Michael Cohen alleges Trump racist outbursts and
role in Stormy Daniels payoff in new book
White House dismisses as ‘fan fiction’ the tell-all
memoir of convicted former fixer who claims Trump is guilty of the same crimes
as him
Staff and
agencies
Sun 6 Sep
2020 04.45 BSTLast modified on Sun 6 Sep 2020 08.39 BST
Michael
Cohen’s tell-all memoir makes the case that president Donald Trump is “guilty
of the same crimes” that landed his former fixer in federal prison, offering a
blow-by-blow account of Trump’s alleged role in a hush money scandal that once
overshadowed his presidency.
It also
alleges that Trump made numerous racist remarks, according to the Washington
Post, including saying that Barack Obama only got into Columbia University and
Harvard Law School because of “fucking affirmative action”. Trump had “hatred
and contempt” for Obama, the book says.
Trump began
his political career by promoting the “birther” conspiracy theory that falsely
claimed Obama was not born in the US. CNN also reports that Cohen’s book claims
that before he became president “Trump hired a ‘Faux-Bama’ to participate in a
video in which Trump ‘ritualistically belittled the first black president and
then fired him’.”
According
to the Post, Cohen alleges that the US president has a “low opinion of all
black folks”.
Trump said:
“Tell me one country run by a black person that isn’t a shithole. They are all
complete fucking toilets,” Cohen claims, and praised apartheid-era South
Africa, saying: “Mandela fucked the whole country up. Now it’s a shithole. Fuck
Mandela. He was no leader.”
Of all the
crises Cohen confronted working for Trump, none proved as vexing as the adult
film actor Stormy Daniels and her claims of an extramarital affair with Trump,
Cohen writes in Disloyal: The True Story of the Former Personal Attorney to
President Donald J Trump.
Trump,
despite his later protestations, green-lighted the $130,000 payment to silence Daniels
ahead of the 2016 election, reasoning he would “have to pay” his wife a far
greater sum if the affair ever became known, Cohen writes, adding the president
later reimbursed him with “fake legal fees”.
“It never
pays to settle these things, but many, many friends have advised me to pay,”
Trump said, according to Cohen. “If it comes out, I’m not sure how it would
play with my supporters. But I bet they’d think it’s cool that I slept with a
porn star.”
The White
House called Cohen’s memoir “fan fiction”.
“He readily
admits to lying routinely but expects people to believe him now so that he can
make money from book sales,” White House spokesman Brian Morgenstern said in a
statement. “It’s unfortunate that the media is exploiting this sad and
desperate man to attack president Trump.”
The
Associated Press obtained an early copy of the book, which is scheduled to be
released on Tuesday.
Cohen
writes that Trump’s three oldest children came to his office after Trump’s
acerbic and racist campaign announcement in 2015, asking him to convince their
father to drop out of the race because of the damage his rhetoric would do to
the company.
“MC, you’ve
got to get dad to stop the campaign. It’s killing the company,” Cohen quotes
Ivanka as saying.
Cohen says
Trump was undeterred and unconcerned with the harm to his businesses. “Plus, I
will never get the Hispanic vote,” Trump said, according to Cohen. “Like the
blacks, they’re too stupid to vote for Trump. They’re not my people.”
The
Washington Post, which also said it had obtained a copy,
also
reports that Cohen writes that Trump “inadvertently” made a crude sexual
comment about Cohen’s 15-year-old daughter, saying: “Look at that piece of ass.
I would love some of that.”
And,
according to the Post, Cohen alleges that he and Trump watched a strip show
which included simulated urination in Las Vegas in 2013.
On Russia,
the Post reported that Cohen wrote Trump’s admiration of president Vladimir
Putin was simply down to his love of money, saying he wrongly identified Putin
as “the richest man in the world by a multiple”.
It
reported: “Trump loved Putin, Cohen wrote, because the Russian leader had the
ability “to take over an entire nation and run it like it was his personal
company — like the Trump Organization, in fact.”
Cohen, who
pleaded guilty to campaign finance violations and other crimes, including lying
to Congress, calls himself the “star witness” of a hush-money conspiracy that
still could culminate in charges for Trump after he leaves office. He described
his new book as a “fundamental piece of evidence” of the president’s guilt.
Cohen’s
allegations – his most detailed to date – are part of an unsparing and deeply
personal put-down of Trump. Cohen assails Trump as an “organized crime don” and
“master manipulator”, but allows that he saw much of himself in a man he once
considered a father figure.
“I care for
Donald Trump, even to this day,” Cohen writes, “and I had and still have a lot
of affection for him.”
I thought Trump was a visionary with
a no-nonsense attitude and the charisma to attract all kinds of voters
Michael Cohen
Cohen
remains at a loss to explain his unswerving allegiance to a cut-throat
businessman who abandoned him at the most vulnerable point in his life. He
likens his fealty to Trump to a mental illness and said he thought of himself
as acting like an alcoholic or drug user in need of an intervention.
“It seemed
to them that I wouldn’t listen to anyone, not even the people who loved me
most, as I gradually gave up control of my mind to Trump,” Cohen writes. “I
confess I never really did understand why pleasing Trump meant so much to me,”
Cohen adds. “To this day I don’t have the full answer.”
Cohen says
in the book that he stayed loyal to Trump for so long, despite the dirty work
and volatile personality, because he wanted to stay close to his celebrity and
power. “I was the canary in the coal mine for the millions of Americans who are
still mesmerized by the power of Trump,” Cohen writes.
The memoir
offers an introspective – and at times self-loathing – apology for the role
Cohen played in Trump’s political ascent. He urged Trump for years to run for
president but now laments that his election “led the nation and maybe even the
world to the brink of disaster”.
“I thought Trump was a visionary with a no-nonsense
attitude and the charisma to attract all kinds of voters,” he writes. But the
real reason he wanted Trump in the White House, Cohen concedes, “was because I
wanted the power that he would bring to me”.
But Cohen
expresses little to no remorse for his federal crimes, saying he was
“railroaded” by the government and pleaded guilty after prosecutors threatened
to indict his wife.
“I was in
the grip of the conviction machine,” he writes. “I was the ham sandwich, and I
had been indicted.”
Cohen has
led a publicity blitz around his memoir even as he continues serving his
federal sentence in home confinement. A federal judge ruled this summer that
authorities had retaliated against him – sending him back to prison in upstate
New York after he had been furloughed because of the coronavirus pandemic – for
publishing the book ahead of the November election.
He was
released to home confinement in July and the government lifted a ban on him
speaking publicly.
“This story
is all I have left for my wife, my children and the country I love so much,”
Cohen writes.
Associated
Press contributed to this report
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