Michael Cohen is a rat. He has ratted out his boss--or, Boss, as he refers to him, still preferring to capitalize the word--about his lies, cheating, innuendoes, double-dealing, media manipulation and all the rest in his book "Disloyal."
To be sure, it is also a confessional. Cohen admits his driving ambition that brought him into 45's orbit, addictively, ignoring transgressions and double-dealings that would have driven calmer thinking people away at first glance. But he also hung around with mobsters as a kid, so he understood the need for protection of the otherwise seedy.
And Cohen's life before 45 was a successful one: He had a posh Manhattan apartment with a gorgeous wife and two great kids, to whom he was deeply devoted--and which, it appears, saved what sanity he could maintain after everything else happened. That they stayed with him through all this attests to their devotion to him, which other people happily together might not endure. To his credit, 45 gave him plenty of opportunity to ruin his marriage, but he stood it off. Having savaged other people's reputations and lives, he still enjoyed coming home at night.
To be with 45 and represent him, you must become him, at least attitudinally. No one can get the best of you. You must be willing to humiliate people and bend them to your will. You must define words and phrases in terms of your boss and no one else. And you must bend the law so that it looks nothing like it was intended to be. Already a well-off attorney, he did work for 45 gratis before being paid less than what he was making.
But he didn't mind. He was the moth edging toward the flame. Eventually, it would consume him.
In the fast-moving world of New York real estate, it was no easy task to keep up with big money dealings. But 45's personality, at least to Cohen, was more than attractive: It had a kind of magic. There are some people like that, with charisma that expands beyond them; you may know a few. Indeed, it alone--certainly not political experience, not integrity, not knowledge of anything vital to the position--got him into the White House. There couldn't have been anything else.
Cohen already was marginally knowledgeable when he began to work for 45; 45, Junior was a friend of his. Cohen already knew how angry he'd been when his father openly cheated on his first wife and Junior's mother, Ivana, with Marla Maples. This didn't stop his interest, though.
Cohen's reaction upon first watching 45 weave his way through an admiring crowd (This was during the run of "The Apprentice") provides some insight into this:
To an outsider, my attraction to [45]--or, as I described it, my "obsession"--seemed to have its roots in money and power and my lust to possess these attributes...But I knew the real answer, for me and others in [his] world, and eventually for a significant percentage of the citizens of the United States....[It] included something deeper than the obvious lures of money and power, though those were crucial factors. It was physical, emotional, not quite spiritual, but a deep longing and need that [45] filled for me. Around [him] I felt alive, like he possessed the urgent and only truth, the chance for my salvation and success in life.
Remember, Cohen is a well-educated man who'd been around the block and was financially independent. He didn't need anyone. But he wanted more, and he would get it, regardless of the price he would have to make himself and others pay. He would get there just before his fall. 45 completely abandoned him. And yet he also says, "I care for [45], even to this day, and I had and still have a lot of affection for him."
He fell prey to about the same appeal that some German people felt for Hitler--that kind of mesmerizing pull that was indescribable but undeniable: the personification of charisma. And which, even if 45 should lose this election, will go on. His following has been described as a cult. With the above description, I would have to call that accurate. Don't expect his followers to disband. They might regroup even stronger than before. We will have to deal with this for decades.
It's also a big reason why 45 was able to attract the religious right, due partly to their own desires to become more than they were, too, and invent any justification for continuing to support him. Being close to God wasn't enough; they had to be famous, too, and some of them are terrible hypocrites. Indeed, Jerry Falwell, Jr. and wife's recent fall from grace is highly predictable after reading this book. Paula White comes off as a thrill-seeker, ready to embrace any religiously-based invention for supporting 45. It's a very short step from religiosity to psychological addiction. After reading about it, it's enough to create atheists.
45 plays right along with it, too, pretending piety when he has absolutely none. He doesn't believe in gun rights or is anti-abortion any more than he believes in the Easter Bunny. But it's his way into building a political base, so that's the way it would have to be. That's what's coming on the Supreme Court: nothing more and nothing less than the fulfillment of a mass deception. Amy Barrett, innocent as she looks, is a handmaiden pawn in a game, put there in case a decision about the election needs to get there. If she turns on him, he will invent an excuse for putting her there that has nothing to do with him.
