Roy Cohn
Roy Cohn was the notorious lawyer for the notorious communist witch-hunting Senator Joseph McCarthy in the 1950’s. He is Trump’s symbolic figure of toughness against the law, by which is meant a willingness to ignore all aspects of the law in order to achieve what wants.
Jeff Sessions
“Where’s my Roy Cohn” becomes a common refrain from Trump in reference to his Attorney General Jeff Sessions. Despite being a fervent supporter of Trump from the beginning of his candidacy, former Senator Sessions demonstrated an unusual unwillingness to break with established conventional codes of ethical behavior by recusing himself from the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election. This unwillingness to spit in the face of the law was deemed by Trump to be the ultimate symbol of disloyalty.
John McCain
Late Senator John McCain is situated by the writers as the fundamental symbol of opposition to Trump in the sense that he seemed to be everything that Trump was not: beloved by admirers, respected by rivals, a war hero, honest and direct and possessed of a fundamental decency utter lacking in Donald J. Trump.
Barack Obama
On the other hand, Barack Obama is the symbol of everything that Donald Trump himself considers to be his exact opposite. From his perspective, Pres. Obama did absolutely nothing right and his eights years in the White House presents a legacy that Trump feels in his mission to completely reverse and undo. For Trump, if Obama said the sky was black, then that mean to Trump it was white. This symbolic status of Obama is perhaps more effectively conveyed in the figure of Michael Flynn. Obama called him a “bad guy” whom he had fired from his job with the Defense Intelligence Agency. Trump appointed Flynn National Security Adviser. The rest is judicial history.
Deep State
The existence of a so-called “Deep State” of permanently employed bureaucratic workers not dependent upon being newly appointed every time the administration changes hands is the central symbol of the paranoia gripping Donald Trump which instills great fear in many people. The existence of a Deep State committed to overthrowing Trump’s Presidency has been either completely disproven or proven to be woefully incompetent and inadequate in achieving its alleged goal. That it continues to “exist” in the minds of millions of Trump supporters is evidence of the power of symbolism: what is a symbol of unfounded paranoia to half the country is also a symbol of the uncontrollable reach of the government to take corrupt the rights of the people to the other half.
