The servers to Michael Cohen’s book site are purportedly crashing since the foreword to his new book, Disloyal: A Memoir. The true story of the former personal attorney to President Donald J. Trump has just been made available on the internet. You may recall, that Cohen suffered the same fate as Mary Trump, with attempts being made to enjoin publication. However, Cohen prevailed. The book is scheduled to drop October 6, but Cohen says he would like to move the release up to the end of September. In the meantime, the foreword offers some juicy details, not to mention insight into the mindsets of both Cohen and Trump. (link to the full forward is at the bottom of this piece)
Apart from his wife and children, I knew Trump better than anyone else did. In some ways, I knew him better than even his family did because I bore witness to the real man, in strip clubs, shady business meetings, and in the unguarded moments when he revealed who he really was: a cheat, a liar, a fraud, a bully, a racist, a predator, a con man.
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. I was the one who most encouraged him to run for president in 2011, and then again in 2015, carefully orchestrating the famous trip down the escalator in Trump Tower for him to announce his candidacy. When Trump wanted to reach Russian President Vladimir Putin, via a secret back channel, I was tasked with making the connection in my Keystone Kop fashion. I stiffed contractors on his behalf, ripped off his business partners, lied to his wife Melania to hide his sexual infidelities, and bullied and screamed at anyone who threatened Trump’s path to power. From golden showers in a sex club in Vegas, to tax fraud, to deals with corrupt officials from the former Soviet Union, to catch and kill conspiracies to silence Trump’s clandestine lovers, I wasn’t just a witness to the president’s rise—I was an active and eager participant.
At first blush, since it’s a matter of record now that Cohen arranged the pay offs for Stormy Daniels and Karen McDougal, it would certainly stand to reason that they were not the only two, and that Cohen is the one who would know what skeletons are in which closet. This alone promises to make this book a blockbuster, coming in the last few weeks of the election. Now here Cohen makes a valid and persuasive point.
As you read my story, you will no doubt ask yourself if you like me, or if you would act as I did, and the answer will frequently be no to both of those questions. But permit me to make a point: If you only read stories written by people you like, you will never be able to understand Donald Trump or the current state of the American soul. More than that, it’s only by actually understanding my decisions and actions that you can get inside Trump’s mind and understand his worldview. As anyone in law enforcement will tell you, it’s only gangsters who can reveal the secrets of organized crime. If you want to know how the mob really works, you’ve got to talk to the bad guys. I was one of Trump’s bad guys. In his world, I was one hundred percent a made man.
Cohen goes on to reiterate what he said before Congress, what a childish bunch of dupes the Republican party is, and how he came to write the book.
Now, sitting alone in an upstate New York prison, wearing my green government-issued uniform, I’ve begun writing this story longhand on a yellow legal pad. I often wrote before dawn so not to be disturbed in my thoughts when my fellow inmates awoke. I had to report to the sewage treatment plant where some of us worked for a wage of $8 a month. As the months passed by and I thought about the man I knew so well, I became even more convinced that Trump will never leave office peacefully. The types of scandals that have surfaced in recent months will only continue to emerge with greater and greater levels of treachery and deceit. If Trump wins another four years, these scandals will prove to only be the tip of the iceberg. I’m certain that Trump knows he will face prison time if he leaves office, the inevitable cold Karma to the notorious chants of “Lock Her Up!” But that is the Trump I know in a nutshell. He projects his own sins and crimes onto others, partly to distract and confuse but mostly because he thinks everyone is as corrupt and shameless and ruthless as he is; a poisonous mindset I know all too well. Whoever follows Trump into the White House, if the President doesn’t manage to make himself the leader for life, as he has started to joke about—and Trump never actually jokes- will discover a tangle of frauds and scams and lawlessness. Trump and his minions will do anything to cover up that reality, and I mean anything.
Watching Trump on the evening news in the prison rec room, I almost feel sorry for him. I know him so well and I know his facial tics and tells; I see the cornered look in his eyes as he flails and rants and raves, searching for a protector and advocate, someone willing to fight dirty and destroy his enemies. I see the men who have replaced me and continue to forfeit their reputations by doing the President’s bidding, no matter how dishonest or sleazy or unlawful. Rudy Guiliani, William Barr, Jared Kushner and Mike Pompeo are Trump’s new wannabe fixers, sycophants willing to distort the truth and break the law in the service of the Boss. All this will be to no avail. Trump doesn’t want to hear this, and he will certainly deny it, but he’s lost without his original bulldog lawyer Roy Cohn, or his other former pitbull and personal attorney, Michael Cohen.
During my testimony, Republican House members repeatedly asked me to promise that I wouldn’t write a book. I refused, repeatedly. It was another way of saying I shouldn’t be permitted to tell my story, in essence giving up my First Amendment rights. It was a clear sign of desperation and fear. I have lost many things as a consequence of my decisions and mistakes, including my freedom, but I still retain the right to tell this story about the true threat to our nation and the urgent message for the country it contains.
One last thing I can say with great confidence, as you turn the page and meet the real real Donald Trump for the first time: This is a book the President of the United States does not want you to read.
Hit this link and read the entire foreword. Again, at first blush, my sense of this is that this is going to be the ultimate Trump tell-all. John Bolton’s book provided the perspective of an administration member, Mary Trump’s book the view of a family member, but Cohen’s point of view is that of a member of the mob. We haven’t gotten that one yet. And just the few things he’s saying in the foreword are tantalizing. This is going to be something.
