood well the agency of government that seemed to be most riddled with spies or at least that's the way it appeared was the US state department which was the agency that was setting our foreign policy so it was understandably scary to people when we were watching Russia suddenly develop its atomic bomb when we were seeing stories of Russian expansion around the world to think that uh there could be Communists and spies within our own government was a scary Prospect keep that in mind today with all the movies that make light of the Cold War it may seem like the threat was overplayed but as a country we were legitimately concerned about nuclear weapons labor protests civil rights demonstrations and evolving ideas about taking care of the elderly or unemployed had people seeing Communists behind every door starting in 1947 federal employees had to give a loyalty oath the FBI investigated anyone thought thought to be even a little suspicious 4.8 million people were screened in 6 years with over 26,000 people investigated by the FBI perhaps the most famous person on the hunt for Communists in the government was Senator Joseph McCarthy a man who not only accused Communists but bullied strong armed and played the media to get what he wanted and even today we still feel the Echoes of McCarthyism you're listening to the show that uses journalistic tools to look inside the Christian church we press pause on the culture wars in order to explore how we got here and how we can do better I'm Chris staron and this is truce as a Young Man Joe McCarthy raised chickens then managed a grocery store in Wisconsin he wanted more but hadn't graduated high school so at 20 years old he went back to school and knocked out all four grades in one year then he went to college became a small town lawyer and a Circuit Judge he played cards gambled and was always in money trouble he drank heavily and was a tough boxer when World War II broke out he enlisted so his military career contains a perfect look at Joe McCarthy the good and the bad of mcarthy uh the good was that he had when he was running for Senate proclaimed himself a World War II hero he had told stories about his exploits in the South Pacific island where he was stationed for the US Marine Corps his exploits going up in Planes as a tail Gunner something that folks in the media later investigated but could not corroborate when he later became a senator the man talked a big game but couldn't always produce proof when he needed it they mocked him by calling him tail Gunner Joe and they looked and thought that he his record was one of in fact being officially stationed on the ground and what the heck was he doing claiming to have been a war hero up in Plains he wasn't assigned to work in the air how could he have been a tail Gunner when the military had him on the ground for a long time people thought these stories were just more hot air from Joe McCarthy but Larry did some sleuthing when I started writing my book there was a trove of all of McCarthy's personal and professional papers that his widow had left to his alamada which was Mar K University in Milwaukee and she left them with a provision that those papers would become public when either of two things happened either when Joe McCarthy's daughter died or when this daughter who was younger than me and alive and well said yes the paper should become public for years Joe's daughter either denied her request to see the documents or flat out said no but for Larry one day I got a note from the archist at Marquette saying to our shock the daughter has said that you can have access to the papers and that the day you stop looking they go under lock and key again and surprisingly he discovered that McCarthy was telling the truth that while his official Duty was as a landbased intelligence officer he volunteered for Missions he volunteered to fly in the back of a plane as a tail Gunner and he put himself at huge risk of being shot down when he didn't have to do that he was a war hero Larry was able to find the documentary evidence that had evaded journalists for decades I think the lesson to me is if you lie often enough and Joe McCarthy lied often enough when you're telling the truth people might not believe you Joe lied in other ways for example he told people he enlisted at the bottom and then worked his way up when in fact he started as an officer before the war he told folks that he was the youngest Circuit Judge in the history of the state also not true in life as in gambling McCarthy bluffed often and when he did he went all in he was also a democrat in a red State voted for FDR three times and even liked the New Deal he saw that being a democrat in Wisconsin wasn't going to get him far so with an eye on the US Senate he switched parties running while still in the Marines was illegal as was made clear and rulings from the top levels of the Pentagon for soldiers to be campaigning for them to mix their military service with their politics but Joe McCarthy strung banners across his tent and across his Jeep basically proclaiming his campaign for the US Senate and there weren't a whole lot of votes in his Wisconsin District in his South Pacific island but back home people ate up the idea of electing a marine who was fighting for the country yes it was illegal to campaign but McCarthy was never one to let the law get in the way of what he wanted yeah so what he was doing was mailing