They say a man can be known by the company he keeps, and Donald Trump kept — and then turned his back on — one of America's most notorious figures. For 13 years, Trump looked up to his "closest friend" and mentor Roy Cohn, who in the 1950s shadowed Sen. Joe McCarthy as the legal aide behind the Red Scare and the infamous communist hearings, Politico reports.

"[Cohn] became Donald's mentor, his constant adviser on every significant aspect of his business and personal life," Village Voice investigative journalist Wayne Barrett said.

As Trump's lawyer, Cohn advised the real estate mogul on everything from getting a prenuptial agreement before his marriage to first wife Ivana to helping negotiate a $20 million tax abatement for the construction of Trump Tower. But it wasn't just business — the two were genuinely buddies:

In The New York Times in 1980, Cohn called himself "not only Donald's lawyer, but also one of his close friends."

They talked, according to Vanity Fair, "15 to 20 times a day."

Cohn's vanity plate on his Rolls: RMC. Trump's vanity plate on his Cadillac limo: DJT. [Politico]

Trump even stuck with Cohn through his disbarment proceedings, when Cohn was hit with charges of fraud, deceit, and misrepresentation. And while Cohn was indeed disbarred in the end, it wasn't until Trump learned that Cohn had been diagnosed with AIDS that he decided to sever his ties with his mentor.

"Donald found out about it and just dropped him like a hot potato," Cohn's longtime secretary Susan Bell said. "It was like night and day."

Cohn was reportedly stunned by the betrayal, after all he'd done for Trump. "Donald pisses ice water," he is quoted as saying in Barrett's 1992 book about Trump.

The company a man keeps is one thing — but perhaps a whole other is why he leaves in the end. Read the full story in Politico. Jeva Lange

Fox News senior analyst Brit Hume doesn't think Rep. Steve King should get a pass for defending white nationalism and white supremacy, he told Marth MacCallum on Tuesday's The Story. "I'm sorry, the juxtaposition of what's wrong with those terms and white supremacism is just too close for comfort." But journalists have to be careful not to go "throwing the word racist around with abandon," he argued, because while the Civil Rights movement rightfully stigmatized racism in the 1960s, the word "racist" has since been "weaponized."

Hume singled out The New York Times for running an article listing "racist" things King has said, objecting to their inclusion of anti-Islamic statements, and he criticized NBC News for rescinding its guidance that NBC journalists shouldn't call King a racist. The media should just "accurately" quote what people say and let people "make up their own minds" if it's racist, he said. "I think it is absolutely one of the things it is wrong with the news media today and why we as an institution stand in such low esteem," Hume said. "People think we are biased, and this suggests that indeed we are."

As it turns out, Fox News is one of the few news organizations that called King's remarks racist.

"Fox News earned some credit on Twitter when its news alert called King's comments racist," but "the conservative network hasn't given the story much air time," notes HuffPost's Lydia O’Connor. "King's quote got a 30-second mention on Fox & Friends on Tuesday morning, in which the hosts referred to his statement as 'comments about white supremacy and white nationalism.' For comparison's sake, the show spent 12 minutes discussing a razor commercial that day." Peter Weber

Tuesday's Late Show used President Trump's giant hamburger takeout order to remind everyone that he once cut a TV ad for McDonald's — only in this version, Grimace is very curious about why Trump is doing so much to help Russian President Vladimir Putin.

One of the bombshell reports about Trump last weekend was that he commandeered the notes his interpreter took of one of his secretive conversations with Putin. Luckily, Trump "kept his own notes," Stephen Colbert said, holding up a drawing. "See, there's Trump and Putin, and apparently that pile of cheeseburgers is Friendship Mountain. Fun fact: We wrote that joke yesterday morning, hours before the president posed in front of an actual mountain of 'hamberders.'" Trump has also spent the last year threatening to pull the U.S. from NATO, a top item "on Putin's Amazon Wish List," Colbert said, "along with Not Shirts and Western Ukraine."

Colbert pivoted to Rep. Steve King's (R-Iowa) recent defense of white nationalism and white supremacy. "King got a lot of heat for the comment, and it wasn't just because he was standing next to that cross," he joked, noting that Republican leaders finally responded by stripping King of all his committee assignments. "I applaud the Republican effort, but why now?" Colbert asked. He showed a reel of some of King's other greatest hits.

The Daily Show's Trevor Noah took a deeper dive into King's past comments. "As it stands, Steve King said a thing that's really racist, but he claims that he isn't racist at all," Noah recapped. "So which is it? Is he racist or not?" He transformed into "Trevor Noah, Racism Detective," and ran through the evidence. "On the one hand, we have Steve King being racists toward Mexicans, Muslims, and the entire non-white world," Noah said. "But on the other hand, he says he's not racist. Huh, even I'm not good enough as a racism detective to crack this one." Watch below. Peter Weber

Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta said early Wednesday that a terrorist attack at a luxury hotel and office complex in an upscale area of Nairobi was over, and at least 14 people were killed. "The security operation at Dusit is over and all terrorists have been eliminated," Kenyatta said. "We will seek out every person involved" and "relentlessly" pursue al-Shabab, the Somalia-based Islamist terrorist group that claimed responsibility for the attack. Kenyans should "go back to work without fear," and visitors should feel safe, he added. One American was among the dead, the U.S. State Department says.

