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Michael Cohen

Disloyal: A Memoir: The True Story of the Former Personal Attorney to President Donald J. Trump Hardcover – September 8, 2020

by Michael Cohen (Author)

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A #1 New York Times Bestseller!

"I read it cover-to-cover. I did not intend to, but I started at the beginning and didn’t put it down until it was over."—Rachel Maddow, MSNBC

This book almost didn’t see the light of day as government officials tried to bar its publication.

The Inside Story of the Real President Trump, by His Former Attorney and Personal Advisor—The Man Who Helped Get Him Into the Oval Office

Once Donald Trump’s fiercest surrogate, closest confidant, and staunchest defender, Michael Cohen knows where the skeletons are buried.

This is the most devastating business and political horror story of the century. As Trump’s lawyer and “fixer,” Cohen not only witnessed firsthand but was also an active participant in the inner workings of Trump’s business empire, political campaign, and presidential administration.

This is a story that you have not read in newspapers, or on social media, or watched on television. These are accounts that only someone who worked for Trump around the clock for over a decade—not a few months or even a couple of years—could know. Cohen describes Trump’s racist rants against President Barack Obama, Nelson Mandela, and Black and Hispanic people in general, as well as the cruelty, humiliation, and abuse he leveled at family and staff. Whether he’s exposing the fact that Trump engaged in tax fraud by inflating his wealth or electronic fraud by rigging an online survey, or outing Trump’s Neanderthal views towards women or his hush-money payments to clandestine lovers, Cohen pulls no punches.

He shows Trump’s relentless willingness to lie, exaggerate, mislead, or manipulate. Trump emerges as a man without a soul—a man who courts evangelicals and then trashes them, panders to the common man, but then rips off small business owners, a con man who will do or say absolutely anything to win, regardless of the cost to his family, his associates, or his country.

At the heart of Disloyal, we see how Cohen came under the spell of his charismatic "Boss" and, as a result, lost all sense of his moral compass.

The real "real" Donald Trump who permeates these pages—the racist, sexist, homophobic, lying, cheating President—will be discussed, written about, and analyzed for years to come.

Print length

432 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Skyhorse Publishing
Publication date

September 8, 2020
Dimensions

6 x 1.27 x 9 inches
ISBN-10

1510764690
ISBN-13

978-1510764699
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Trump is a master at getting otherwise seemingly sensible people to enter into his fantasyland because of the fear that failure to do so means banishment.
Highlighted by 1,544 Kindle readers
“Can you believe that bullshit?” Trump said, with incredulity, referring to the ritual and the evangelicals. “Can you believe people believe that bullshit?”
Highlighted by 1,365 Kindle readers
“Plus, I will never get the Hispanic vote,” Trump said. “Like the blacks, they’re too stupid to vote for Trump. They’re not my people.”
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From the Publisher

Editorial Reviews

Review

A #1 New York Times Bestseller!

This book almost didn’t see the light of day as government officials tried to bar its publication.

"I read it cover-to-cover. I did not intend to, but I started at the beginning and didn’t put it down until it was over."—Rachel Maddow, MSNBC
“I make the finding that the purpose of transferring Mr. Cohen from furlough and home confinement to jail is retaliatory. And it’s retaliatory because of his desire to exercise his First Amendment rights to publish a book and to discuss anything about the book or anything else he wants on social media and with others.”—Federal District Court Judge Alvin K. Hellerstein

“Trump has tried to stop the publication of unflattering books about him before, including his very recent and unsuccessful attempts to silence his former national security advisor John Bolton and Mary Trump, the President’s niece. But the attempted suppression of Cohen’s book is different from prior efforts because it uses (and abuses) DOJs hammer of incarceration.”—Jennifer Rodgers, CNN

“Was federal law enforcement punishing Cohen because he’d worked on a book critical of the president? Was the White House responsible for orchestrating Cohen’s re-imprisonment? Was Team Trump pulling levers to silence the president’s former fixer ahead of the election?”—Steve Benen, MSNBC

“'JUDGE ORDERS COHEN RELEASED, CITING “RETALIATION” OVER TELL-ALL BOOK.’ A judge agreed that federal officials had returned Michael D. Cohen to prison because he wanted to publish a book about President Trump.”—The New York Times

“The idea that Michael Cohen is sitting in solitary confinement because he won’t sign papers committing not to publish a book is unfathomable. This is the United States of America. We don’t send people to solitary confinement because they want to write a book.”—Alan Dershowitz, author of The Case Against Impeaching Trump

“Michael Cohen’s book to allege Trump made racist comments about Obama and Nelson Mandela, lawsuit says.”—Washington Post

About the Author

Michael Cohen is an American attorney and businessman. He acted as Special Counsel to President Donald J. Trump from 2017-2018 and as Executive VP for the Trump Organization before then. Cohen lives in New York City with his wife and two children.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

DISLOYAL, THE FOREWORD: THE REAL REAL DONALD TRUMP

The President of the United States wanted me dead.