or having his family and his friends mail tens of thousands of postcards and other material through the mail as part of his campaign something that will be a theme next season Direct Mail allows people like Joe to circumvent traditional media and tell people what they want to hear without the fact Checkers getting involved and that was one of a doz dozen ways in which Joe McCarthy's politicking anticipated what is going on in today's politics he understood every form of the media and exploited it whether it was newspaper coverage whether it was direct mail whether it was embellishing what he was doing and assuming the Press would never catch up to his embellishments or would catch up too late McCarthy understood the media well and he used it to his benefit this time the bluff worked so he beats an entrenched Senator a longtime senator from Wisconsin named lafallet and the lafalot were to Wisconsin what the taffs were to Ohio and what the Kennedy's were to my native Massachusetts he took on an icon of the Senate beats him and then goes on to be an incredibly undistinguished first-term Junior senator who looked like he would be a one-term senator and he was sufficiently unimpressive that on the famous the most famous day in Republican party circles is the day honoring Abraham Lincoln in this case it was February 9th 1950 Republican politicians are invited to give speeches all around the country and prominent senators get invited to places like Los Angeles and San Francisco New York and Boston politicians like Joe McCarthy who were total backbenchers got invited in his case to Wheeling West Virginia it's this moment that launched McCarthy into the spotlight and he shows up that night in Wheeling West Virginia with a briefcase containing two speeches one was a speech on National Housing policy and had he read that speech that night 75 years later we wouldn't be here talking about Joe McCarthy but instead he reached deeper into his briefcase he pulled out a speech he waved it in the air and said I have in my hand a list of all kinds of spies at the US state department and in other critical places in the US government and these are spies who are dangerous to our country these are spies who President Truman either does know about or should have known about and these are spies that I promise I'm going to expose and weed out here is an actor reading from the speech there the bright young men who are born with silver spoons in their mouths are the ones who have been most traitorous I have in my hand a list of 205 a list of names that were made known to the Secretary of State as being members of the Communist party and who nevertheless are still working and shaping policy in the state department it's not just a claim about Communists it's also a populist statement calling members of the state department bright young men who are born with silver spoons in their mouths smearing the east and west coast Elites was a trademark of McCarthyism now what he had in his hand that night might have been his wife's grocery list it might have been a recycled set of of spies from the uh house on American Activities Committee but what we know he didn't have in his hand is a list of the uh 24 Karat goldplated spies that he claimed despite the Bluster he didn't have the goods and he never produced that list even though journalists beg for it and members of Congress wanted to see it but he learned a very important lesson that night that if you make an extraordinary charge like the government being riddled with spies that it will get coverage in every newspaper not just in America but around the world and by the time the Press catches up and tries to really look clearly at whether the people he named were spies and decides to publish their responses his story is on page one their story a day or to later is next to the corset ads on page 67 Joe McCarthy was off and running that number 25 Communists is odd he didn't say how he picked it it may have come from a state department letter released earlier claiming that there were 285 staffers with potentially damaging information on them and not necessarily Communists they could have been fascists people with criminal records or homosexuals in a time when it was potentially illegal to be gay there were fears that a person could be blackmailed into giving up State Secrets against a threat of being publicly outed 79 of that 285 were fired leaving 206 I mean it's not exactly the 25 that Joe claimed but close enough that may have been where the number came from but who knows so I don't know what it was about the number 205 that appealed Joe McCarthy but the number as you changeed from time to time and at one point it was 57 and people speculated that it may have been that he was in a restaurant having his trademark hamburger and putting Hines 57 sauce on it or it could have come from anywhere he sometimes also changed it to 27 depending on the day there was no basis to his number and there was no magic or basis to the list that he would eventually the list that he ended up producing at various times which had different numbers and were always incomplete whatever the number imaginary or real it made McCarthy a sensation the story was picked up by newspapers all over the country and this junior Senator with no real distinctions was suddenly everywhere ready to point fingers he set up an office to supposedly investigate Communists in the American