{"id":820539,"date":"2026-08-21T02:38:10","date_gmt":"2026-08-21T02:38:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/820539\/"},"modified":"2026-08-21T02:38:10","modified_gmt":"2026-08-21T02:38:10","slug":"ex-trump-fixer-michael-cohen-hosts-the-president-on-his-radio-show","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/820539\/","title":{"rendered":"Ex-Trump fixer Michael Cohen hosts the president on his radio show"},"content":{"rendered":"

WASHINGTON (AP) \u2014 President Donald Trump<\/a> appeared Thursday on his former fixer-turned-foe Michael Cohen\u2019s<\/a> radio show, holding a stunning public reunion with the man who once called him a \u201cCheeto-dusted cartoon villain\u201d and testified against him both in court and before Congress.<\/p>\n

For Cohen, who served prison time<\/a> for his role in what he said was covering up Trump\u2019s \u201cdirty deeds,\u201d it was the culmination of a behind-the-scenes detente that would have been impossible to imagine several years ago.<\/p>\n

The interview, part of which aired on Cohen\u2019s 77 WABC radio program Thursday evening and which will air in full Sunday, was an exceptionally friendly affair, with only passing reference to the men\u2019s tumultuous history.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey weaponized you like nobody\u2019s ever been weaponized, like few have been,\u201d Trump told Cohen.<\/p>\n

\u201cI respect the fact that you recanted everything you said,\u201d he went on. \u201cThat\u2019s a big thing that you did.\u201d<\/p>\n

In an interview with CNN shortly before the radio interview aired, Cohen said he had resubmitted a pardon application to the White House that had been denied by the previous administration, but had yet to receive any response and planned to follow up Friday.<\/p>\n

The truce with Cohen makes him the latest in a long line of Trump loyalists who have had public falling-outs with the president but found themselves back in his good graces. Other recent examples include Elon Musk<\/a> and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis<\/a>. <\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\"Pedestrians<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\"Airport<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

But the split from Cohen was perhaps the most personal. Cohen once boasted that he would \u201ctake a bullet\u201d for the president and was by Trump\u2019s side during his political rise. After their public breakup, Cohen\u2019s testimony in Trump\u2019s 2024 criminal hush-money trial instead helped secure Trump\u2019s criminal conviction just as he was trying to make his political comeback.<\/p>\n

Cohen has since criticized prosecutors in the case \u2014 an admission that paved the way for their reconciliation.<\/p>\n

\u2018Boss, remember when I was by your side,\u2019 Cohen tells Trump<\/p>\n

Cohen has said he and the president have had multiple conversations over the past year and introduced the interview by explaining his decision to move on.<\/p>\n

\u201cForgiveness does not mean amnesia. It does not mean that the past did not happen. It does not mean the scars vanish, that the pain was fake or that I have forgotten a single second of what transpired, I have not. Forgiveness isn\u2019t about erasing history,\u201d he said. \u201cIt is about having the courage to decide that yesterday will no longer dictate tomorrow.\u201d<\/p>\n

He sounded nostalgic about a time when he was one of Trump\u2019s most trusted aides.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

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\u201cBoss, remember when I was by your side,\u201d he said at one point.<\/p>\n

The clip was introduced with the 1975 War song, \u201cWhy Can\u2019t We Be Friends,\u201d and closed with the lyrics, \u201cReunited and it feels so good,\u201d from the 1978 Peaches & Herb song.<\/p>\n

In a long post on his online newsletter Thursday promoting the interview, Cohen said that although his relationship with Trump became \u201cpolitical blood sport,\u201d there were 15 years of close friendship between them.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe good times don\u2019t cease to have existed because the bad times came afterward,\u201d Cohen wrote.<\/p>\n

Simply, he said, \u201cWe forgave.\u201d<\/p>\n

Trump had made no warm public statements about Cohen before Thursday, but in a series of social media posts this year, he linked to some of his former lawyer\u2019s comments saying he felt pressured by prosecutors to testify against Trump in the criminal hush money case and a civil fraud case.<\/p>\n

