Can nothing stop President Donald Trump? Despite widespread opposition, Trump continues his blustering, unchecked by the usual guardrails of American politics. He’s attacking Venezuela, then threatening Greenland and sending federal immigration agents into American cities from Minneapolis and Portland to Chicago and Washington. His power seems unchecked.

Trump’s vulnerability, however, is readily apparent if we consult another moment when a bully was stopped, a bully whose right-hand man Roy Cohn, ironically, later served as mentor and lawyer to Trump.

In the post-World War II era, as fears of communism grew and the Cold War escalated, the nation was gripped by McCarthyism, a term coined by Washington Post editorial cartoonist Herb Block to describe the actions of Wisconsin U.S. Sen. Joseph McCarthy. Although significant differences exist between McCarthy and Trump, what is notable in both cases is how basic decency reemerged to restrain a politician engaging in political repression, persecuting individuals they disliked, making claims unsupported by evidence, and engaging in bullying and fearmongering.

As they have with Trump, the institutions that were supposed to stop McCarthy had failed to do so.

A combination of factors brought down McCarthy, but the Army-McCarthy hearings played a significant role. The meetings of the 1954 U.S. Senate subcommittee on investigations were televised and widely watched. Their purpose was to investigate conflicting accusations between the Army and McCarthy. The Army claimed McCarthy and Cohn, his chief counsel, had pressured the Army to give preferential treatment to David Schine, a McCarthy aide with whom Cohn was infatuated. McCarthy countered, claiming he was being persecuted because he was investigating the Army for suspected communists and security risks.

The hearings started on March 16, 1954. Their climax came on June 9, when McCarthy was bested by Joseph Welch, the Army’s chief counsel and a man possessed of a laser-sharp legal mind and a wicked sense of humor. Welch was a lawyer at a prominent Boston law firm, and his legal team included colleague Fred Fisher, who had been a member of the left-leaning National Lawyers’ Guild while attending Harvard Law School. When Welch learned this, Fisher was removed from the case. Welch was not a rabid anti-communist, just a realist who wanted to protect Fisher by ensuring this past association would not be used against him.

Assisting McCarthy was Cohn, who later mentored Trump when he was young. Cohn taught Trump never to admit wrongdoing, to attack aggressively and to ruthlessly use the law and the media to punish personal disloyalty. Although of draft age, Cohn had avoided military service throughout the entire Korean War. As the two sides negotiated ground rules for the hearings, Welch agreed not to embarrass Cohn by raising his draft situation; in exchange for this courtesy, Cohn agreed not to mention Fisher’s so-called communist connections.

As the hearings continued, Welch and Cohn engaged in heated legal skirmishes. But Welch soon got under McCarthy’s skin, and, increasingly agitated by Welch’s questioning, McCarthy jumped into the fray and started attacking Welch.

“I think we should tell (Welch) that he has in his law firm a young man named Fisher, who has been for a number of years a member of an organization which is … the legal bulwark of the communist party. I have hesitated bringing that up,” McCarthy said.

Welch responded without losing his temper but exhibited great contempt for McCarthy: “Little did I dream you could be so reckless and so cruel as to do an injury to that lad. … I fear he shall always bear a scar needlessly inflicted by you.”

The cameras panned to Cohn, visibly shaken. He looked at McCarthy, but McCarthy would not stop and instead began another harangue. Once again, Welch interrupted him.

“May we not drop this?” Welch turned directly to Cohn. “I did you, I think, no personal injury, Mr. Cohn.”

“No, sir,” Cohn replied.

“Let us not assassinate this lad further, Senator. You’ve done enough. Have you no sense of decency, sir? At long last, have you left no sense of decency?”

Welch spoke with obvious heartfelt sincerity. Close observers noticed a tear in his eye. His response was considered a striking, and spontaneous, moral condemnation of McCarthy’s excesses.

Yet Jim St. Clair, Welch’s second in command, later revealed that after the next break in the meetings, “We walked out the side door. The door closed behind us. He winked at me and said, ‘How did I do?’”

Contrived or not, this was the moment when the public saw McCarthy as a demagogic bully, not a righteous crusader fighting valiantly to save America. Welch’s words struck home. The depiction of McCarthy as lacking any sense of decency caught up with him.

Newspaper headlines screamed that Welch had called out McCarthy for his cruelty, his ruthlessness and his lies. All the pain McCarthy had inflicted on people surfaced. It was as if the entire country had been waiting for someone to finally stand up and say, “Enough!”

By highlighting the exchange with Welch, I do not minimize the importance of other factors that helped curb McCarthy. McCarthy took on the Army. He alienated the popular President Dwight D. Eisenhower. The media tired of his excesses. Other Republican senators finally grew some backbone and spoke out. McCarthy’s drinking took its toll. All these factors contributed to his downfall.

But the crystalline aspect of this one moment stands as a stunning reminder that — eventually — even the most powerful bully can be shamed by simple human decency. It can and must happen with Trump.

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Kristen Monroe is the chancellor’s distinguished professor and director of the Ethics Center at the University of California at Irvine. She is the author of the upcoming book “Morality in Politics: How Donald Trump’s Assault on America’s Moral Foundations Will Be his Downfall.”

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