Donald Trump’s former fixer-turned-Judas rolled out the red carpet for his old boss in an embarrassing display of sycophancy.
Michael Cohen, the president’s former personal attorney who testified against him in his hush money trial, hosted Trump as a guest on his 77 WABC radio program, with a short portion of their chat premiering on Thursday. The interview will air in its entirety on the conservative radio station on Sunday.
In the roughly 15-minute snippet, Cohen fawned over his friend-turned-foe, frequently addressing him as “sir” and trying to walk down memory lane with the 80-year-old president.
“Let me go back to 2016, if we can, because you and I have obviously traveled a pretty rocky road together,” Cohen, 59, said. “Do you remember, sir, when I went on CNN with Brianna Keilar, and she told me that you were underwater in the polls? And I responded with those famous two words: ‘Says who?’ Which became some worldwide meme.”
Trump acknowledged Cohen’s desperate plea for validation, saying, “I respect the fact that you recanted everything you said. That’s a big thing that you did.”
Cohen continued, asking if Trump remembered giving him “one of those traditional Trump slaps on the shoulder” before complaining about “CNN, MS NOW, and the other left-leaning outlets” reporting on Trump’s low approval rating in the polls.
“I think that we’re doing really well in the polls—the real polls,” Trump replied. “If I were running today, I think I’d win by 25 points—I think we’d win by a lot.”
Trump cited the economy as a major factor in his supposed win, despite more than two-thirds of Americans disapproving of how his administration has handled the economy.
Toward the end of the snippet, Cohen brought up another way he used to aid the president.
“Boss, you remember when I was by your side? I literally used to analyze the polls,” he said. “You remember how much attention I used to pay to that methodology? I would come in and I would say to you, ‘Oh, you know they’re claiming that you’re 31 percent, that you’re underwater,’ but I showed you that—”
Trump interrupted him, saying that all of the negative polls about him are “rigged” and that the reporters are “crooked.”
Cohen had once said he would “take a bullet” for Trump, but things changed in 2018 when he was prosecuted and pleaded guilty to federal charges of campaign finance violations and tax evasion.
After serving a three-year sentence, partly in prison and partly in home confinement, he was later a key witness in Trump’s own criminal trial—his 2024 hush money case involving Stormy Daniels.
“I regret doing things for him that I should not have,” Cohen testified during Trump’s trial. “To keep the loyalty and to do the things that he asked me to do, I violated my moral compass.”
Cohen, who had called the president a “con man” and suggested he would flee the country if he won in 2024, seemed to patch things up with Trump enough for their cordial chat.
“For years, the left, they embraced me as their ultimate weapon against [Trump], but loyalty on that side of the aisle is completely transactional,” he said on WABC’s “Cats & Cosby” program last month.
