Headline: New York Times, 7/22/2026
Jamie Boulle opines:
It is fitting that Trump, a student of Roy Cohn, would turn to Red-baiting as he fights for political survival. Cohn was a prosecutor in the trial of Ethel and Julius Rosenberg and chief counsel to Senator Joseph McCarthy, where he played a major role in McCarthy’s anti-communist witch hunts. The president, who isn’t known for his embrace of new ideas, might see anti-communism as an easy path to victory.
What’s more, Trump’s turn to Cold War-era rhetoric, and specifically that of the Second Red Scare, is of a piece with the overall dynamic of his administration.
You can understand the two Trump presidencies as attempts to relive and re-enact the most atrocious moments in American history, as if the nation were led by toxic obsessives who relished the cruelty and criminality of the past and worshiped perpetrators as heroes — the supposedly hard men who built the country we know.
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