Yahoo Finance Michael Cohen is scathing about Donald Trump. So why did he spend years enabling him?
Once upon a time people who were very good at lying made a living writing fiction. Now they write memoirs. After spending years as Donald Trump’s self-described fixer, Michael Cohen has reinvented himself and is now hawking a memoir stuffed with sordid details about his former client. Disloyal: The True Story of the Former Personal Attorney to President Donald J Trump was published today and has already generated endless headlines.
Does this tell-all actually tell us anything about Trump that we didn’t know before? From all accounts, no. Cohen writes at length about how Trump admires Vladimir Putin, hates Barack Obama and made numerous racist remarks. Not exactly new news. Cohen also reports the shocking revelation that Trump is a sexual predator. Apparently, the president once “inadvertently” made leering comments about Cohen’s then 15-year-old daughter, stating: “Look at that piece of ass. I would love some of that.” Which bothered Cohen enough for him to put it in his memoir, but clearly didn’t bother him enough to stop working for Trump.
To be fair, Cohen’s oeuvre contains a few eyebrow-raising anecdotes that weren’t in the public domain. Notably a claim that Trump hated Obama so much he once hired a “Faux-Bama” to take part in a video, in which Trump “ritualistically belittled … and then fired him”. Generally, however, there seems to be nothing in Cohen’s memoir that adds to the sum of human knowledge. It has always been clear who Trump is: he has been fielding high-profile accusations of racism since the 70s.
But it isn’t so much the contents of Cohen’s book that irritate me – it is his rapid rehabilitation. Cohen was all over primetime TV on Friday, promoting his book and pontificating about how Trump is ready to start a war to stay in office. When he is not being a pundit, he is starring in pro-Biden ads; American Bridge, the group behind the ads won’t say if Cohen was paid for his appearance but it wouldn’t surprise me if he was. He also seems set to make a handsome sum from his memoir. There are laws against people profiting off their crimes, but these don’t appear to apply to Cohen – who began a three-year prison sentence last year after pleading guilty to campaign finance violations and lying to Congress, among other charges – because his crimes were nonviolent. Crime pays, kids! Give it a few months and Cohen will probably follow Sean Spicer’s footsteps and be on Dancing with the Stars or delivering lectures at Harvard.
Everyone deserves a second chance. But you’re supposed to earn it, and that requires doing more than just writing a memoir slagging off the man whose worst instincts you spent years enabling. As far as I can tell, Cohen has been very happy to cry mea culpa to help sell his book, but hasn’t taken responsibility or meaningful steps towards rehabilitation. “It was my blind loyalty to [Trump] that led me to take a path of darkness instead of light,” Cohen said when he appeared in court in 2018. “I felt it was my duty to cover up his dirty deeds.” Terrible when one is led into a life of crime because of one’s sense of “duty”! Cohen doesn’t even seem to be taking his prison sentence particularly seriously. Like some other nonviolent offenders he was released from prison this year because of the pandemic and put under house arrest; not long after that, he was spotted eating at a fancy Manhattan restaurant with pals. He was returned to prison in July, but released again soon after. Cohen wants us to think he is a reformed man but I, for one, don’t buy it. And I’m sure as hell not buying his book.
