Michael Cohen blames ‘Stockholm syndrome’ for letting Trump leer at his daughter

President Trump’s former lawyer Michael Cohen on Monday blamed “Stockholm syndrome” for remaining silent when Trump allegedly called Cohen’s then-teenage daughter “hot.”

Asked by host Joy Behar on ABC’s “The View” how he could “let that slide,” Cohen responded, “I have to refer back to my daughter … when she talks about Stockholm syndrome. I knew it was wrong. Under any other circumstances, I never would have allowed anybody to speak about her that way, but I was part of the cult. There really was no wrong that he could do, even though I knew it was wrong.”

“I knew it was wrong.”@MichaelCohen212 on lewd comments he claims Pres. Trump made about his then 15-year-old daughter and why he let the comments slide: “I did just because, you know, as so many people would say, ‘let Trump be Trump,’ and that’s the problem.” pic.twitter.com/LfaTYD6YAr

— The View (@TheView) September 14, 2020

In his book, “Disloyal,” Michael Cohen claims that during a 2012 meeting at Trump’s Bedminster, N.J., golf club, Trump said of Samantha Cohen, “That’s your daughter? When did she get so hot?”

She was 15 at the time of the alleged incident.

Samantha Cohen also used the term “Stockholm syndrome” in a Vanity Fair interview last week while describing her father’s relationship with Trump.

“I really think he had Stockholm syndrome. That’s the only way I can put it,” she said. “He saw how Trump treated his own children and how mean he was to them, and I think he thought that if he’s treating me like that, then I am part of the family.”

She also weighed in on the specific incident her father described on CNN on Monday, saying that her memory of it was “a little bit less clear” and that she had become “desensitized” to men making similar comments.

“What stood out to me in that moment was he said to my dad, ‘Well, there is no way that she got her looks from you. Thank God you married a beautiful woman,'” she said. “And I was desensitized to men making creepy comments about me, but I was not desensitized to someone blatantly insulting and degrading my father in front of me, someone who I looked up to and loved very much, and that was very upsetting to me.”

Stockholm syndrome, named for a hostage situation during a 1973 bank robbery in Sweden’s capital, refers to prisoners emotionally bonding with their captors. It is not recognized in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, and experts disagree on its legitimacy as a psychological condition.