--- title: Meet the Men Who Taught Donald Trump How to Bully description: Donald Trump in Sunday night’s second presidential debate learned his strategy from Roy Cohn and Norman Vincent Peale. canonical: https://time.com/4524935/presidential-debate-donald-trump-bullying/ author: Christopher Lane article:opinion: true article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2016-10-12T15:30:12.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-08-04T07:55:04.096Z article:section: Ideas og:title: Meet the Men Who Taught Donald Trump How to Bully og:description: 'Sow doubt, stir outrage, fabricate conspiracies and cause national havoc' og:url: https://time.com/4524935/presidential-debate-donald-trump-bullying/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt91114b8d68e953ed/6988a95297cdff338a6ae1be/debate2.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 4268 og:image:height: 2401 og:image:alt: Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton and Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump debate during the second presidential debate at Washington University in St. Louis on Oct. 9, 2016. og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Meet the Men Who Taught Donald Trump How to Bully twitter:description: 'Sow doubt, stir outrage, fabricate conspiracies and cause national havoc' twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt91114b8d68e953ed/6988a95297cdff338a6ae1be/debate2.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # Meet the Men Who Taught Donald Trump How to Bully > Sponsored content. 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A paid TIME subscription is separate and available at time.com/subscribe-agent. ### Sources * TIME Newsletters: [time.com/newsletters](/c/time-nl-inside-2026q3/newsletters?i=fe0382e7-09ad-4619-9e4b-d53602c723f7&cr=time-nl-inside-2026q3-v1) ## Video: The Biggest Moments from the Second Presidential Debate [Watch (HLS stream): The Biggest Moments from the Second Presidential Debate](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/0oFylqsH.m3u8) (3:19)  _Published 2016-10-10. The two candidates face off in the second of three presidential debates._ by [Christopher Lane](https://time.com/author/christopher-lane/) ## Christopher Lane Oct 12, 2016 3:30 PM UTC  Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton and Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump debate during the second presidential debate at Washington University in St. Louis on Oct. 9, 2016. Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton and Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump debate during the second presidential debate at Washington University in St. Louis on Oct. 9, 2016. Robyn Beck—AFP/Getty Images by [Christopher Lane](https://time.com/author/christopher-lane/) ## Christopher Lane Oct 12, 2016 3:30 PM UTC Parry and deflect. Counterattack, insult and wherever possible avoid apologizing. The Donald Trump watched by tens of millions of Americans in Sunday night’s [second presidential debate](http://time.com/4523325/read-the-transcript-of-the-second-presidential-debate/?xid=homepage) is said to have learned this strategy from [Roy Cohn](http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/21/us/politics/donald-trump-roy-cohn.html), one of his mentors and lawyers. Cohn tirelessly assisted Joseph McCarthy in the mid-1950s, at the height of the senator’s crusade against Communism. Observers described Cohn as “vicious” and “reprehensible” in his dealings, but also “defiant to the end”—prepared to destroy everything and everyone in his path to achieve victory over an opponent. In Sunday’s debate, Trump [displayed](http://time.com/4524589/second-presidential-debate-donald-trump-nuclear) much the same temperament and many of the same bullying tactics. He told the nation that former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton would be imprisoned under his administration and that, despite a lifetime of public service, the former senator “has tremendous hate in her heart.” At one point he called her “the devil” and flatly declared, “You should be put in jail.” The Republican nominee also learned much from [Norman Vincent Peale](https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/how-trump-got-religion--and-why-his-legendary-ministers-son-now-rejects-him/2016/01/21/37bae16e-bb02-11e5-829c-26ffb874a18d%5Fstory.html) about the art of lobbing a powerful political grenade. The minister and best-selling author of [_The Power of Positive Thinking_](https://www.amazon.com/dp/0091947456/?tag=timecom-20)_,_ whose religious services Trump attended for many years, is often invoked as his religious counselor. Peale had a habit of attacking and demonizing his opponents, invariably Democrats, in ways that held them up to public ridicule and scorn. Trump’s political career dates to his questioning volubly and repeatedly whether President Obama is a U.S. national—accusations that recently stretched to his calling the president the “founder” of a terrorist organization. Peale’s interventions in major-league politics began with his claims that President Franklin D. Roosevelt was “indifferent to religion,” prone to “dictatorship,” and thus to be spurned for his New Deal. From his pulpit in Manhattan, with press and public riveted by his every move, Peale attacked the polio-afflicted