Citizen Cohn (1992 TV Movie)

Joe Don Baker: Sen. Joseph McCarthy

Quotes 

• Roy Marcus Cohn : Senator, I've seen enough names working for Pat McCarran. You're going to be hauling up Jew after Jew... all those European names, and with a McCarthy and a Kennedy together, it's gonna look like an Irish/Catholic-run pogrom. That will discredit everything you do, and I know, because I'm a Jew.

  Senator Joseph McCarthy : But they're Communists. They betrayed the faith of the Fathers for this Socialist God of Iron. Now, that's the issue, not anti-Semitism.

  Roy Marcus Cohn : That's NOT what your opposition will say. It's very hard sometimes to control what an issue really is, and if your enemies can find a way to twist your motives, believe me, they will do it.

• [McCarthy and Cohn make a toast] 

  Senator Joseph McCarthy : To the birth of Jesus.

  Roy Marcus Cohn : Right. Another tough Jew.

• Senator Joseph McCarthy : What are you trying to DO to me?

  Roy Marcus Cohn : I'm trying to make a great man out of you.

• Senator Joseph McCarthy : Now, please answer this: are you now, or ever have been, a member of the Communist Party?

  First Annie Lee Moss : No, sir, I'm a Democrat!

• [Roy Cohn leaves a drunk and censured Senator McCarthy] 

  Senator Joseph McCarthy : I always tried to do the right thing.

  Roy Marcus Cohn : The right thing? What a disaster! If for one day, everybody in Washington tried to do the "right thing", you'd come into both Houses of Congress, there'd be mass suicide!

  Senator Joseph McCarthy : Yeah, well, it didn't used to be that way.

  Roy Marcus Cohn : Wait, are you trying to tell me something, Joe? What? What? That I caused this? I didn't invent dirty tricks.

  Senator Joseph McCarthy : [chuckles]  No, no, you didn't. You kind of just made them into an art form.

• Senator Joseph McCarthy : Hey, you ever listen to Bob and Ray... making fun of me? Awfully, awfully funny.

• Roy Marcus Cohn : We'd like you to describe the apparatus of your organization, those to whom you reported, what they told you to put in your books, others you may have seen at party meetings. And we'll expect you to testify to a certain amount of this in public session.

  Dashiell Hammett : I know what you're thinking about, but it isn't so, no how. Contrariwise, if it was so, it might be, and if it were so, it would be, but as it isn't, it ain't That's logic.

  Senator Joseph McCarthy : Very funny.