Michael Cohen > Quotes

“Trump would say so many things that were illogical or just plain bullshit, as we consciously would know, but we would stay on his message, even though we knew it was nonsense. We would repeat what he said, as if it were true, and then we’d repeat the message to one another so often that we would actually begin to believe the distortions ourselves.”
― Michael Cohen, Disloyal: The True Story of the Former Personal Attorney to President Donald J. Trump

“The thing that astounded me, and still does to this day, was that the media didn’t see that they were being played for suckers. They didn’t realize the damage they were inflicting on the country by following Trump around like supplicants.”
― Michael Cohen, Disloyal: The True Story of the Former Personal Attorney to President Donald J. Trump

“Wait until you get backstage as these beauties are getting dressed and made up,” he said. “They are the finest pieces of ass from every state and country.”
― Michael Cohen, Disloyal: The True Story of the Former Personal Attorney to President Donald J. Trump

“He frequently commented on the amount of money I had as a way to throw it in my face that he was so much richer than me. It was like water off a duck’s back to me, but it fed his need to demean people around him who had the temerity to get ahead in life; success was always a zero-sum game for him, and he and he alone had to be the winner.”
― Michael Cohen, Disloyal: The True Story of the Former Personal Attorney to President Donald J. Trump

“We even hired a Faux-Bama, or fake Obama, to record a video where Trump ritualistically belittled the first black president and then fired him, a kind of fantasy fulfillment that it was hard to imagine any adult would spend serious money living out—until he did the functional equivalent in the real world.”
― Michael Cohen, Disloyal: The True Story of the Former Personal Attorney to President Donald J. Trump

“From golden showers in a sex club in Vegas, to tax fraud, to deals with corrupt officials from the former Soviet Union, to catch-and-kill conspiracies to silence Trump’s clandestine lovers, I wasn’t just a witness to the President’s rise—I was an active and eager participant.”
― Michael Cohen, Disloyal: The True Story of the Former Personal Attorney to President Donald J. Trump

“Let me be clear: Donald Trump hated Barack Obama from the get-go. It’s a visceral hatred. He hates him because he’s black. He hates him because he’s successful and he hates him for being everything Donald Trump knows he himself is not: smart, talented, urbane, witty, and charming.”
― Michael Cohen, Revenge: How Donald Trump Weaponized the US Department of Justice Against His Critics

“When his hair wasn’t done, his strands of dyed-golden hair reached below his shoulders along the right side of his head and on his back, like a balding Allman Brother or strung out old ’60s hippie.”
― Michael Cohen, Disloyal: The True Story of the Former Personal Attorney to President Donald J. Trump

“you actually give up your common sense, sense of decency, sensitivity, even your grip on reality. It was like having a mental illness: the reality was hard for outsiders to grasp, in all of its dimensions.”
― Michael Cohen, Disloyal: The True Story of the Former Personal Attorney to President Donald J. Trump

“The biggest influence by far—by a country mile—was the media. Donald Trump’s presidency is a product of the free press. Not free as in freedom of expression, I mean free as unpaid for. Rallies broadcast live, tweets, press conferences, idiotic interviews, 24-7 wall-to-wall coverage, all without spending a penny. The free press gave America Trump.”
― Michael Cohen, Disloyal: The True Story of the Former Personal Attorney to President Donald J. Trump

“Rudy Giuliani, William Barr, Jared Kushner, and Mike Pompeo are Trump’s new wannabe fixers, sycophants willing to distort the truth and break the law in the service of the Boss.”
― Michael Cohen, Disloyal: The True Story of the Former Personal Attorney to President Donald J. Trump

“The cosmic joke was that Trump convinced a vast swathe of working-class white folks in the Midwest that he cared about their well-being. The truth was that he couldn’t care less. I don’t mean that as speculation or an opinion. That was a stone-cold fact during the 2016 campaign and throughout Trump’s presidency to this very day. To Trump, his voters are his audience, his chumps, his patsies, his base. Guns, criminalizing abortion—Trump took up those conservative positions not because he believed in them but because they were his path to power. That was what I meant when I told Congress that Trump is a con man.”
― Michael Cohen, Disloyal: The True Story of the Former Personal Attorney to President Donald J. Trump

“Don has the worst fucking judgment of anyone I have ever met,” Trump would often tell me, adding that he’d been reluctant to bestow his first name on his first-born son. He didn’t want to share his name with a “loser,” if that was what his son turned out to be.”
― Michael Cohen, Disloyal: The True Story of the Former Personal Attorney to President Donald J. Trump

“Business in New York has always been hard-edged, with the opening bid in negotiations typically starting with an exchange of “fuck you” and the threat of litigation. 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.”
― Michael Cohen, Disloyal: The True Story of the Former Personal Attorney to President Donald J. Trump

