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There are reasons why there has never been an intimate portrait of Donald Trump, the man. In part, it’s because he has a million acquaintances, pals, and hangers on, but no real friends. He has no one he trusts to keep his secrets. For ten years, he certainly had me, and I was always there for him, and look what happened to me. I urge you to really consider that fact: Trump has no true friends. He has lived his entire life avoiding and evading taking responsibility for his actions. He crushed or cheated all who stood in his way, but I know where the skeletons are buried because I was the one who buried them.

There have been many books written about Donald J. Trump. Most deal in tracking down his many criminal acts. Some offer a look at how he operates as president. Some look into his life as a real estate mogul. Some look into his relationships with foreign nations, Russia most particularly. There are many books that look into his significance as a prime example of a world-wide flowering of authoritarianism. But few people can offer the sort of close-up, long-term, personal account of the man like Michael Cohen can. (The only other being Mary Trump, in her book Too Much and Never Enough)


Michael Cohen and you-know-who - image from The Atlantic

Cohen offers a history of how he was brought into Trump’s circle, how exciting it was to be working for The Donald, engaging in all sorts of trickery, underhandedness, and brutality. That this appealed to Cohen, and proved to be work at which he excelled, says a lot about him. Cohen accepts that he has done many bad things, and does not let himself off the hook for his actions. His early life, pre-Trump is interesting and offers an early manifestation of the not-so-nice guy he would become, being attracted to gangsters, their lifestyle, their power, their code, their violence. It was one of the things that attracted him to Trump, whom he describe as a mobster don.

He didn’t need me to be a lawyer when he was in the right. He needed a lawyer for when he was in the wrong: when he was trying to go around the law, or offer a twisted or tortured interpretation to an agreement that could be used to screw the other side.

Cohen blackmailed a tenant who was holding up work on a Trump property, promising to make the guy’s son’s life a living hell if he did not play ball. He tells of sundry women Trump had harassed or had sex with, arranging to make accusations go away, for a price, working hand in glove with David Pecker, publisher of the National Inquirer, to catch and kill many of these tales. He took care of rigging a vote CNBC was conducting to determine the most important twenty-five business people alive. He sued Benjamin Moore for the poor quality of paint used in the Doral resort, when it was Donald who had gone out of his way to buy the cheapest crap they sold.

One of the more interesting tidbits was how Donny Junior hated the business, and having to deal with his father. He would rather be raising cattle and hunting buffalo. But his father beat him into submission just as Donald’s father, Fred, had beaten him into the sort of person he thought worthy of being his son. (A monster like pop) Other family observations were on Ivanka having daddy’s sociopathic disregard for everyone, and how Tiffany is mostly kept out of the family loop because she is not considered pretty enough to be an asset.

I expect that you have heard or seen most of the juicy bits from this book. It very successfully portrays a monster of a human being, a creature out of mythology, so corrupt, so self-centered, so delusional as to be barely human. A caricature of a mob boss, although one with some particular gifts. He has a nose for the jugular, taking advantage of anyone he can in order to stuff more money into his pockets. Cohen tells how Trump screwed a wealthy woman who had hit hard times, by taking her $100 million property for $13 million and convincing her that he was doing her a favor. Any who have watched Trump knows that has no loyalty to anyone. He will throw anyone under the bus, will hide behind lawyers and doting yes-men, all the while denying all responsibility for his lifetime of crime.

Among the revelations is Trump’s contempt for the religious sorts who had been asked to a meeting in Trump Tower. After they left, having all laid hands on him together,

“Can you believe that bullshit?� Trump said, with incredulity, referring to the ritual and the evangelicals. “Can you believe people believe that bullshit?

He lets us know that Melania knows who she married, and declines to hear any information about Donald’s philanderings, that he regularly uses his financial muscle to aim nuclear-powered lawyers at any he seeks to exploit, leaving them unable to defend themselves against his thievery, the cost of defense lawyers being much greater than the cost of just walking away. He lets us know that the Trump trio of children, Ivanka, Junior, and Eric are just as monstrous when it comes to exploiting anyone with less power, with less ability to stand up to their bullying. Trump’s racism comes through loud and clear, with his visceral hatred of Obama a prime manifestation of this, even before the infamous .

He describes a world in which Trump has surrounded himself with such a band of toadies, that there is no one left who will dare to speak truth to him. This only reinforces his megalomania and narcissism. He was always, but is now even moreso, a “boy in a bubble.� No criticism or negative news comes in, only his own thoughts, rants, and tweets go out.