Cohen was a key figure in Trump\u2019s prosecution in New York<\/p>\n

In 2024, Cohen was the star witness in Trump\u2019s criminal hush money<\/a> trial, which resulted in a 34-count felony conviction. He ended up facing no punishment.<\/a><\/p>\n

But over days of probing questioning by prosecutors, followed by bruising cross-examination, Cohen placed the then-Republican candidate at the center of schemes during the 2016 presidential election to stifle accounts from an adult film actor and former Playboy model who said they had sexual encounters with Trump.<\/p>\n

Cohen testified that Trump promised to reimburse the lawyer for the money he fronted and that he was constantly updated on behind-the-scenes efforts to bury stories feared to be harmful to the campaign.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat I was doing, I was doing at the direction of and benefit of Mr. Trump,\u201d Cohen testified.<\/p>\n

Cohen\u2019s testimony at the time appeared to be the final breach in a once-close relationship between the lawyer and his client that was tested in dramatic fashion in 2018 when FBI agents searched Cohen\u2019s office, home and hotel room.<\/p>\n

Cohen later pleaded guilty to lying to Congress about a Trump Tower project in Russia as well as to campaign finance violations in which he implicated Trump in payments that went to Stormy Daniels, an adult film star, and Playboy Playmate Karen McDougal. He was sentenced to three years in prison.<\/p>\n

Since his trial testimony, though, Cohen has sung a different tune as he\u2019s moved closer to Trump, insisting that he had testified under duress.<\/p>\n

\u201cI felt pressured and coerced to only provide information and testimony that would satisfy the government\u2019s desire to build the cases against and secure a judgment and convictions against President Trump,\u201d he wrote in a Substack post in January.<\/p>\n

Cohen testified before Congress in 2019<\/a>, alleging Trump had a history of misrepresenting the value of assets to gain favorable loan terms and tax benefits.<\/p>\n

He gave similar testimony in a 2023 civil fraud trial<\/a> in New York, which found that Trump and his companies had engaged in fraud by exaggerating his wealth for decades. A New York appeals court later threw out a $550 million judgment against Trump in that case. Trump has asked a court to overturn<\/a> the remaining parts of the case.<\/p>\n

In his tell-all memoir in 2020<\/a>, \u201cDisloyal: The True Story of the Former Personal Attorney to President Donald J. Trump,\u201d Cohen was unsparing, calling Trump an \u201corganized crime don\u201d and \u201cmaster manipulator.\u201d<\/p>\n

But, foreshadowing their later rapprochement, Cohen also wrote that he still cared for Trump, writing, \u201cI had and still have a lot of affection for him.\u201d<\/p>\n

___ Colvin reported from New York. Associated Press writer Eric Tucker in Washington contributed to this report.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"WASHINGTON (AP) \u2014 President Donald Trump appeared Thursday on his former fixer-turned-foe Michael Cohen\u2019s radio show, holding a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":820540,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[23,2224,2302,3505,1072,11,88,2808,793,347907,2221,58568,1576,2005,1999,3,111,2825,2819,303773,2226,795,21,19,22,20,25,24,800],"class_list":["post-820539","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-states","tag-america","tag-arts-and-entertainment","tag-courts","tag-district-of-columbia","tag-donald-j-trump","tag-elon-musk","tag-entertainment","tag-florida","tag-general-news","tag-karen-mcdougal","tag-legal-proceedings","tag-michael-cohen","tag-military-and-defense","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-news","tag-politics","tag-prisons","tag-ron-desantis","tag-stephanie-clifford","tag-trials","tag-u-s-news","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-of-america","tag-unitedstates","tag-unitedstatesofamerica","tag-us","tag-usa","tag-washington-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/820539","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=820539"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/820539\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/820540"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=820539"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=820539"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=820539"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}