Or, let me say it the way Donald Trump would: He wouldn’t mind if I was dead. That was how Trump talked. Like a mob boss, using language carefully calibrated to convey his desires and demands, while at the same time employing deliberate indirection to insulate himself and avoid actually ordering a hit on his former personal attorney, confidant, consigliere, and, at least in my heart, adopted son.

Driving south from New York City to Washington, DC on I-95 on the cold, gray winter morning of February 24th, 2019, en route to testify against President Trump before both Houses of Congress, I knew he wanted me gone before I could tell the nation what I know about him. Not the billionaire celebrity savior of the country or lying lunatic, not the tabloid tycoon or self-anointed Chosen One, not the avatar @realdonaldtrump of Twitter fame, but the real real Donald Trump—the man very, very, very few people know.

If that sounds overly dramatic, consider the powers Trump possessed and imagine how you might feel if he threatened you personally. Heading south, I wondered if my prospects for survival were also going in that direction. I was acutely aware of the magnitude of Trump’s fury aimed directly at my alleged betrayal. I was wearing a baseball cap and sunglasses and I kept the speedometer at eighty, avoiding the glances of other drivers. Trump’s theory of life, business and politics revolved around threats and the prospect of destruction—financial, electoral, personal, physical—as a weapon. I knew how he worked because I had frequently been the one screaming threats on his behalf as Trump’s fixer and designated thug.

Ever since I had flipped and agreed to cooperate with Robert Mueller and the Special Counsel’s Office, the death threats had come by the hundreds. On my cell phone, by email, snail mail, in tweets, on Facebook, enraged Trump supporters vowed to kill me, and I took those threats very seriously. The President called me a rat and tweeted angry accusations at me, as well as my family. All rats deserve to die, I was told. I was a lowlife Judas they were going to hunt down. I was driving because I couldn’t fly or take the train to Washington. If I had, I was sure I would be mobbed or attacked. For weeks, walking the streets of Manhattan, I was convinced that someone was going to ram me with his car. I was exactly the person Trump was talking about when he said he could shoot and kill someone on 5th Avenue and get away with it.

My mind was spinning as I sped towards DC. For more than a decade, I had been at the center of Trump’s innermost circle. When he came to my son’s bar mitzvah, a generous gesture that I found touching, he told my then thirteen-year-old boy that his Dad was the greatest and that, if he wanted to work at the Trump Organization when he grew up, there would always be a position for him.

“You’re family,” Trump said to my son and me.

And I fucking believed him!

Pulling over at a service plaza, I gassed up and headed inside for a coffee, black no sugar. I looked around to see if I was under surveillance or being followed; a sense of dread consuming my thoughts. Who was that FBI-type in the gray coat or the muscle-bound dude a few paces behind me? The notion that I was being followed or stalked may have seemed crazy; but it was also perfectly logical. I wasn’t just famous—I was perhaps the most infamous person in the country at the time, seen by millions upon millions as a traitor. President Trump controlled all the levers of the Commander in Chief and all the overt and covert powers that come with the highest office in the country. He also possessed a cult-like hold over his supporters, some of them demonstrably unhinged and willing to do anything to please or protect the President. I knew how committed these fanatics were because I’d been one of them: an acolyte obsessed with Donald J. Trump, a demented follower willing to do anything for him, including, as I vowed once to a reporter, to take a bullet.

On the eve of my public testimony, lying in the still of the night in my hotel room, taking a bullet assumed a completely different meaning. That was the level of ruination I had brought upon myself—complete and total destruction. I closed my eyes, wishing the nightmare would end. When I started working for Trump I had been a multi-millionaire lawyer and businessman, and now I was broke and broken; a convicted, disgraced, and disbarred former attorney about to testify against the President on live television before an audience of more than 15 million Americans.

