Cohen’s book is out. If Cohen’s portraits of past performance is correct, tRump is running hobbling around the White House enraged and screaming red-faced at anyone he can corner. The image of Meadow’s and Barr’s faces flecked with tRumpian rage spittle is a mental image that I’m enjoying. I think tRump has had an adverse effect on my patience and understanding.
If we are following the news at all, we’ve all seen a lot of excerpts by now. I’m going to try to avoid repeating the ones that are plastered everywhere and concentrate on uncovering smaller nuggets of interest.
Because it dropped on the day I write the Good News Roundup, I was unable to dedicate full time to finishing the book. So, this review/report will appear both tonight and tomorrow.
Disloyal: A Memoir by Michael Cohen — A Book Report
Cohen’s basic defense is that he was seduced by the idea of tRump and the power he would gain through the association. He freely admits that he was deluded and mesmerized by tRump, but does make some effort to own his own failings. If he’s sincere, he still has a long way to go to make amends for the crimes and other breaches of civility he orchestrated or abetted.
Unlike Bolton, who came across as an unlikable blowhard, Cohen is doing a better job of humbling himself. I’m not finished yet, so I don’t have a final verdict on his sincerity or whether I find him potentially redeemable.
Aside from the relationship with tRump, Cohen spends some time talking about his childhood and his childhood fascination with mobsters. He doesn’t spend a lot of time on the “early years”, but attempts to give some background for his skewed (at least to us) worldview. In his view, tRump fits into the mold of the gangster wannabe — and so does he. Take what you want, ignore the law and any harm you might do is the rule they lived by. I (and I think we) have viewed tRump as a morally depraved charlatan since he first rode down that escalator. Cohen’s words fill in some of the blanks and flesh out the portrait of a man who never should have gotten within a continent of the presidency.
As I pointed out, in this morning’s GNR, the first thing that struck me was this passage regarding Cohen’s first meeting with tRump:
This was Trump’s first tell, if I’d had the ability to see what was unfolding, but events were moving so fast and in such a tantalizing way that I didn’t have the presence of mind to consider what had just occurred. I had paid the asking price on the Park Avenue apartment; there had been no discount or special consideration—it had never even come up. But there it was: within the first few seconds of our meeting, Donald Trump had lied to me, directly, demonstrably and without doubt.
Cohen ruefully reflects on the downside of becoming tRump’s fixer:
… But that didn’t matter to Trump. He wanted a lawyer who would fight when the cause was clearly racist and illegal.
Roy Cohn had played the role of pit bull for Trump until the Boss dropped him like a hot potato in his hour of greatest need when he was dying of AIDS—a fate I should have considered as I insinuated myself into Trump’s world.
I found this description of the demise of tRump Plaza in Atlantic City to be an excellent analogy for explaining most of tRump’s business ventures and a decent metaphor for characterizing his administration:
In 2014, the company would file for bankruptcy yet again, turning union members into another class of stiffed debtors. Its assets dwindled to the pathetic specter of a hulk of an abandoned wreck once known as the Trump Plaza in Atlantic City waiting for its demolition. With blown-out windows, gilded ceilings collapsed, and giant holes in shoddy floors, the eyesore and firetrap illustrated the delusional and failed business endeavors of Trump.
Another striking insight into tRump’s methods. Is it possible to lower my opinion of tRump even further? Yes, yes it is:
No tactic or ruse was too low, including preying on the weak or vulnerable—in fact, that became Trump’s business model, perhaps because he’d gone broke so many times himself, only to be bailed out by his Daddy, that he knew just how defenseless the insolvent really are.
We’ve all known that David Pecker (National Enquirer) was a sleazy character, but jeepers:
I would discover that Pecker’s considerable power emanated from a virtually complete lack of morality or basic decency or shame, compounded by a brazen willingness to cover up rapes and assaults and despicable acts of all varieties, provided he was benefitting a powerful man and that he would receive a favor in return; in a way he was like me, a fixer, but on the next level, with tabloids doing his bidding.
One of the people tRump assaulted is Jill Harth. Cohen coerced her into denying allegations and was then directed to get tRump off the hook with Melania. It looks like Stephanie Winston Wolkoff is not the only one who found Melania to have a character deficiency.
“I don’t care what people say or write,” she said. “Thank you for letting me know.”
But she knew. She knew everything, but she didn’t do what most wives would do and insist on the whole story.
On becoming part of the tRump family:
The rejection was weirdly a kind of compliment from Trump, in that he was treating me just as he treated his children: badly.
On the Housing Crash in 2008:
Trump likes to pretend he’d foreseen the disaster, much as he liked to lie about opposing the Iraq invasion of 2003 from the start, twenty-twenty hindsight being a specialty of his, but he was as clueless as any average Joe, I can attest with absolute certainty.
Cohen doesn’t let tRump off the hook on those claims of great wealth:
… Trump spent his waking hours chasing money from endorsements for products like Trump Steaks and Trump Vodka and, infamously, Trump University. He’d endorse pretty much anything, as long as he had a piece of the action and didn’t have to put up any money. This hardly was the expected activity of a billionaire investor, of course, and I often wondered about the truth of his net worth.
I guess tRump is going to lose the IRS vote too:
“Can you believe how fucking stupid the IRS is?” Trump asked. “Who would give me a refund of ten fucking million dollars? They are so stupid!”
How about a little open racism on tRump’s part:
Trump reminisced to me about Rancic, who had been in a head-to-head with another contestant, Kwame Jackson. Kwame was not only a nice guy, but also a brilliant Harvard MBA graduate. Trump was explaining his back-and-forth about not picking Kwame. “There was no way I was going to let this black fag win,” he said to me.
There’s a nice short shot at tRump’s insatiable ego:
Trump was ego-surfing, no one was exempt from his need for praise and admiration.
Followed up by a real show of his venality:
... the forthcoming Comedy Central “Roast of Donald Trump.” The Boss had approval over all the jokes for the roast, and he didn’t really care how he was made fun of, with a few specific and very important provisos: no one was to mock his wealth, his various bankruptcies, or his hair; those subjects were strictly out of bounds, I knew, as I parsed the script on his behalf—and a script it was, with every joke vetted and requiring final approval by me.
In Cohen’s opinion, birtherism is at the core of tRump’s run for president. Remember when tRump claimed he had investigators in Hawaii and Kenya searching for Obama’s birth certificate. Here’s a little bit of the inside scoop on that story:
“We don’t have anyone in Hawaii that I know of,” I said. “Do you want me to put someone on that?”
“No,” Trump replied. “Who fucking cares? Wait until the headlines come out. This story is going to be huuuuuge!”
Thus endeth Part 1 of sharing my experience reading Disloyal. Nothing Cohen had to say about tRump struck me as obviously fabricated so far. I’ll be back tomorrow with the finale.
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