government donations poured in from across the country especially from Texas where wealthy oilmen ponied up to his cause Joe forever in debt was known to pocket what he could Joe's claims were so big that he himself was investigated by a congressional committee within months so Senator Millard Tidings from Maryland was one of the most old school and distinguished senators in that August body and he was outraged by what McCarthy was doing he felt that McCarthy was a fraud and he went after him but Tidings was no opponent for a guy who was a street fighter and a dirty player like Joe McCarthy 1950 was an election year and tidings was up for reelection something that McCarthy was able to play to his Advantage by campaigning for someone else to take his opponent's seat he did this with the same tactics that got him elected using bulk mail one publication included a photo of Tidings hanging out with a known communist the only problem is the photo wasn't real it was a composite of other pictures a fake but it did the job convincing people that Tidings should not be reelected McCarthy when he was investigated did all they could to oppose the investigator running a no nothing unknown candidate against Miller Tidings watching that candidate win and the same way he had done in Wisconsin when he beat lafallet um another Titan of the Senate when went down at the hands of Joe McCarthy he did the same in 1952 with another senator who dared oppose him in return McCarthy gained power and notoriety and the backing of everyone he put into office he received around 2,000 requests to speak across the country more than all the other Senators combined his office got busy making accusations and trying to substantiate those they'd already made meanwhile Joe played the system to stay in the spotlight so he knew how the Press worked and he knew that if instead of releasing your bombshell charges um in the morning when the Press had all day to investigate them if you did it in the evening just before journalist deadline they would publish your charges in the next day's paper and then they'd start investigating them for the next day after that's paper and he knew that the countercharges the defense is never as wrong as the offense and so he knew how to play The Press with deadlines he knew how to court reporters to take them out drinking to shower Praise on them he knew journalists have egos like everybody else does and if you leak things to reporters or made them feel special they were going to make you feel special on the front page of their newspapers using these tactics he managed to control the story for 4 years in 1952 the Republicans took control of the Senate and Joe mcarthy won his place at the head of the Senate investigations committee now he not only had the weight of the Senate but also a budget they've taken over the majority and suddenly McCarthy goes from being a backbencher to being chairman of a very powerful subcommittee called the permanent subcommittee on investigations as well as chair of the overall government operations committee and he is looking for just the right aggressive young staffer to to dig up the kinds of things that he felt that he needed to dig up to keep his Crusade going in terms of names of people he could accuse of being communists and in terms of what seemed like damning evidence and he finds this young ambitious brilliant lawyer in New York named Roy con he was a prosecutor of the Rosenberg trial at just 23 and was every bit as aggressive as Joe as a reminder the rosenbergs were executed on charges of spying for the Communists in the HBO documentary series about Cohen bully coward victim person after person calls him the most evil man they've ever met he had a gaunt face with big haunting eyes he was a well-connected bulldog known not only for dodging taxes but also failing to pay for everything from dinners to expensive art he'd later go on to be a lawyer for the mob he fought legislation to give equal rights to to both women and homosexuals despite himself being gay McCarthy then had to decide who to make his chief of staff con or this other guy you've probably heard of um recent graduate of the University of Virginia law school named Robert F Kennedy yes that Robert Kennedy brother of future President John F Kennedy their father Joe was a friend of McCarthy it's possible that this posting with McCarthy seemed like a way to help the family name years earlier Joe Kennedy had advocated for appeasing the Nazis and likely didn't want to be seen as doing the same for the Communists putting his son in touch with the country's loudest anti-communist probably seemed like a good move bone had an advantage over Kennedy he was Jewish it would be helpful for McCarthy to give him the top position to put down allegations that McCarthy was an anti-semite Joe made Roy Cohen his chief of staff leaving Bobby to his future benefit out of the spotlight and con and McCarthy are off on what Bobby Kennedy would later describe as a tobogan ride down a steep hill with no breaks McCarthy called 546 Witnesses in just a few years many of the hearings against protocol were private and may not have included any other members of the committee except McCarthy or con Witnesses were often summoned to testify the night before they were expected to appear leaving them little time to prepare or retain Council some people chose to plead their Fifth Amendment rights and