What the Cohen-Trump tapes reveal
Trump is not just a bad President, he’s a bad person, which makes for a dangerous presidency
Ataped conversation between Michael Cohen and then-candidate Donald Trump is going to be interpreted, and reinter- preted, like the Zapruder film. Once more, slower this time: Did Trump say the hush money should be paid through a fake corporation in cash or by check?
It could be Venmo for all it matters. Nor should we belabor which David is being discussed: Dennison, one of Trump’s favorite aliases, or Pecker, the Dickensian- named owner of American Media who it turns out to be. He would “catch and kill” Playboy model Karen McDougal’s story of her 10month affair before it could hurt Trump’s election.
What the recording tells us, indisputably, is that Trump is not just a bad President. He’s a bad person. Which in turn makes for a dangerous presidency, the one that’s playing out in a hundred different ways from Helsinki to lost children to the fields of Iowa. The ethics of the people you hear on the tape are the ethics of the White House.
The tape is also a cry from the heart of Cohen, Trump’s longtime fixer. He’s telling Robert Mueller he’s broken up with Trump and is available. If he wants collusion, Cohen’s got collusion and long walks on the beach.
Of course, in the short run, Trump can game the tape, the way the official records of his meeting with Vladimir Putin have been doctored to say Trump did and didn’t say things he clearly did.
Trump’s such an experienced liar, he can get 40% of the country who feel so dissed by the other 60% of the country they’ll believe anything. Their wages may be down, their health care gone, soybeans piling up, meat rotting in coolers, yet only Trump can deliver the country from the rot former Presidents wrought. All will be well once he tears down what feckless leaders before him built.
In the meantime, here’s $12 billion to tide you over.
But there are cracks in the protective wall Trump’s built around himself that the tape may widen. Sen. Ron Johnson compared Trump paying off farmers to a Soviet commissar deciding who gets propped up. The VFW, where Trump goaded veterans to heckle the press, tweeted its regrets, adding that CNN, NBC News, ABC, Fox News and CBS News “were our invited guests. We were happy to have them there.”
Not since Trump gave a profane speech at the Boy Scouts Jamboree in 2017 eliciting an apology from the organization’s leader for the “political rhetoric” have we seen such pushback from a friendly group.
More significant, Republican leaders who whispered vague regrets about Charlottesville, and to kidnapped children, and to Putin are having a visceral response to hearing Trump on tape, as they did upon hearing Trump boasting about his ability to assault women with impunity on the Access Hollywood recording.
The Cohen tape shows how it’s just another day at Trump’s office to walk in, flip on the light, set down your coffee and plot how to cover up your latest crime. His trusted lawyer doesn’t trust him enough not to wear a wire like a character out of “The Sopranos.” Matter-of-factly, Cohen and Trump discuss not whether to make a Playboy model go away, but how. Maybe Trump’s already shot someone on Fifth Ave. and Cohen’s covered it up. Stay tuned, there are 12 more tapes.
Could this time be different, or will we move on to the next shiny object? Lobsters are going bad on the docks in Maine, children are lost perhaps forever, Trump is standing with Putin against his own White House and Trump’s very own voice is confirming what we suspect about hidden payments.
Congressional Republicans, are you listening?