podcast<\/a>, Cohen was in full defense-of-Trump mode. He opened by declaring it was good Trump was buddy-buddy with Putin. \u201cTrump\u2019s whole pitch is pragmatic realism,\u201d he said. \u201cYou talk to people like Putin at the G20. You host meetings in Alaska, so you keep a dialogue open so that you don\u2019t end up in World War III. I mean, if keeping lines of communication open prevents direct military conflict and paves the way for a deal with Ukraine, why paint that as appeasement, rather than basic hard-headed diplomacy?\u201d<\/p>\nThat might be a decent take if Trump\u2019s cozying up to Putin resulted in progress toward ending the war the Russian tyrant launched against Ukraine. But it hasn\u2019t. And, as I noted, my book shows that Putin has for a decade been waging a shadow war against the United States with influence and disinformation operations that benefit Trump\u2014and Trump has been aiding Putin by denying any of this has been occurring. Worse, he\u2019s been in cahoots with the Russians. I pointed out that when Rudy Giuliani was Trump\u2019s personal attorney in 2019 and 2020, Giuliani colluded with a Russian intelligence agent to smear Joe Biden.<\/p>\n
Now hewing to the party line, Cohen insisted the Trump\u2013Russia scandal was a \u201choax,\u201d even as he referred to me as a \u201cvery prestigious journalist, somebody who knows a lot.\u201d <\/p>\n
Cohen replied: \u201cYou\u2019re 100 percent correct\u2026I\u2019m not going to argue with you about that. Rudy Giuliani is not Donald Trump. Let\u2019s be clear.\u201d But, I countered, Giuliani was Trump\u2019s lawyer at that time. \u201cThat doesn\u2019t mean Trump was involved,\u201d Cohen replied.<\/p>\n
That was a strange defense of Trump. I shot back: \u201cUS intelligence told Donald Trump that Rudy Giuliani was a target of Russian intelligence and Donald Trump did nothing. He never told him to stop\u2026Donald Trump even ended up tweeting some of the Russian disinformation [about Biden] that Rudy Giuliani was putting out there. He was part of this.\u201d Cohen\u2019s answer: \u201cI don\u2019t know if [Trump] was part of this. Maybe he was just trying to support Rudy.\u201d<\/p>\n
Trump merely trying to support his lawyer who was collaborating with a foreign intelligence operation to tarnish Trump\u2019s political rival? Gee, what a guy. (Remember, Trump and Giuliani also together pressured Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to manufacture dirt on Biden.)<\/p>\n
Now hewing to the party line, Cohen insisted the Trump\u2013Russia scandal was a \u201choax,\u201d even as he referred to me as a \u201cvery prestigious journalist, somebody who knows a lot.\u201d He maintained Trump had \u201cnothing to do with Russia in 2016, to the best of my knowledge.\u201d But Cohen knows that in June 2016, Donald Trump Jr., Paul Manafort, and Jared Kushner met with a Russian emissary who was supposed to pass them derogatory information on Hillary Clinton after being told this go-between was part of a secret Kremlin effort to help Trump\u2019s campaign. And Cohen knows that during the 2016 campaign, Trump was pursuing a big deal to develop a Trump Tower in Moscow. Cohen was the point man for this endeavor, which involved negotiations with Russian businessmen with possible ties to Russian intelligence (according to a bipartisan 2020 Senate Intelligence\u00a0 Committee report).<\/p>\n
When I mentioned that over the past year and a half, the Trump administration has shuttered units within the FBI, State Department, and\u00a0 intelligence community that track and try to thwart Russian disinformation aimed at the United States (as well as disinformation operations mounted by other foreign governments), Cohen countered that conservatives \u201clook at these same intelligence agencies\u2026and they see bloated, partisan operations that spent years, years chasing rumors\u2026Isn\u2019t it fair to say that cutting those units down to size is just good governance and draining the swamp than leaving our doors unlocked to Moscow?\u201d<\/p>\n
Uh, no. Trump seems to be purposefully leaving the door wide open for Russian interference in the current elections.<\/p>\n
His position was that it\u2019s fine for Trump to let Putin attack a US election. That\u2019s not very America First-ish.<\/p>\n
I described the disinformation and influence operations Putin directed at the United States in the 2020 and 2024 elections. Cohen contended that there\u2019s no evidence Trump was personally involved. \u201cHe denies Russia has done anything,\u201d I responded, \u201ceven though his own intelligence community and Treasury Department in his first term identified Russian operations aimed at the 2020 election to hurt Joe Biden.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cFair point,\u201d Cohen said. Now he was agreeing with me?<\/p>\n
After I again criticized Trump for dismantling the anti-disinformation offices, he said: \u201cThat\u2019s one way to look at it. Another [for Trump] is that \u2018They were helping me, so I don\u2019t personally give a shit. Let them do whatever they want. I\u2019m not going to interfere if someone wants to help me.\u2019\u201d His position was that it\u2019s fine for Trump to let Putin attack a US election. That\u2019s not very America First-ish.<\/p>\n