“Trump brand in the former Soviet Union. I’d learned that Trump had a certain audience in the United States, mostly not at the higher levels of taste and society, but there were many who weren’t attracted to his gaudy blend of wealth, braggadocio, and machismo. Not so in Georgia, not by a long shot. The more boorish elements of Trump’s shtick were directly relatable to wealthy oligarchs ripping off the resources of their countries, as if he was a universal role model.”
― Michael Cohen, Disloyal: The True Story of the Former Personal Attorney to President Donald J. Trump

“You now have all the information you need to decide for yourself in November.”
― Michael Cohen, Disloyal: The True Story of the Former Personal Attorney to President Donald J. Trump

“the whole country up. Now it’s a shithole. Fuck Mandela.”
― Michael Cohen, Disloyal: The True Story of the Former Personal Attorney to President Donald J. Trump

“Our GOP colleagues aren’t upset because you lied to Congress for the president. They’re upset because you stopped lying to Congress for the president.”
― Michael Cohen, Revenge: How Donald Trump Weaponized the US Department of Justice Against His Critics

“Apart from his wife and children, I knew Trump better than anyone else did. In some ways, I knew him better than even his family did, because I bore witness to the real man, in strip clubs, shady business meetings, and in the unguarded moments when he revealed who he really was: a cheat, a liar, a fraud, a bully, a racist, a predator, a con man.”
― Michael Cohen, Disloyal: The True Story of the Former Personal Attorney to President Donald J. Trump

“listening to him go on and on and on about Obama and caricature his mannerisms. We even hired a Faux-Bama, or fake Obama, to record a video where Trump ritualistically belittled the first black president and then fired him, a kind of fantasy fulfillment that it was hard to imagine any adult would spend serious money living out—until he did the functional equivalent in the real world.”
― Michael Cohen, Disloyal: The True Story of the Former Personal Attorney to President Donald J. Trump

“As is obvious to everyone by now, Donald Trump has a preternatural ability to avoid consequences for his actions.”
― Michael Cohen, Revenge: How Donald Trump Weaponized the US Department of Justice Against His Critics

“But that wasn’t the end of the Doral story, not by a long shot. The painting contractor eventually walked off the job, no doubt in frustration at not being paid in a timely fashion. Scores of small contractors have had to sue Trump over the years to try to get justice against a billionaire who has absolutely no compunction about screwing the little guy. I know because I was often the one tasked with doing such lowlife things to innocent and honest business people providing goods and services to the Trump Organization.”
― Michael Cohen, Disloyal: The True Story of the Former Personal Attorney to President Donald J. Trump

“Trump wins another four years, these scandals will prove to be only the tip of the iceberg. I’m certain that Trump knows he will face prison time if he leaves office, the inevitable cold Karma to the notorious chants of”
― Michael Cohen, Disloyal: The True Story of the Former Personal Attorney to President Donald J. Trump

“As the election wore on, I began to believe that Trump secretly wanted Putin’s kind of power for himself, which is part of why I’m convinced he won’t leave office voluntarily—but I will get to that subject in due course. To Trump, Putin was like the Saudi royal family, or Kim Jong-un in North Korea: the incarnation of dynastic wealth and the real ruling class of the planet. Everyone other than the ruling class on the earth was like an ant, to his way of thinking, their lives meaningless and always subject to the whims of the true rulers of the world.”
― Michael Cohen, Disloyal: The True Story of the Former Personal Attorney to President Donald J. Trump

“He is capable of behaving kindly, but he is not kind. He is capable of committing acts of generosity, but he is not generous. He is capable of being loyal, but he is fundamentally disloyal.”
― Michael Cohen, Disloyal: The True Story of the Former Personal Attorney to President Donald J. Trump

“he was hiding unsightly scars on his scalp from a failed hair-implant operation in the 1980s.”
― Michael Cohen, Disloyal: The True Story of the Former Personal Attorney to President Donald J. Trump

“Dangerous forces were let loose on the land that day, and I was there, not just complicit, but an active and cynical participant in the game of Russian roulette the United States of America was about to play.”
― Michael Cohen, Disloyal: The True Story of the Former Personal Attorney to President Donald J. Trump

“Trump’s one true gift is that he has mastered the art of exploitation and deceit.”
― Michael Cohen, Revenge: How Donald Trump Weaponized the US Department of Justice Against His Critics

“Given my experience working for Mr. Trump, I fear that if he loses the election in 2020 that there will never be a peaceful transition of power,” I concluded. “This is why I agreed to appear before you today.”
― Michael Cohen, Disloyal: The True Story of the Former Personal Attorney to President Donald J. Trump

“President doesn’t manage to make himself the leader for life, as he has started to joke about—and Trump never actually jokes—will discover a tangle of frauds and scams and lawlessness. Trump and his minions will do anything to cover up that reality, and I mean anything.”
― Michael Cohen, Disloyal: The True Story of the Former Personal Attorney to President Donald J. Trump