Cohen makes a case that there really was no real collusion between Trump and the Russians, making a point of saying that he was not much involved in most of those connections, saying that what Trump saw in Putin was incredible wealth, something he wanted for himself.

Ask yourself this question: What does Trump most admire and worship? The answer is money. Now ask yourself, who is the richest man in the world? “Putin is the richest man in the world by a multiple,� Trump often told me. “In fact, if you think about it, Putin controls twenty five percent of the Russian economy, including every major business, like Gazprom. Imagine controlling twenty five percent of the wealth of a country. Wouldn’t that be fucking amazing?�

He adds that Putin and Trump’s mutual hatred of Hilary Clinton gave them, common purpose, without requiring coordination. Frankly, I take this with a grain of salt. There may have been other parties more involved in that end of things in Trumplandia, but it seems to me that Cohen would have at least had some sense of what was up. Also, there is no mention in the book of the mysterious server, present in Trump Tower, that connected Trump to a Russian bank, and which was removed once it became known that it was a target of investigative journalists and possibly the FBI. Really? Cohen, knew nothing of this? Possible, I suppose, but it seems unlikely. So, if you are interested in intel re the Trump-Russia connection, this is not the best place to look.

But the most important piece of analysis Cohen offers is the following:

If you want to understand how Donald J. Trump became president, you have to grasp the essential fact that by far the most important element wasn’t nationalism, or populism or racism, or religion, or the rise of white supremacy, or strongman authoritarianism. It wasn’t Russia, or lying, or James Comey, though all those forces were hugely influential. It wasn’t Hilary Clinton…No, the biggest influence by far—by a country mile—was the media. Donald Trump’s presidency is a product of the free press…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. Right, left, moderate, tabloid, broadsheet, television, radio, Internet, Facebook—that is who elected Trump and who might well elect him again.

He is amazed at how gullible the mainstream media has been and continues to be, allowing Trump to suck them in every time with BS of diverse sorts, truth-free more often than not, just to keep his name and his face in the news. Earned media Trump calls it, but mostly it is a con-artist taking advantage of a mark.

We know that those dedicated to the preservation of the cult of Trump have done their screaming about how Michael Cohen is a convicted liar and that nothing he says can be believed. It was my take that most of the material here is on the up-and-up. Cohen has testified significantly with Congress, has worked with prosecutors in New York and DC, has plenty of legal reasons not to be promoting untruths. He presents himself with a contrite persona, which I take to be true. We have no reason to disbelieve his compelling tales of growing up impressed by mobsters, and can understand, from that, the appeal of someone like Trump. He describes many of the crimes he committed while working for the future president and accepts responsibility for his actions. The one exception being that he contends that he pled guilty to tax fraud not because he believed himself actually guilty, but because if he didn’t the prosecutors would start going after his wife. He makes it clear he was guilty of plenty more.

Underneath all the layers of delusion and wishful thinking and willful ignorance and stupidity, I was like Gollum in The Lord of the Rings, lusting after the power that would come from possessing The White House--"my precious�--and I was more than willing to lie, cheat, and bully to win.

True believers in Trump will not even read this book, just presuming that it is a pack of lies, or fearing it might be true, but being unwilling to challenge their Trump/Truth barriers. For the rest of us it is yet another illuminating piece in the puzzle that is Donald Trump. It shows how one might be drawn in to the 24/7 craziness. And shows, from a place of professional intimacy, just what an awful human being, and danger to the nation and the world Trump is, all to satisfy his insatiable greed and ego. Cohen has stated in interviews that Trump is above nothing when it comes to the election, including starting a war to distract, or seek to delay election day. He is already very publicly trying to suppress the vote and is making it clear that he will seek to have hundreds of thousand, maybe millions of legitimate votes thrown out on legal technicalities. There are plenty of reasons to fear Donald Trump. Michael Cohen has given us more. Disloyal is an entertaining read even if you are not interested in politics, but really you should be interested in politics if you value your freedoms, if you value your democracy, if you value your life. Disloyal offers a look at the man behind the curtain. He is not a wonderful wizard.


Review posted � October 30, 2020

Date Published � September 8, 2020


=============================EXTRA STUFF

Links to the author’s , and pages

Interviews
-----NBC News � with - video 5:19
-----Vanity Fair � with by Emily Jane Fox
-----Rollingstone - by Peter Wade
-----MSNBC - - by Rachel Maddow
----- MSNBC - - by Rachel Maddow

Items of Interest
-----Politico.com -
-----C-Span - Michael Cohen Testimony Before House Oversight Committee - with separate tabs for areas of interest
-----The New Yorker - by Dexter Filkins