Then Cohen derided the recent news reports that Moscow is meddling in the midterms, noting it\u2019s \u201cjust the same political playbook\u201d every election. I explained these reports come up each campaign season \u201cbecause it keeps happening again and again. And Donald Trump refuses to recognize this because it\u2019s happening often to his benefit\u2026He\u2019s been denying it all this time, which is why it keeps happening.\u201d<\/p>\n
We went back and forth on Trump\u2019s actions regarding Ukraine, with Cohen maintaining that his former employer was not soft on Putin. He asked why voters ought to care about the fuss over Trump and Russia. I contended that a foreign adversary subverting a US election was a prominent national security concern. And he stupefied me with this comment: \u201cThe premise of your book is accurate. I\u2019m not going to argue with the premise of the book. Now do I think, again, that Trump is allowing Putin to win? No more than Obama wanted to play into the hands of the Iranians when he sent over $9 billion in an airplane in cash.\u201d<\/p>\n
Why was he hailing a book that depicts Trump as a useful idiot for Putin who has betrayed the United States? It seemed Cohen was having trouble sticking to his new Trump-friendly stance when confronted with facts.<\/p>\n
You cannot say my book is accurate and Trump has done no wrong\u2014though that\u2019s what Cohen did. And his attempted deflection referring to Iran made no sense. (It was $1.7 billion that the Treasury Department paid Tehran to settle a long-standing breach-of-contract claim pending before the Iran\u2013US Claims Tribunal at The Hague, an arrangement that coincided with the multilateral Iran nuclear agreement.)<\/p>\n
We argued over whether Trump\u2019s refusal to acknowledge Putin\u2019s assaults on the United States was an important matter. \u201cOne hundred percent and it is,\u201d Cohen eventually said. But he quickly added, \u201cIt is one person\u2019s opinion.\u201d Presumably mine. He then remarked: \u201cI applaud you. I applaud the writing of this book. I agree with the premise: Russia, bad; America, good.\u201d<\/p>\n
That\u2019s not the premise of the book. But why was he hailing a book that depicts Trump as a useful idiot for Putin who has betrayed the United States? It seemed Cohen was having trouble sticking to his new Trump-friendly stance when confronted with facts.<\/p>\n
Toward the end, Cohen said: \u201cThe beauty of having you, David, come on is the fact that you and I can have a respectful and an open conversation about differences of opinions\u2026That\u2019s what I believe is needed today in America in order for us to actually start to become Americans again.\u201d<\/p>\n
I replied, \u201cI wish that sentiment was held by your friend the president.\u201d I stated that Trump routinely \u201cdenigrates people he doesn\u2019t like as communists, radicals, enemies of the state\u2026He\u2019s a demagogue, and he uses the bully pulpit actually to divide America\u2026I hope now that you\u2019re pals, he will listen to you and that you will spend all your energy and your great strength to convince him to drop the bullshit and try to unite the country so we can have these conversations.\u201d<\/p>\n
Cohen didn\u2019t take the bait. He said: \u201cI appreciate you. I respect you. I wish you the best of luck with your book. I recommend people read it.\u201d I couldn\u2019t argue with that.<\/p>\n
Cohen had wiggled his way back into Trump\u2019s good graces, but here he was telling his listeners to read a book that shows that Trump has been complicit in Putin\u2019s twilight war against the United States. I was confused, but I concluded that Cohen\u2019s recent reversal had caused him some whiplash and he, too, was confused about how to be pro-Trump, appear fair-minded, and not go full MAGA. Good luck with that.<\/p>\n
At one point, I kiddingly remarked that I hoped Trump reads How Russia Won. \u201cSend me the book,\u201d Cohen said. \u201cI\u2019m going to go see him, and I\u2019ll hand it to him.\u201d I asked my publisher to mail Cohen a copy. What are the odds he keeps that promise?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Donald Trump and Michael Cohen during a campaign event on September 21, 2016. Evan Vucci\/AP When I began…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":876417,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[55],"tags":[223,88],"class_list":["post-876416","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-books","tag-books","tag-entertainment"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/876416","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=876416"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/876416\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/876417"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=876416"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=876416"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=876416"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"Michael](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/20261009_trumpcohen.jpg\")
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