if they did McCarthy labeled them as traitor saying an innocent man does not need the Fifth Amendment the name he gave them was Fifth Amendment Communists 2third of his hearings going after communist were held behind closed doors and we never got a peek at them but recently just before my book came out the transcripts of all those hearings suddenly became public there was a 50-year rule they were under lock and key for 50 years and suddenly we had a look at them and what they show is as bad as we thought that Joe McCarthy was when he went public with his hearings when he was behind closed doors and he and Roy con could really run rough shod over the rights of witnesses and the ones who stood up to him not surprisingly never appeared in public session because he didn't want to have eloquent convincing witnesses there the ones who caved most easily were the ones who we saw paraded in the public sessions and all I can say is it would have been miserable I would never want to be before any Senate investigative committee but I sure as heck wouldn't have want to been before Joe McCarthy's committee and I wouldn't have want to been have appeared before Joe McCarthy in the morning when he was stone cold sober but I definitely wouldn't want to appeared before him in the afternoon after he had had several drinks at lunch and he was often what was clear from the transcripts not so sober it's difficult to quantify the effect these men had on the country it may not sound that bad to have to testify before a hearing but it inflicted a lot of stress One Voice of America engineer named Raymond Kaplan threw himself in front of a truck rather than appear before the hearings another man named Bob lafallet from the Congressional Dynasty mentioned earlier shot himself after having fired a staffer suspected of being a communist but not telling the FBI we're talking about intense social pressure this went on for years and it's hard for us to appreciate what it meant to be labeled a communist or even a fifth amendment communist it meant potentially losing all of your friends being asked to leave your church a divorce your children harassed at school not just loss of employment but becoming unemployable we can just imagine if you're name is splashed across the newspaper during a Red Scare era and you're being accused not just of being a communist which was bad enough then but you're being accused of being a communist who sold out your country that was not something that was going to stand you well in terms of your future and your family's future and McCarthy ruined lives it was a serious charge leveled willy-nilly by people with connections to him it was almost a game he was a great sort of fairly well kind of guy and he could be leveling scalding charges against somebody during the day in his subcommittee and invite them out for a drink at night because it all seemed like a game and he thought everybody understands this is the way politics Works in Washington and in America so my book was called demagogue and my book could as easily have been called bully because bully is a much simpler and more easily understood way of saying the same thing it is somebody who is like a Schoo yard bully and that's what Joe McCarthy was though he left a wake of Destruction he was immensely popular about half the country backed McCarthy in what he was doing he had powerful supporters some of whom will become important next season like Howard Jarvis who sparked the tax revolt in the 1970s and phy Schley the one woman force of nature who stopped the Equal Rights Amendment and created the pro- family movement they were fans of McCarthy but so were Walt Disney John Wayne and several heads of the Hollywood Studios there were people in the FBI including at the beginning at least Jay Ed go Hoover who thought McCarthy was doing more good than harm Hoover and McCarthy met regularly for lunch and frequently traded information pack and forth Hoover would either himself or have his people leak material to McCarthy and again in the papers that we were discussing earlier these papers that were McCarthy's personal and professional papers they would have stamps AC Ross many of the documents saying top secret and it was very clear that those papers had been leaked by somebody to Joe McCarthy and it's also clear from notes that he wrote in the margins of some of the papers it's pretty clear that the leaker was doing leaking with the authorization at the very top of the FBI meaning Jed gaho the leaks demonstrate yet another hypocrisy in the life of Joseph McCarthy McCarthy's going after people for leaking sensitive documents from the US government and on the other hand he was using to make those charges sensitive documents from the US government that were leaked to him many of which were just speculation you know an FBI agent might compile a report on somebody and have it be something that was entirely inconclusive but if McCarthy said the FBI has a file on this person the fact that it was inconclusive never made it into the newspaper story it was that the FBI had a file on that and that was good enough for Joe McCarthy and sadly it was good enough for too many reporters the witch hunts continued for Years first with his unofficial Bluster and then with the full weight of the United States Senate generating suicides divorces harassment and fear but the nightmare could not last forever as some of his enemies knew all