Parallels of Trumpism/McCarthyism

Review by Bill Doughty

Some isms are based in fear, hate, anger, paranoia, and ignorance. They take hold because they operate in emotional shadows rather than in the light of logic. McCarthyism is worth studying because of obvious parallels that would eventually be revealed nearly seven decades later in Trumpism.

Far from being a caricature, Senator Joe McCarthy, junior Republican senator from Wisconsin through most of the 1950s, was “more layered and counterintuitive than the two-dimensional demagogue enshrined in history.”

Author Larry Tye gives a colorful biography of the senator with new information from recently revealed personal and professional papers, financial files, previously sealed Senate subcommittee testimony, and medical records from Bethesda Naval Hospital. 

“Demagogue: The Life and Long Shadow of Senator Joe McCarthy” (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2020) shows that McCarthy was a hard-working “whizkid” entrepreneur and good student at Marquette University who became an attorney and circuit court judge and then a United States Marine before campaigning (while in uniform) for the U.S. Senate.

Some family members and friends knew McCarthy as tender and supportive in private. But his public persona was one of “a tyrant who recognized no restraints and would do anything –– anything –– to win.” He blamed his “roughness in fighting the enemy to his training in the Marine Corps.”

“Barely three years into Joe’s judicial term, the Empire of Japan sucker punched the United States of America, unleashing a crippling assault on the naval fleet at Pearl Harbor and letting loose a stampede of American boys raring to pound back. Judges like Joe, however, were deemed to be doing their part already, and most watched from the sidelines with nobody doubting their manliness or their patriotism. That was not enough for Joe McCarthy. He believed in public service, which was one reason he’d run twice for office at Marquette and two more time soon after graduation. He was also unabashedly ambitious, which had him eyeing Carl Zeidler, the wunderkind mayor of Milwaukee, who could someday be a rival for statewide office and who, in early 1942, scored page-one headlines by enlisting in the Navy. There was always more than one thing driving Joe, and now it was defending his country and one-upping his imagined opponent. The way to do that, he reasoned, was to sign on with the most hallowed of the armed services: the leathernecks of the US Marines.”

McCarthy in the Marines

Military records show McCarthy joined as a first lieutenant, but in “his first wartime fib” he claimed he joined as a “buck private.” McCarthy would lie about a leg injury he claimed to receive in combat but which he actually got 600 miles away, slipping and falling as a “pollywog” in a crossing-the-equator initiation aboard USS Chandeleur (AV-10). There were other embellishments and distortions about his time in uniform.

McCarthy’s active duty service lasted only 29 months, and the Marine Corps accepted his resignation March 29, 1945, just before the battles of Iwo Jima and Luzon. McCarthy then returned to the circuit court bench in full military dress uniform and accelerated his campaign for the Senate.

Joe McCarthy and Donald Trump are different in some obvious ways: military service (Trump avoided the draft); family origins (Trump was born rich but McCarthy started as a chicken farmer); complicated relationship with the FBI (McCarthy was friends with Hoover, while Trump fired FBI directors); views on Russia and the Soviet Union (although both opposed communism); and alcohol consumption (McCarthy died of the effects of severe alcoholism, but Trump claims not to drink alcohol).

But McCarthy/Trump parallels, as revealed in “Demagogue,” are astounding –– and plentiful:

McCarthy switched party affiliation “from unflinching Democrat to unwavering Republican” and became a faux conservative when he saw more opportunity to win with his tactics. (p.62)

McCarthy opposed overseas intervention and proposed isolationism at home. (p.69)

He was against internationalism and a classless society (i.e., equality). (p.371)

“He began as a gamesman and carpetbagger but quickly but quickly became a true believer and missionary. A slapdash cry for attention had become a transcendent calling.” (p.162)

He funded his career with financial backing from his father. (p.100) 

McCarthy also made money in the booming wartime markets and disguised his windfalls “by not filing a state tax return in 1943.” (p.59)

He used his office for personal gain, showing pecuniary interests in supporting Pepsi Cola in procuring sugar, but “he denied any quid pro quo.” (p.85)

McCarthy showed “tone deafness regarding conflicts of interest,” Tye writes. “Joe trespassed legislative ethical boundaries,” “took out fat loans,” skirted campaign election rules (including involving real estate) and had to pay back taxes. (p.90)

Early in his career, he wanted to find compromises with Russia. (p.81)

“Quick to pick a fight and loath to admit a mistake,” McCarthy was morally ambivalent and very quick to lie or embellish rather than tell the truth. He was “one of the Senate’s and the nation’s most outrageous liars.” (p.116)

“He’d learned early on that there was no worse a penalty for a big lie than for a little one, but that only the big ones drew a crowd, so he told whoppers.” (p.143)

McCarthy questioned the fitness of each of his political rivals. He often disrespected the military, including top generals. (p.91)

He threatened physical violence on his opponents, including strikers against the coal industry. McCarthy tried to get them drafted into the Army so they could be court-martialed under the military justice system and then sentenced to death. (p.80)