45 says wacky things again and again so often that he begins to believe them himself. But he believes in nothing but himself, and that must be serviced insatiably.
When you try to do business with him, these things are likely:
- He already thinks you're a turkey and easy pickings--in any event, you should be lucky he's dealing with you at all;
- It is likely that you will be stiffed for your work for him, or at a considerable discount from what you've been promised;
- You cannot outwit him because he knows all the angles;
- You cannot go at him financially because he'll take you to court;
- He already has enough money to make you pay too much to defeat him; and
- Even if you do, he is a master media manipulator and can plant stories of innuendoes that you might spend years refuting--unless you play ball and do things his way.
When you are connected to 45, these things are also sure:
- Loyalty is demanded, but goes just one way--toward him.
- Anything that isn't done to glorify him can easily be interpreted as hostile, requiring revenge;
- He cannot be trusted about anything;
- His 'jokes' are never really jokes, but can be taken any way he wishes at any time;
- Stopping the loss of his temper becomes Job One;
- He will never say anything directly, thus permanently establishing "plausible deniability" (check the Mueller Report, in which he's clearly guilty of obstruction of justice and goes right up to the edge of it but never expressly goes over);
- If you get into trouble that somehow implicates him, he will immediately distance himself from you, denying he had much to do with you, even denying that he knows you, and he will watch you be destroyed, with any previous relationship ignored; (Not hard to recall this behavior) and
- If that doesn't happen, he'll be happy to do it himself.
It all came crashing down on Cohen when the feds learned that he had given the silencing payment to Stormy Daniels (Remember her?) out of his own funds, largely because 45 didn't want to do it and everyone else who had been solicited knew that, having known 45 well enough, they'd never see the money again or might get the law crashing down on their heads, too. Somehow the Southern District of New York also wanted to put his wife Laura on trial even though she had no knowledge of any of this whatsoever. Instead, to save her the humiliation, he submitted to confession and jail.
He gave evidence--as opposed to Roger Stone (and Cohen has some pretty dicey information on him), who resisted, got sent to jail but got his sentence commuted--getting him thrown into white-collar federal prison. With Covid-19 about, though, he was about to be sent home with an ankle bracelet. But he had already let it be known that he was writing a book about his time with 45, so the government then made an attempt to prevent him from doing so, making it a condition of his adjustment, First Amendment be damned.
He was negotiating that in his street clothes when authorities handcuffed and shackled him, put him back into prison garb, and shipped him back to prison, which by March, 2020 had turned into a Covid-19 Petri dish (which could have been a real problem as he had respiratory issues), as had so many prisons all over the country. Cohen managed to get an attorney who procured his return to home. The judge made it plain that he considered that retaliation from 45 for writing his book, which started in longhand on a yellow legal pad.
The book doesn't come off as literature; Cohen was obviously in a hurry to get it into print. The last sentence of the pre-epilogue text says it all: "You now have all the information you need to decide for yourself in November." It does add new information but deals in some gossipy trash and a bit of speculation. That doesn't mean it lacks value, though.
It also does some fact-rearranging: the so-called Steele Dossier is wrong, for instance, about his going to Prague to plot collusion with the Russians. He says he's never been there. And he's the second source I've read to hint that a coordinated effort to disrupt the 2016 election couldn't have happened, anyhow--not because of the lack of nefarious notions, but because it would have taken far better organizational and logistic skill than 45's 2016 campaign ever had (which doesn't mean, again, that obstruction of justice didn't happen). Working with 45, who never looks farther than an inch in front of his nose, usually leaves his staff like Keystone Kops, mopping up after the next surprise, unable to anticipate anything.
Remember that Cohen is a convicted criminal with his back up for being double-crossed by a morally vacant person. But remember, too, that payback is pure hell sometimes. The reasons for going into print need not always be pure and unfettered. They just need to be real and, as far as they go, honest. As a close-up look at a cruel, conniving sociopath in the wrong place at the wrong time, it is important work.
Be well. Be careful. Wear a mask. For heaven's sake, vote. With some luck, I'll see you down the road.
Mister Mark
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