The attack began Tuesday afternoon, when multiple suicide car bombs destroyed the security gate to the complex and at least four armed men stormed the lobby of the DusitD2 hotel. The hotel complex, in Nairobi's Westlands neighborhood, also has banks, offices, bars, and restaurants. You can watch an early report on the attack from BBC News below. Peter Weber

President Trump's right hand had a small bandage on it when he visited McAllen, Texas, on Thursday, then again in New Orleans on Monday. In some photos from McAllen, there was blood visible underneath the bandage. It's just a scratch, White House Press Secretary Sara Huckabee Sanders told Politico. "The president was having fun and joking around with his son Barron and scratched his hand." Trump, 72, had his last known physical exam a year ago, and Sanders said Trump will undergo another physical sometime this year.

Blood on Trump's hand was visible in a photo Fox News host Sean Hannity posted to his Instagram account on Thursday, and "in a curious twist, a bandage is also visible on the back of Hannity’s left hand as the pair stand filming an interview," Politico notes.

Hannity told Politico that he hadn't noticed Trump's bandage but his was from a mixed martial arts fight. "What?" he added. "Do you think we colluded to have Band-Aids on?" Peter Weber

In a court filing released Tuesday, Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey asserts that the former president of Purdue Pharma, Richard Sackler, knew in the early 2000s that his company's powerful opioid painkiller, OxyContin, was being abused, but still pushed it on doctors and tried to blame users for becoming addicted.

"We have to hammer on abusers in every way possible," Sackler, whose family owns Purdue Pharma, wrote in a 2001 email. "They are the culprits and the problem. They are reckless criminals." This was one of several internal documents cited in the court filing, The New York Times reports, which also alleges that Sackler told sales representatives they needed to urge doctors to prescribe the highest dosage of OxyContin, because Purdue made the most money off of those pills.

In June, Healey sued eight members of the Sackler family, Purdue Pharma, and several directors and executives, accusing them of misleading doctors and patients about the risks of taking OxyContin. Purdue Pharma has long said the Sackler family was not involved in marketing the drug, which came on the market in 1996. Doctors were told that it was next to impossible for people to abuse the painkiller; since then, more than 200,000 people have died in the United States from OxyContin overdoses.

The court filing says the Sackler family also knew that Purdue Pharma was aware early on that OxyContin was being abused by some users and sold on the street, but never told authorities. Purdue Pharma said in a statement the court filing is "littered with biases and inaccurate characterizations." The Sacklers are extremely wealthy, with OxyContin sales helping boost their bank accounts, and involved in philanthropy. With this latest court filing, it's expected that many institutions will be urged to decline or give back their gifts, the Times reports. Read the entire complaint against Purdue Pharma at The New York Times. Catherine Garcia

"It is Day 25 of the government shutdown, which is great news for everyone whose New Year's resolution was lawless anarchy," Stephen Colbert joked on Tuesday's Late Show. But "it's been hard on government employees, particularly the president. His popularity had taken a nose dive," even on his favorite poll, Rasmussen. "He's cratering," Colbert said. "By the time the election rolls around, he could lose to the ticket of Chlamydia/Ted Cruz 2020."

Still, "at least one good thing has come out of the government shutdown: A giant pile of hamburgers," Colbert said. He reveled in the photo of Trump standing before the 300 hamburgers he bought for Clemson's champion football team. If Trump's using his pile of burgers to distract everyone from Special Counsel Robert Mueller's investigation and his tanking poll numbers, "I'm totally into it," Colbert said, especially if it comes with presidential tweets about serving "over 1,000 hamberders."

"That's right, 'hamberders,'" Jimmy Kimmel laughed on Kimmel Live. "How does that happen? The 'e' and the 'u' aren't even near each other on the keyboard! It's like in the middle of tweeting he had a stroke or something. Or is it possible he thought they were called 'hamberders' until today?" Before Trump took down the tweet, he was trolled by Burger King, among others, Kimmel noted. He trolled Trump, too, with a special person-on-the-street quiz. He also pointed out that Trump himself said he ordered 300 burgers, not 1,000. "He has to lie about everything, he can't help it," Kimmel said. "Or maybe he ate the other 700 hamberders himself."

The Daily Show's Trevor Noah found the whole burger-by-candlelight thing eerily on-brand: "If you combine any fancy thing with any garbage-y thing, that's Trump's style, right? McDonald's by candlelight, caviar in a porta-potty, him in the White House. It's just the mix. But I will say this: If the government shutdown means that Trump gets to eat cheeseburgers every night, then this thing is going to last forever." Watch below. Peter Weber