they had to do was give McCarthy enough rope and he'd hang himself when he did they'd be ready I'll continue the story after these messages is this episode is brought to you by no small Endeavor the Acclaim podcast from great feeling Studios and PRX in each episode host an award-winning Theologian Lee C Camp sits down with courageous and impassioned people like Hollywood Legend Rob Brer and civil rights hero Reverend James Lawson talking about what it means to find true happiness and flourish in day-to-day life and if you're looking for somewhere to start why not check out their recent episode with award-winning journalist and best-selling author Tim Alberta on Christian nationalism role in the Republican Party follow no small Endeavor on Apple podcast Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts in the 1950s Dwight Eisenhower was one of the most beloved people in the United States so popular that both the Democrats and Republicans courted him to run for president this of course was thanks to his success leading the American efforts during World War II Ike was no fan of Joe McCarthy not since McCarthy went after his friend George Marshall who served as chief of staff for the US Army Secretary of Defense and Secretary of State he was a hero of the Allied Victory yet McCarthy accused him of being a communist that was really offensive it was untrue of course but it was really offensive to Dwight Eisenhower and Dwight Eisenhower had during the campaign a speech that he was going to use to attack Joe McCarthy and defend Senator Marshall and his political advisers convinced him not to give that speech and that was the first time for entirely political motives because he wanted to be president and he was worried that he might not get the nomination or might not get the electoral votes he needed if the important state of Wisconsin where Joe McCarthy was such a powerful figure voted against him so Eisenhower kept the speech in his briefcase Joe McCarthy got away without being attacked by Eisenhower which could have been very damaging to him given how popular Eisenhower was and when Eisenhower finally made it into the White House Eisenhower's trusted advisor his brother mother Milton Eisenhower whispered into Dwight's ear saying give up a little of your political capital and take on that bully Joe McCarthy but it took years for him to do it Ike's strategy was simple give McCarthy enough rope and he'll hang himself but in the intervening year between Eisenhower taking office and McCarthy's downfall many lives were impacted and I think a president who I greatly respect white eisar who did a lot of great things for this country I think one of his biggest faults was failing to go after Joe McCarthy the way his brother told him he ought to it led Larry TI to write that Eisenhower was quote McCarthy's enabler and chief it's often said that McCarthy's downfall began during the famous Army McCarthy hearings held before Congress Larry argues that it really started 4 months earlier when tail Gunner Joe picked an enemy capable of besting him he attacked Brigadier General Ralph zwicker who at first had been a Cooperative witness someone McCarthy thought to be on his side essentially a dentist suspected of being a communist had been promoted by zwicker when McCarthy learned this he badgered him publicly here is a reenactment from the transcript published in the New York Times General let's try and be truthful I'm going to keep you here as long as you keep hedging and hemming I am not hedging or hauling I am not hauling and I don't like to have anyone impune my honesty which you just did either your honesty or your intelligence I can't help imputing one or the other see how nasty he could be this was not good publicity for McCarthy especially once the television cameras were rolling and Americans got a taste of his shamelessness zwicker was a war hero but McCarthy treated him with contempt people noticed and McCarthy started losing public support matters only escalated as Joe ratcheted up his accusations of the army I think he went after the Army because it had all gone to his head he was enough of a narcissist that he thought that there was nobody too big for him to take on and he said that there were spies in the Army and specifically at a base called Fort Monmouth which was a critical intelligence base of the US military he said those spies were dangerous they were spies connected to the rosenbergs who were the atomic spies in America and he sort of used every heartstring that he could imagine tugging at to go after the military but the United States had only recently been victorious in World War II and the Army was at Peak popularity if McCarthy had read the tea leaves he would have seen that taking on generals isn't the best strategy if you want to survive as a politician in America and I think that that sort of set the template McCarthy takes on the military and the Senate decides it's going to investigate this and it holds these very famous arguably the most famous hearings other than maybe Watergate in the history of the US Congress these famous hearings that became known as the Army McCarthy hearings so famous in fact that 30 million Americans watched the first day of proceedings on television another 50 million listened on radio or followed via newspaper this thing was everywhere for 36 Days Roy cone had gone from an asset to a liability for Joe McCarthy