I’m surprised Michael didn’t meet up with an ‘unfortunate accident’ while behind bars, if what he’s got to say is as devastating as this tip of the iceberg indicates. I hope this book is the final nail in tRump’s coffin, especially coming out just before the election.
My thought is that whatever October Surprise Trump has planned, probably something about his campaign being spied on, or Hunter Biden’s resume, it’s going to pale before what Cohen has to say.
Trump himself may well have sprung that October surprise far too early with the postal shenanigans.
Cohen and Bob Woodward. Woodward has 45 on tape along with everyone else he interviewed and the book comes out in September
https://www.marketwatch.com/story/bob-woodwards-new-trump-book-rage-due-out-in-september-2020-08-12
Neither of those things would be a huge surprise that could turn the tide. he’s flogged both endlessly and they’re on life support if they are indeed even alive. And he’s already said the most extreme things he could say about either, so early they’ve been beyond debunked. There never had been a signifiant “October surprise — it’s just a horror story we tell ourselves around our virtual campfire – and will dramatically increased early voting, there never will be.
I think the reason said campfire story, among others, keeps getting circulated, Anastasia, is because people on our side are beginning to lie to themselves about Trump. Now that he’s unveiled on just how truly weak and pathetic he’s become, a narrative is being pushed to make him seem more than he is.
What makes for a cooler story: a vicious mob boss who outthought everybody and we just barely overcame or a senile wannabe mob boss whose only accomplishments have been destroying things he’s given? The ego of most Americans of either political persuasion would never let them admit to the second because it would unmask their OWN weakness. So let’s get started on tweaking that history now…sadly, it’s the American way.
https://www.cnn.com/2020/08/13/politics/trump-campaign-voter-fraud-lawsuit-pennsylvania/index.html
make, I believe every state governor except those who are hopeless tRump sycophants will have to go this route of suing tRump and the Reoublican Party and the tRump campaign for this lie about mail-in voter fraud. How sad that a psycho faux-president has to be sued for lying!
Just finished the foreword two minutes ago. Were the man he was describing still with us instead of effectively going away during that mystery trip to Walter Reed, I would be as anxious as he is. Thankfully for all of us, that man is now a ghost, all the viciousness, none of the finesse.
So I gather the book is “in the can” and the sooner it comes out the better. I hope they get a bunch of copies printed and soon and then hide them away in locations around the country with a planned mid-September full release. Between now and then Cohen, or his publisher can keep hitting Trump with poison darts to keep him off balance and in fear. I just hope I’m right about the book being done and simply undergoing some final editing because Barr is at this very moment pushing HARD to get Cohen back behind bars.
For God’s sake, Denis, OF COURSE it’s done. I hazard to guess that it’s been done for months now; Cohen and/or his publisher have just been picking the right moment to pull that trigger. Throwing Cohen back in the slammer was the usual ineffectual theater from Trump that would have done nothing to stop its release.
Yep. I know this from lots of publishing experience. No book manuscript with an edited foreword (not a great edit, but it’s okay) as comprehensive as this one is remains largely or even a teensy bit unwritten. It doesn’t work that way. Publishers may be a lot of things, but crazy they are not–they do not gamble on claims and unwritten books without a ton of information from the writer or ghost writer. And then not even this with a deadline as tight as this one: October 8th. I’d think maybe May this wasn’t fully done, but we’re more than three months past it.
This guy has so much to say but at least from the foreword, his thoughts are gathered, collected and organized, not written scattershot. And we do know that he had a lot of “stuff” from which to draw stories, chapters, anecdotes–from what I remember, his material was returned to him following his testimony in Congress and before SDNY, Mueller, etc.
I can’t remember who said it here, but ditto on it: this guy is coming at us with a story about Trump that is far rawer and in our faces than could either Mary Trump or John Bolton write.
Rachel Maddow read a good bit of this material last night and she had one quite twitchy, raised eyebrow through much of it. She wouldn’t even touch the golden showers reference but this rings a bell for all of us who remember the scuttlebutt about those pesky, sexy showers in a hotel room in Moscow. Hmmmmmmmmm. How would this work for a guy who is a clean freak, germaphobe?
Denis, enough of the book is done that even if Barr got Cohen behind bars again, it could still be released.
If Mary’s book terrified Trump, I can’t imagine what Cohen’s is doing. We are all witnessing what a raving madman will do to avoid being held accountable for his crimes. We’re entering the red zone, and Cohen’s book release is going to make it white hot.
BREATHE, Roger. And do remember that this part was ALWAYS going to be this bad, regardless of the chain of events involved.
This book appears to be a Golden Opportunity to reveal the real Trump.
I am really worried about what Trump is doing to the Post Office now to prevent mail-in ballots from being delivered on time. As Cohen said Trump will do anything to stay in power. He is starting the birther argument now against Kamala Harris.
Does anyone have any ideas on how we can make sure the Post Office keeps going as it should?
The vets are screaming about not getting their meds because the USPS is owing down service. tRump is losing whole segments of the population with his antics. The problem is, he doesn’t care.
Just wondering if Trump’s dirty birtherism remark isn’t somehow related to the fact he didn’t take his Golden Shower today?
Please forward the forWORD to *rump.