Donald Trump’s business records trial subjected America to an eminently sleazy witness on the stand — making everyone feel like they needed a shower after it was over. Adult film actress Stormy Daniels testified recently, too.
Yes, convicted felon Michael Cohen — Donald Trump’s one-time Fredo-like “fixer,” with a degree from the worst law school in America — was on the stand throughout this week, and it went about how you’d expect.
Cohen pled guilty to lying to banks and to Congress in 2018. He has admitted to lying in federal court. As recently as March, he was accused by a federal judge of committing perjury under oath and denied an early end to his probation.
He’s being propped up by the prosecution — he is, after all, the witness on which their entire flimsy case rests. He’s being pilloried by the defense. And members of the establishment media, with their vested interest in seeing Trump get labeled a “convicted felon” as the 2024 polls look increasingly dire for President Joe Biden, have no choice but to play along with the charade, trumpeting their best available option.
The press benefits from the lack of cameras in the courtroom, so Americans can’t witness the oozing seediness for themselves. Journalists get to replace the overwhelming ick with their laundered, sanitized narrative, in which Cohen has undergone some miraculous reinvention.
But Cohen is the Michael Avenatti of 2024. He’s slick and fame-hungry, and has fashioned himself into a Resistance icon by adding a dash of legal acumen into otherwise generic punditry. Like Avenatti in 2018, when Stormy Daniels first burst onto the cable news scene, Cohen has positioned himself at the center of the story of the moment. And like Avenatti, the performance can only last so long before the house lights come up.
But Cohen’s roots run deeper into the media establishment, intertwined with the New York City media elite, thanks to his longtime association with Trump. In September 2020, Tucker Carlson revealed on his Fox News show an audio recording of Michael Cohen talking with Jeff Zucker, then the head of CNN. It’s a phone call from March 10, 2016, and it represents a window into the connection Cohen has with members of the media who now must grit their teeth and spin him as the savior of the republic.
The final GOP primary debate would be airing later that night on CNN, and Cohen and Zucker were talking shop. “As fond as I am of the boss,” Zucker told Cohen, referring to Trump, “he also has a tendency, like, you know, if I call him or email him, he then is capable of going out at his next rally and saying that we just talked, and I can’t have that, if you know what I’m saying.”
So instead, this would have to be private — at least until it was released in 2020 by Carlson. Zucker then floated giving Trump a CNN show after the election, assuming he would go on to lose. “I have all these proposals for him. I want to do a weekly show with him and all this stuff,” Zucker said.
Zucker and Cohen then proceeded to talk debate strategy — before the debate aired on Zucker’s own network. “Whoever’s around him today should just be calling him a conman all day, so he’s used to it, so when he hears it from Rubio, it doesn’t matter,” Zucker suggested, giving a tip for how Trump’s then-primary opponent Marco Rubio might attack him.
Cohen would occasionally do interviews on CNN and other media outlets as a Trump surrogate in 2016. But he really began to shine starting in 2020 after he turned on Trump, like calling him a racist with Don Lemon during Cohen’s book tour. Recently he’s become a regular on the network, opining on this very trial that’s happening now back in February with Erin Burnett — who hosts the show he perhaps appears on most frequently.
Which is ironic, of course, because Erin Burnett and Trump go way back — like when she would sit next to him as a guest judge in his fake boardroom, on the hit NBC reality show “Celebrity Apprentice” (when NBC was being run by … Jeff Zucker).
There will come a time in the not-too-distant future when Cohen will no longer be useful for the Acela media. They’ll wring out the last vestiges of perceived credibility he has, and he’ll be off the stage, likely returning to his love of TikTok and his podcast with progressive activists.
The media’s love affair with Avenatti eventually soured, once they caught on — or once he no longer could be viably portrayed as a serious foil to Trump. If Cohen does his job and wins over a New York City jury predisposed to hate Trump, he’ll achieve what Avenatti couldn’t. But the pyrrhic victory will undoubtedly leave a bad taste in the mouths of many independent and apolitical voters about this whole slimy process.
Avenatti tweeted this week — from prison: “Unlike many, I have been consistent for 6 years: Michael Cohen is a liar and a total fraud/narcissist who cares only about himself.”
Spoken like a fellow convicted criminal and liar who fell from grace, and perhaps is a bit jealous that someone else is stealing his thunder and enjoying one last moment in the spotlight.
Steve Krakauer, a NewsNation contributor, is the author of “Uncovered: How the Media Got Cozy with Power, Abandoned Its Principles, and Lost the People” and editor and host of the Fourth Watch newsletter and podcast.