A picture is worth a thousand words and when you look at Trump and his whipped dog, Todd Blanche, standing outside the courthouse, you’ll get the story. Simply, the day’s testimony featured Michael Cohen, who hit a home run in early critics’ appraisal and this evening you’ll get plenty of commentary. Cohen was soft spoken, composed and exact. Those were the proper notes to strike because along with the documentary evidence which corroborated each point of his testimony, his credibility was extremely high. That is bad news for Trump and his lawyers. Their one hope was to destroy the credibility of Cohen and that just went up in smoke. Now their last and only hope is to destroy him on cross. Good luck, Mr. Blanche.
Just that this whole shtick is weak and desperate. 🙄
— Art Candee 🍿🥤 (@ArtCandee) May 13, 2024
You notice that legal expert (and one-time acting AG) Matt Whittaker was quoted here as saying what a bad thing it was that Trump was kept off the campaign trail. There’s a video at the end of this piece on Matt Whittaker’s “History Of Time-Travel, Toilets, and Bigfoot.” Once again, only the best people.
And what is up with that sound? Trump sounds like he’s broadcasting from the men’s room of the Greyhound bus station, or maybe the sewer itself, which if you think about it is quite apropo. Johnathan Alter at the New York Times offers a recap:
Cohen, Trump’s former lawyer and fixer, is willing to look like a stooge — pathetically eager for any praise from the boss — to implant in jurors’ minds that even in the absence of incriminating emails, he should be believed because of all the time he spent looking for Brownie points from Trump. When he did so, he was implicating Trump.
Cohen’s testimony about the Playboy model Karen McDougal, who says she had a nine-month affair with Trump, is important beyond Trump describing her to Cohen as “beautiful.” It cemented Trump’s attention to detail, which we’ve heard a lot about already. He constantly asked for updates on the hush money that American Media Inc., publisher of The National Enquirer, was paying at his direction to McDougal, replying, “Great!” or “Fantastic,” when Cohen delivered them.
Cohen’s tape of Trump discussing that deal landed hard when it was played, and not just because it was Trump’s voice talking about “150” — a clear reference to the $150,000 in hush money that Trump — through Cohen and A.M.I. — was originally going to pay McDougal. Trump’s micromanaging, which we’ve heard about for two weeks, came to life in a way that didn’t help him. And when Cohen dissected practically every moment of the call, there was no mistaking the meaning of the brief conversation.
When Cohen told Trump that Stormy Daniels was shopping her story, “Trump was really angry with me,” he said. Trump told Cohen: “‘I thought you had this under control, I thought you took care of this! … Just take care of it!’”
According to Cohen, Trump thought he would surely lose the 2016 election if the Daniels story came out. He testified that Trump said, “This is a disaster, a total disaster. Women will hate me,” and added that “guys, they think it’s cool” to have sex with a porn star, “but this is going to be a disaster for the campaign.” In combination with the fallout from the “Access Hollywood” tapes, they agreed, it would send his already low polling with women into a tailspin.
“Get control of it!” Trump barked, Cohen testified. “Just get past the election. If I win, it’ll have no relevance when I’m president. And if I lose, I don’t really care.”
You see why this is so damaging on its face. Trump knew about every step of the process, he micromanaged every step of the process. So his chief defense that the sexual encounter with Stormy Daniels never happened is coming apart readily at the seams. There’s too much documentary evidence and Cohen is leading Trump down the primrose path here, one step at a time, delivering blow after blow.
Cross examination is expected to begin Tuesday afternoon. That is Todd Blanche’s sink or swim moment. And right now, he’s swimming against the tide. And tomorrow morning, things can get worse. In fact, depend on it.
Now, as promised, a walk down memory lane to see what Matt Whitaker is all about. This is where we were and it will be much much worse than this if Trump gets back in.
Some folks at P.Z. were convinced Cohen would screw the pooch. Looks like he kept it together and testified in a professional manner. Granted, he get cross-examined tomorrow (?) and Blanche’s job, pretty much sole job at this point, is to get Cohen to f*ck up. We saw just how well Blanche does this when he cross-examined Ms. Daniels so Cohen probably doesn’t have much to worry about.
Lanny Davis is no one’s fool (I suspect he’s charging Cohen a teeny percentage of his usual fee: good publicity AND he probably thinks of Trump like we do) and Lanny’s one job is to make sure Mike doesn’t f*#k up! ie “Mike, keep your cool at all costs and above all else, say NOTHING but 100% verifiable truth and if you’re not 100% sure, say so!”
Simple and easy coaching, and Michael is VERY motivated to listen and follow his coache’s coaching. Looks like he may be sliding home tomorrow untouched. Fingers crossed everyone!!!!