so Roy con like Joe McCarthy believed that there were no limits to the power he had and he had a young assistant and whether or not the assistant Roy con um although he never publicly came out he died of AIDS and he was clearly gay and whether this young assistant named David shine was just his palale or was his lover we'll never know and it doesn't matter remember this was a time in the United United States when acting on homosexual desires could be against the law something McCarthy and con played upon during their hearings igniting what became known as the lavender scare sort of a parallel to the Red Scare where the government went to work removing suspected homosexuals from their positions but What mattered was Roy con intervened when the Army drafted David shine to give him all kinds of special treatment partly so he could come to New York and party with Roy con and Roy con took on the chief of staff of the Army and the Army establishment in trying to get special treatment for his friend and this was fine when it was happening behind the scenes and when nobody could see what he was doing but when it came out during those Army McCarthy hearings Roy con fell even harder than Joe McCarthy did and it was partly what was said in those hearings and the fact that McCarthy's evidence didn't stand up and it was partly that Joe McCarthy in front of the glare of these TV cameras looked like a fat balding guy who looked a little bit like the bully that people could imagine from their school grounds he was no longer this Noble Senator taking on the Red Menace he was a wild man on your TV screens and I think by the end of those hearings people who watched it as importantly as people who listened to it decided that Joe McCarthy wasn't somebody they could go to the bank with and the fact that behind the scenes President Eisenhower was helping the army fight back and the fact that there was a brilliant lawyer from Boston named Joe Welch who asked the question that resonated Across America here's how it came about McCarthy attacked one of Welch's attorneys alleging that he had ties to the Communist Party Welch carefully calmly fought back here he is defending his younger colleague it is I regret to say equally true that I fear he shall always bear a scar needlessly inflicted by you if it were in my power to forgive you for your Reckless cruelty I would do so I like to think I'm a gentle man but [Music] your forgiveness will have to come from someone other than me McCarthy sits there with a combover looking disheveled slowly choosing his words he tries to win sympathy for Roy con but it isn't working so Joe attempts another jab at Welch's team only to get a sharp rebuke this is the famous line from Welch did you I think no personal injury Mr Cole I meant to do you no personal injury and if I did I beg your pardon let us not assassinate this lad further Senator you've done enough have you no sense of decency sir at long last have you left no sense of DEC it seems that this was the moment when people watching television across the country saw m y for who he was a demagogue a bully who attacked when anyone called him out for breaking the law or code of ethics have you no sense of decency the hearing continued with other members of the panel choosing to take Jabs at McCarthy I think the files of what you call my staff my director my chief of staff have been the sloppiest and most dangerously handled files that I have ever known of since I've been in the government [Music] Mr chairman now you can run away if he likes Ste you can run away if you like eventually the meeting is adjourned the committee stands and leaves but McCarthy keeps talking the cameras no longer see him just to seea of men heading for the door he no longer has the attention of the American people you shouldn't do that Mr Sim that's just dishonest that's that's the that's the thing thing that the Communist Party doing apparently every time anybody says anything against anybody working for S McCarthy sing them and is accusing them of communis answer the question do you know of any sub the best answer that I can do you know any Rec it was that question whether or not he had any decency that put the last nail in the coffin McCarthy went from being the most popular bully in the country to toxic to to the point that literally nobody sat with him during lunch they skirted around him every day in the Senate he understood that he was being shunned by the very Senators he had helped elect and he became he went back to being even worse than a backbencher he became a bit of a pariah nobody especially wanted to be seen with him nobody wanted to go out with him nobody wanted to smoo with him and nobody wanted to let him vent his charges in their hearing rooms and so while he continued to serve in the Senate he served like he was wearing a Scarlet Letter McCarthy was now an outsider though he still had a job his career was basically over this was almost the end of the story for Joe McCarthy though Roy con his young assistant continued to have influence he faded from public view for a while he went back home to New York he became over the years one of the most powerful lawyers in and political fixers in New York history Co went on to represent members of the mob and Rupert Murdoch the owner of Fox News he also made influential friends like Nancy Reagan people like Andy Warhol Cole Barons and New York politicians showed