New York Times
Opinion
Trump’s a Guy Who’s Tough to Defend
They’ve got better things to do in Dripping Springs.
By Gail Collins Opinion Columnist Feb. 27, 2019
So. Michael Cohen started off his testimony by declaring that the president of the United States was “a racist,” a “con man” and a “cheat.” The Republicans who were supposed to be grilling him responded by saying … um.
Well, mainly they complained that the hearing was happening. (“I am appalled. We could be focused on actual issues that are facing America, like border security.”)
Nobody jumped up and yelled: “A racist? How dare you call this man a racist?” To be fair, one Republican committee member did demur, and brought in a black government appointee to stand there and look diverse.
But you couldn’t say there were a lot of expressions of shock. Nobody announced having it on good authority that all those checks Cohen got from Trump were not reimbursements for the Stormy Daniels payoff, but rather anonymous donations to an orphanage.
The Republicans simply argued, over and over, that the whole thing was a dumb waste of time.
“I talked to my beautiful wife back in Dripping Springs, Tex., just before the hearing. I said, ‘Don’t bother watching,’” said Representative Chip Roy.
The hearing was before the House Oversight Committee, which is, of course, now under new Democratic control. Cohen showed the members a $35,000 check that he said the president gave him as a partial repayment for the Stormy Daniels payoff.
Nothing better than an evidence exhibit. But the public is so inured to Trump scandals now there’s almost no way to raise new excitement about Stormy’s sex-with-the-future-president story. Unless Cohen could have demonstrated that his then-boss wrote “hush money” on the check memo.
Nevertheless, there are always new things to be learned.
For instance, Cohen testified about Donald Trump Jr.’s role in the payoff deal. In passing, he said the president thought his son had “the worst judgment of anyone in the world.”
Wonder how Junior reacted to that? This was presumably before Ivanka, who’s supposed to be the bright one in the family, denounced the idea of a guaranteed minimum wage because she felt all Americans “want to work for what they get.”
Cohen claimed that in all his years of serving as Trump’s hatchet man he never once heard his boss “say anything in private that led me to believe that he loved our nation or wanted to make it better.”
That could have been a cue for Republicans to offer up a multitude of examples to the contrary. But for the most part, all we got was one white male representative after another announcing that Cohen had to be ignored because he’s due to go to “prison for lying.”
Almost everybody who knows Donald Trump appears to be going to prison for lying. Or is awaiting sentencing for lying. Or is facing charges of lying. If you are a Donald Trump intimate and the federal authorities come calling, be careful to tell the truth. Or move to Papua New Guinea.
Even for the most jaded Trump watcher, there were parts of the Cohen testimony worth discussing. For instance, he said Trump threatened legal action to make sure his old high school, colleges and the College Board kept his grades and SAT score secret.
Certainly not a surprise that Trump doesn’t want to publicize the details of his academic career. But still a great question to keep harping on, if only because it will drive him completely nuts. Maybe every day the House Democrats could make a speech about it on the floor. And introduce a C student with a sense of humor who could announce he’s proud to be following in the presidential footsteps of intellectual mediocrity.
Cohen testified that Trump had him going back and forth with Forbes magazine in an attempt to get a good spot on the Wealthiest list. While simultaneously trying to push down the income he reported for tax purposes. Let’s hope the Democrats use it as another lever to get their hands on those tax returns. Truly that would be a development even better than calling Donald Jr. to testify about his role in the Cohen payments and his father’s assessment of his judgment.
We certainly know that Cohen is not … perfect. After all, he spent 12 years as Trump’s lawyer. Representative Jim Jordan, the top Republican on the committee, even brought up Women for Cohen, an account put up to promote his little-known role as a “sex symbol.”
But Cohen made a pretty good witness, looking appropriately miserable and answering questions convincingly, with some balance. He told the lawmakers rumors about a mystery tape showing Trump hitting his wife in an elevator were untrue and “in my opinion that’s not something he would do.” On the other hand, he said Trump did make him call Melania and lie about the Stormy Daniels unpleasantness.
While all this was going on, the president was in Asia, dining with Kim Jong-un of North Korea. Previous negotiations with Kim have produced monster publicity and very little in the way of nuclear disarmament.
Nevertheless, Trump seems to believe this may get him a Nobel Peace Prize. He really seems to want that a lot. Maybe if the Nobel committee offered to trade it for his tax returns …
RELATED
Opinion | Michelle Cottle: Regrets, Michael Cohen Has a Few Feb. 27, 2019
Opinion | Nicholas Kristof: ‘He Is a Racist, He Is a Con Man, and He Is a Cheat’ Feb. 27, 2019
Opinion | Peter Wehner: Republicans Sink Further Into Trump’s Cesspool Feb. 27, 2019
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Gail Collins is an Op-Ed columnist, a former member of the editorial board and was the first woman to serve as Times editorial page editor, from 2001 to 2007. @GailCollins • Facebook
A version of this article appears in print on Feb. 27, 2019, on Page A27 of the New York edition with the headline: Trump’s a Guy Who’s Tough To Defend.
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