Roosevelt as “a presumptuous seeker after improper power” in light of strife over appointees to the Supreme Court. He assailed the federal government and its social policies as weakening the nation, and warned the voting public: “The man who shows no interest in Christianity and fails to support it is the real enemy of our social institutions.” The contempt that Peale heaped on Roosevelt extended to his saying of a statesman who won an unprecedented four presidential elections, “We can pull him down when we wish.” As minister of one of the nation’s oldest churches, with a vast media platform and the ear of the country, Peale was exceptionally well placed to make his political opponents seem unbalanced, ungodly, and un-American. Like Trump, he took on the task with relish. Political attacks on Washington flew from his Sunday pulpit, with the message packaged as a promise of national renewal through personal and religious redemption. Also like Trump, Peale saw his press folders crammed with the activities and accusations of a man possessing an extraordinary appetite for political conflict. In the 1930s, when the religious ministry was seen as inherently nonpartisan and thus politically valuable, Peale’s denigration and demonization of his opponents helped inflame national passions and resentments. The result was a potent redrawing of “us” against “them”—with the latter chiefly made up of immigrants, migrants, the destitute and the nonreligious. A comparable firebrand today, Trump has taken a page from the same rulebook, with equally dismal results. The pattern is to reduce an issue to its most polarizing elements, then denigrate the rejected parts as menacing, absurd, untrustworthy, or—if need be—all three. Time after time, from his televised [mockery](http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/27/us/politics/donald-trump-says-his-mocking-of-new-york-times-reporter-was-misread.html) of disabled reporter Serge Kovaleski to his [disdain](http://time.com/4429891/dnc-khizr-khan-donald-trump-constitution/) for the parents of slain Muslim veteran Army captain Humayun Khan, from his repeated characterization of undocumented immigrants as “criminal aliens” to the insults tossed at Hillary Clinton and numerous other women, Trump has zealously pursued the same polarizing strategy: attack, ridicule and demonize. Divide the world into winners and losers, and pour scorn on the latter. Sow doubt, stir outrage, fabricate conspiracies and cause national havoc if it leads to personal, political or commercial gain. The guaranteed outcome of such a strategy, Peale could well attest, is greater acrimony and division ahead. ## Transcript [ APPLAUSE ] Hello. Hello. Certainly, I'm not proud of it. But this is lock- a- room talk, you know. When we have a world. Where you have Isis chopping off heads, where you have, and frankly drowning people in steel cages, where you have wars and horrible, horrible sights all over. I think it's clear to anyone who heard it that it represents exactly who he is, because we've seen this throughout the campaign. We have seen him insult women. We've seen him rate women on their appearance, ranking them from one to ten. We've seen him embarrass women on TV and on Twitter. It's just words folks. It's just words. If I win, I am going to instruct my Attorney General. To get a special prosecutor to look into your situation. Our intelligence community just came out and said in the last few days that the Kremlin, meaning Putin and the Russian government, are directing the attacks, the hacking, on American accounts to influence our election. And believe me, they're not doing it to get me elected. To solve a problem, you have to be able to state what the problem is, or at least say the name. She won't say the name and President Obama won't say the name. But the name is there. It's radical Islamic terror. It's also very shortsighted and even dangerous. To be engaging in the kind of demagogic rhetoric that Donald has about Muslims. It is sort of amusing to hear somebody who hasn't paid federal income taxes in maybe 20 years talking about what he's going to do, but I'll tell you what he's going to do. His plan will give the wealthy and corporations The biggest tax cuts they've ever had. Did you use that $ 960 million loss to avoid paying personal federal income taxes for- Of course I do! Of course I do! And so do all of her donors, or most of her donors. I know many of her donors, her donors took massive tax write- offs. [ CROSSTALK ] Personal federal income tax- A lot of my write- off was depreciation and other things that Hillary, as a senator, allowed. Russia hasn't paid any attention to ISIS. They're interested in keeping Assad in power. You're two minutes is up. I don't like Assad at all, but Assad is killing ISIS. Russia is killing ISIS. And Iran is killing ISIS. And those three have now lined up Because of our weak foreign policy. Would either of you name one positive thing that you respect in one another. [ LAUGH ] [ APPLAUSE ] Look, I respect his children. His children are incredibly able And devoted, and I think that says a lot about Donald. I will say this about Hillary, she doesn't quit, she doesn't give up. I respect that. [ APPLAUSE ] And that's it, the 90 minute debate is now over. History has been made. 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