Illustration: Brianna Navarre | Source: Andrew Harnik, Getty Images

A veil of fear shrouds Washington as a power-hungry Republican issues one threat after another. He's a textbook bully. He not only lies – he repeats big lies that become truths to his frightened listeners. With the FBI as an ally, he intimidates his own colleagues, who keep their concerns to themselves, knowing his wrath could be lethal to their political futures. He assails the press and manipulates the media with the ease of a puppet master.

I’m describing the mood in the capital more than 70 years ago under the reign of terror imposed by Republican Sen. Joe McCarthy’s “Red Scare.” Does it remind you of anyone’s stranglehold on the same party today?

I was reminded of the inescapable parallels between McCarthy and President Donald Trump by the book “Demagogue: The Life and Long Shadow of Senator Joe McCarthy” by Larry Tye. A scholar, teacher and journalist, Tye sees haunting similarities between our current president and the late senator from Wisconsin: “Trump is a logical sequel to McCarthy in America's long infatuation with bullies and demagogues,” he told me.

Trump was just 10 years old when McCarthy died in 1957, but there is a profound personal connection. Roy Cohn, the sleazy but brilliant lawyer who helped guide McCarthy's witch hunts in the early 1950s, decades later became a mentor and fixer for the young Trump in the 1980s, as captured in the recent Trump biopic “The Apprentice.”

The Cohn credo was to attack, attack, attack, admit nothing, deny everything – and always claim victory. Sound familiar?

Cohn died almost 40 years ago. But during low times in Trump’s first presidency, the president would rant to White House officials, “Where's my Roy Cohn?,” according to reporting by The New York Times. A lawyer who was indicted several times and ultimately disbarred for unethical conduct, Cohn would have felt right at home in today’s White House.

McCarthy rose to power as........

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