Michael Cohen has offered a blunt explanation for why Republicans, including himself, have supported US President Donald Trump despite his numerous wrongdoings and attempts to dismantle America’s democracy.
During an appearance on MSNBC, Trump’s former longtime fixer and personal attorney told host Joy Reid that he predicts Trump, if he loses, will claim the November 3 election was rigged and use Attorney General William Barr to invalidate ballots that he will say are “fake” in order to stay in office.
“He doesn’t care about the Constitution of the United States,” he said. “He believes that he’s above everything.”
Reid noted that Trump can’t do these things alone and that Cohen and many others went along with Trump for a long time. She asked, “Why do they do it?”
“Because we’re stupid. You know, we’re a bunch of sycophants,” Cohen said without hesitation. “He’s very much like a cult leader. When you’re in his good grace, you believe that you have this enormous amount of power, which you do, and he somehow manages to convince you to use that power for bad.”
He referred to tasks he describes in his book, “Disloyal: The True Story of the Former Personal Attorney to President Donald J. Trump,” which included feeding Trump’s ego, fixing polls and arranging nondisclosure agreements to silence women with whom he’d had affairs.
“The man doesn’t know what it is to take responsibility for his own dirty deeds,” he said. “Everybody else, like myself, are required to do that.”
He said that officials such as Barr and members of Congress who have continued to stand by Trump are “throwing their careers away.”
Cohen turned against Trump in 2018 when the lawyer cooperated with investigators and testified before Congress. He pleaded guilty to criminal charges including lying to Congress and violating campaign finance law, and he implicated the president in those crimes.
He is serving the remainder of his three-year prison sentence from home after being released due to coronavirus concerns.