He kept enemy lists and accused some of his enemies of being part of a “ruthless and Godless organization.” (p.153)

One of his targets, Owen Lattimore, said, “McCarthy is a master not only of the big lie but of the middle-sized lie and the little ball-bearing lie that rolls around and around and helps the wheels of the lie machinery to turn over.” (p.158)

“Nobody was better at reading America’s pent-up fears and feeding them.” (p.115)

“Those who appreciated a kick-them-in-the-pants type of candidate could feel comfortable with Joe.” (p.45) During televised hearings he “ignored not just parliamentary rules but common civility –– interrupting…" (p.378)

He showed a “casual bigotry” in racist remarks and referring to Jews using anti-Semitic slurs. (p.93)

“He simply lacked the filter to keep his language civil or to screen out the misanthropes among his enablers.” (p.108)

His supporters would send their hard-earned money to McCarthy. He received as much as $5,000 a day in checks, cash, coins, and at least one Social Security check.” (p.146)

Attacks on McCarthy “made Joe’s defenders even more resolved to rally around him and the moment. They saw him as a true patriot.” (p.160) “Joe’s base … believed in him then and forever. (p.222)

“McCarthy’s most loyal backers there as elsewhere had less eduction, worked with their hands, and weren’t members of unions.” (p.369) McCarthyism (like Trumpism) split families. People in the “Badger State still debate whether their former senator was a martyr or a despot.” (p.478)

His fans and backers, who feared the spread of communism, were “people who saw conspiracies everywhere. Patriotic organizations were quickly caught up in the hysteria.” (p.143)

“Joe’s supporters argued that it wasn’t fair to censure him ... and it wasn’t prudent to limit a senator’s free speech.” (p.478)

“It was true that the senator tended to follow the advice of the last person he talked to.” (p.147) He eventually became “tone-deaf” and “lost perspective, unable to see the cocoon he had built around himself stuffed with callow yes men.” (p.400)

His backers included southern racists and billionaires. Oil companies financed him, and he became known as “Texas’s third senator.” (p.353)

A 1954 Gallup poll found McCarthy to be Americans’ fourth-most-admired person, but Gallup’s managing editor said, “He never succeeded in selling more than half of Americans on his crusade.” (p.371) Gallup polls had his popularity at around 50 percent but by the end of the Senate hearings it “had sunk to 34 percent.” (p.378)

Meanwhile, Truman called McCarthy “the greatest asset that the Kremlin has.” (p.144)

McCarthy cited witnesses who invoked the Fifth Amendment for contempt and forwarded their names to the attorney general, creating “a Kafkaesque universe where asserting the right against self-incrimination was itself incriminating.” (p.247)

He voted to slash taxes on the rich and “promised” other tax cuts for the poor. (p.90)

He tried to cut government regulations and reduce the civilian federal workforce. (p.81)

It’s obvious he loved the camera. “Publicity was Joe’s alpha and omega.” (p.83) “The press was essential to McCarthy … amplifying what he said.” (p.122)

But he turned on media outlets and reporters for having Communist influences and “twisted facts” (today’s so-called “fake news”), including the New York Times, Capital Times, and Time magazine, among many others. (p.207)

Writer Willard Edwards of the Chicago Daily Tribune described him this way: “Senator McCarthy was irresponsible in the way that an overgrown boy is careless when his size belies his years. In some respects he never grew up.” (p.121)

Edward Olsen of the Associated Press said, “The man just talked circles. Everything was by inference, allusion, never a concrete statement of fact.” (p.120)

Columnist Drew Pearson noted that overseas, the sense was that the U.S. would be “leaving Western Europe out on a limb.” And, Asia perceived “the sense was that ‘the U.S.A. was near revolt.’” (p.161)

Truth-telling reporting by Pearson left McCarthy “seething –– and plotting.” (p.174)

Among the federal agencies he attacked, in this case viciously, was Voice of America –– VOA. (p.264) He wanted to ban some books but promote what he deemed were patriotic titles and themes. (p.270)

Roy Cohn was McCarthy’s chief legal advisor and later a lawyer for the Trumps. Cohn said McCarthy disdained President Eisenhower, considering him a “lightweight” “in allowing himself to be swayed and many of his policies dictated by the extreme liberals with whom he had surrounded himself.” (p.373)

McCarthy loved eating steak, but it had to be “cremated in a a way sure to offend beef lovers.” (p.102)

He also loved professional wrestling or “fixed wrestling matches.” (p.103)

He lied as a womanizer, having a number of illicit affairs. He also use code to his secretary –– “going to the naval hospital” meant “sneaking off to the racetrack.” (p.98)

Confronting the “Big Lie” “split the Senate in two” and prompted attacks on primary rivals. (p.186)

“The Democrats who ran the Senate were in a quandary about how to handle their rogue colleague,” Tye writes. They wanted to “expose Joe McCarthy as the snake oil salesman he was.” (p.152)

By going “toe to toe” with McCarthy, democrats allowed him to become a martyr. (p.142)

