How Trump Decides Who Deserves Loyalty — And Who Gets Fired

…One of Trump’s closest friends early in his career was Roy Cohn. An infamous attorney and ex-aide to Joseph McCarthy, Cohn served as a mentor to Trump through much of the ’70s and ’80s…. Trump held up his end of the friendship as well: When Cohn was facing disbarment in the mid-’80s, Trump testified on his friend’s behalf as a character witness. For a while, according to Vanity Fair, the two men spoke ‘15 or 20 times a day.’

Then Trump found out Cohn was HIV-positive.

He moved swiftly to cut ties with his mentor, seeking out new attorneys and transferring his legal business to them. The sudden rejection stunned Cohn. Commenting on the betrayal, Cohn reportedly said, ‘Donald pisses ice water.’

‘I don’t know how he found out that Roy was HIV positive, and then it was like, boom, gone,’ recalled Susan Bell, Cohn’s longtime secretary, in an interview. ‘Which was kind of shocking because they were friends. But who knows Donald’s motives? I assume he didn’t want to associate himself with somebody tainted.’