up at his birthday party at Studio 54 he was eventually disbarred for professional ethics violations about a half century after he had been Joe McCarthy's Protege a young guy in the real EST State business in New York was setting himself up for all that he would have to encounter in the Cutthroat world of New York real estate and this guy's father a guy named Fred Trump decided that his young son Donald Trump needed the perfect tutor in how to play hard ball politics and who better to tutor somebody on that than Roy con who had learned at the feet of the master Joe McCarthy and he passed on all of those lessons directly to Donald Trump you can see the crossover influences from McCarthy to Trump the ability to control the narrative being told in the news if you say something loud enough and often enough it becomes truth in the minds of the public another one was if you make an outrageous charge today as the Press is out there investigating whether that charge stands up if they rais any questions raise uh toss another grenade tomorrow and they'll forget yesterday's charge and it is a very definite lesson on how to play The Press make the press your friend when you can and when they're repeating your charges and when they start questioning you rather than the people who you were lobbing charges against attack the Press Roy con died from complications with AIDS in 1986 though he insisted that he didn't have AIDS but liver cancer even at the end of his life trying to control the narrative Senator McCarthy didn't live so long he was sick even during the Army hearings going in and out of the hospital his alcohol consumption ever increasing often replacing food and when he did eat it was cheeseburgers he died at just 48 years old the cause of his demise listed on his death certificate was hepatitis in a poetic way both Cohen and McCarthy tried to change the narratives around their death in truth it was liquor that got McCarthy patrons of the show can hear a bonus featuring Larry Tai discussing how he found the documentary proof for the real cause of Joe's death as Larry said we in the United States have a long history of demagogues bullies who gain our attention entertain us and leave a wake of Destruction in their path we'll meet more of them in season 6 demagogues provide easy answers but not substance can we resist their star power long enough to see them for who they are can we call them what they are even though they Champion our causes maybe the most important takeaway that will prepare us for next season is this when we Face a credible threat like communism how will we react the Soviet Union threatened the United States with nuclear war killing tens of millions of their own citizens suppressed media disappeared imprisoned or ejected religious people and gobbled up Eastern Europe when we're faced with a credible threat are we going to be willing to do the hard work of dealing with it in a righteous way or will we rely on easy answers scapegoats and the protection of a [Music] demagogue special thanks to Larry Tai he's a fascinating man and super patient he was kind enough to come on even though he's in the midst of deadlines he has a new book coming out this spring called the jasine EXP exploring how Duke Ellington Satchmo Armstrong and count basy shaped the Civil Rights Movement he's also working on a book about Jewish resistors to the Holocaust I am hard at work on season 6 good things take time God willing next season will tell the story of how evangelicals tie themselves to the Republican party it's going really well I've already recorded with a bunch of fascinating guests but the story is super complicated and I want to get it right also since I have a full-time job I need to give myself enough completed episodes so I don't have any more stressful days trying to keep up this season I'm going to create a generous buffer subscribe so you get every new episode as it's released and if you'd like an email reminder when the new season starts you can sign up for the email list on the website at trp podcast.com I'd love to do the show full-time but for now I've got to keep driving a school bus to keep food on the table you can help me reach the goal on patreon venmo PayPal or via check details are in your show notes or at truth podcast.com donate and if you give via patreon on you'll hear more of my interview with Larry Tai thanks so much for your continued support truce is a production of truce media LLC God willing we'll talk again soon I'm Chris staren and this is [Music] truce this episode is brought to you by the compelled podcast what would you do if you came face to face with a murderer sent to kill you for being a Christian for Virginia pran that question isn't hypothetical Virginia was a small petite attorney defending Christians in court in communist Romania and she was really good so good in fact she caught the attention of the Communist Regime one day a tall muscular man walked into her office closed the door and pulled out a gun He barked shut up sit down I'm here to kill you Virginia was face to face with a trained assassin what happened next would surprise both of them listen to Virginia's entire story on the compelled podcast where they find incredible true life stories of God working through the lives of normal people Virginia is on episode number 31 which is titled he came to kill me listen on your podcasting app or at compelled podcast.com