Edward R. Murrow

“Republicans were torn. Most recognized early on that McCarthy was an irresponsible bomb slinger, but they were heartened that he was aiming mainly at Democrats and was arming Republicans with a potent electoral issue.” (p.180)

Eventually, renowned journalist Edward R. Murrow, himself a staunch anti-Communist, took on McCarthyism and “ignited a national backlash” (much like the Lincoln Project did in 2020). “Producer Fred Friendly called it a ‘contagion of courage.’” (p.402)

In the end, rejected by most of the nation and shunned by his colleagues, McCarthy imploded. “Performing on the biggest stage of his career, he flopped.” (p.445) “His undoing was behaving like a bully.” (p.446)

The lesson: “If someone without a philosophy or a program could catapult to such heights of popularity, what did it say about America’s capacity to be conned?” (p.479)

Tye writes:

“The dictionary definitions of demagogue and McCarthyism are strikingly similar. Both involve gaining power by playing to emotions and potions, then fanning those prejudices by flinging accusations. Both tap overblown oratory, simplified logic, and outright untruths to plant discord and seize power. Both appeal to the populace (demos means ‘people’ in Greek) and aspire to lead (agogs means ‘leading’), but seldom in the uplifting way the ancient Greeks had in mind. The line isn’t always bright: one man’s populist champion (think Malcolm X or William Jennings Bryan) often is another’s jaw smith. But history has a way of sorting out the real bullies, like it did with Joe McCarthy.”

The Senate held hearings to hold McCarthy accountable. The Watkins Hearings resulted in a condemnation of Joe McCarthy: “Senators used strong language that had some readers reaching for their dictionaries, calling McCarthy’s behavior ‘contemptuous, contumacious and denunciatory,’ as well as ‘highly improper’ and ‘reprehensible.’”

Among McCarthy’s supporters were anti-abortion activist Phyllis Schlafly, anti-tax crusader Howard Jarvis, and James Earl Ray (who would assassinate Martin Luther King Jr.). Conservative commentator Ann Coulter is a recent supporter; she says McCarthy was the victim of a “witch hunt.”

Tye writes, “The tactics of McCarthyism, like Joe McCarthy himself, were self-created although not original –– the big bamboozle with scant proof; narratives that were deliberately distorted and told with a shaking fist; remaining a step ahead of fact-checkers while never recanting anything.”

McCarthy and Cohn and Trump and Cohn

In the book’s epilogue, Tye lashes McCarthy closely with the 45th president:

“Joe McCarthy’s most apt student was Donald Trump. Roy Cohn was the flesh-and-blood nexus between the senator and the president. An aging Cohn taught the fledgling Trump the transcendent lessons he had learned from his master, McCarthy –– how to smear opponents and contrive grand conspiracies. During the 1970s, Cohn and Trump spoke as often as five times a day. ‘I hear Roy in the things [Trump] says quite clearly,’ said Peter Fraser, Cohn’s lover for the last two years of his life. ‘If you say it aggressively and loudly enough, it’s the truth.’

Trump shared even more with his mentor’s mentor. Both Trump and McCarthy were geniuses at seizing upon public fears and rifts, faking evidence to support their assertions, and claiming vindication when there was none. Each railed against corrupt elites and crafted a handy scapegoat for America’s troubles –– in McCarthy’s case, conniving Communists, in Trump’s, rapacious immigrants. The [former] president’s defenders, like the senator’s, say the narcissistic bully we perceive in public masks a charming and faithful friend. Both were wizards at grabbing the spotlights of their day –– Joe via newspapers, magazines, pamphlets, radio, and TV; Donald on twitter, reality TV, and cable news, and in supermarket tabloids and mass-market books. Each made his name into a ubiquitous brand. Neither had a master plan other than accumulating and holding on to power. Both shocked the world and themselves by rising as fast and as far as they did. Trump is a dream come true for those who, for more than sixty years, have hungered to resurrect McCarthy and McCarthyism.”

McCarthyism’s legacy, Tye contends, was “political upheaval” resulting in tectonic power shifts, but the parallels and legacy have left long shadows decades later.

Why should Navy readers consider this book? Beyond the issues related to supporting and defending the Constitution, Tye covers topics of particular interest to the military: 

• Did McCarthy’s vehement anti-communism cause overreaction by leaders, including Presidents Kennedy and Johnson, and lead to the war in Vietnam? 
• Who were some of the many McCarthy’s targets involved Navy military and civilian personnel?
• What was McCarthy’s role and record in the Marine Corps?
• Was Secretary of the Navy James Forrestal truly an inspiring mentor to McCarthy, as the senator claimed?
• How was “Tailgunner Joe” swift-boated by his political enemies like John Kerry would be decades later?
• What did Navy nurses, physicians, and corpsmen at Bethesda say about a conspiracy surrounding McCarthy’s death?

Navy veteran and former Secretary of State John Kerry, now leading President Biden’s special envoy for climate initiatives, calls this book “the defining biography of Joe McCarthy.” He adds, “To understand Donald Trump, you have to understand Joe McCarthy first, and Tye’s your guide.”