“Hey, Michael Cohen, do your wife and father-in-law know about your girlfriends?” GOP Representative Matt Gaetz tweeted at me that night, to cite just one example of the juvenile idiocy and menace aimed in my direction. “I wonder if she’ll remain faithful when you’re in prison. She’s about to learn a lot…”

Sitting in the green room on the morning of my testimony before the House Oversight Committee, I began to feel the enormous weight of what was about to happen. For some reason, after all that I’d been through, and all I’d put my family and the country through, waiting in that room was the moment when the gravity of what was about to happen truly hit home. The United States was being torn apart, its political and cultural and mental well-being threatened by a clear and present danger named Donald Trump, and I had played a central role in creating this new reality. To half of Americans, it seemed like Trump was effectively a Russian-controlled fraud who had lied and cheated his way to the White House; to the other half of Americans, to Trump’s supporters, the entire Russian scandal was a witch hunt invented by Democrats still unable to accept the fact that Hillary Clinton had lost fair and square in the most surprising upset in the history of American presidential elections.

Both sides were wrong. I knew that the reality was much more complicated and dangerous. Trump had colluded with the Russians, but not in the sophisticated ways imagined by his detractors. I also knew that the Mueller investigation was not a witch-hunt. Trump had cheated in the election, with Russian connivance, as you will discover in these pages, because doing anything—and I mean anything—to “win” has always been his business model and way of life. Trump had also continued to pursue a major real estate deal in Moscow during the campaign. He attempted to insinuate himself into the world of President Vladimir Putin and his coterie of corrupt billionaire oligarchs. I know because I personally ran that deal and kept Trump and his children closely informed of all updates, even as the candidate blatantly lied to the American people saying, “there’s no Russian collusion, I have no dealings with Russia…there’s no Russia.”

The time to testify nearing, I asked the Sergeant at Arms for a few minutes of privacy and the room was cleared. Sitting alone, my thoughts and heart racing, I had the first panic attack of my life. I struggled to breathe and stand. The pressure was too much; I had contemplated suicide in recent weeks, as a way to escape the unrelenting insanity. Reaching for a seat, I started to cry, a flood of emotions overwhelming me: fear, anger, dread, anxiety, relief, terror. It felt something like when I was in the hospital awaiting the birth of my daughter and son, with so many powerful and unprecedented emotions welling up in anticipation. Only now I was that child being born and all of the pain and blood were part of the birth of my new life and identity.

Trying to pull myself together, I went to the private bathroom and checked my eyes to see if they were bloodshot or puffy. To my relief, they weren’t. I splashed my face with cold water and felt a calm coming over me, and then a surge of confidence and adrenaline. I had pled guilty to multiple federal crimes, including lying to Congress, but I was there to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. I knew that Trump and the Republican House members would want me to hesitate, falter, show weakness, even break down. They wanted me to look unreliable, shifty, and uncertain about the truth and myself. This was blood sport and they wanted me to cower. I wasn’t going to give them the satisfaction, I decided. I was going to nail it.

“Showtime,” the Sergeant at Arms called out, opening the door. “You’re on, Mr. Cohen.”

One deep breath and I stepped into the hallway, into a crush of photographers and TV cameras and the craziness of wall-to-wall national obsession. I made my way alone through the jostle and shove of the surging crowd as I experienced the out-of-body sensation of seeing myself on television screens walking in to testify. It was truly bizarre to be at the epicenter of American history at that moment, to personify so many fears and resentments, to be the villain or savior, depending on your point of view, to speak truth to power in an age when truth itself was on trial. There I was, watching myself on TV, the Michael Cohen everyone had an opinion about: liar, snitch, idiot, bully, sycophant, convicted criminal, the least reliable narrator on the planet.

So, please permit me to reintroduce myself in these pages. The one thing I can say with absolute certainty is that whatever you may have heard or thought about me, you don’t know me or my story or the Donald Trump that I know. For more than a decade, I was Trump’s first call every morning and his last call every night. I was in and out of Trump’s office on the 26th floor of the Trump Tower as many as fifty times a day, tending to his every demand. Our cell phones had the same address books, our contacts so entwined, overlapping, and intimate that part of my job was to deal with the endless queries and requests, however large or small, from Trump’s countless rich and famous acquaintances. I called any and all of the people he spoke to, most often on his behalf as his attorney and emissary, and everyone knew that when I spoke to them, it was as good as if they were talking directly to Trump.

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.

To underscore that last crucial point, let me say now that I had agency in my relationship with Trump. I made choices along the way—terrible, heartless, stupid, cruel, dishonest, destructive choices, but they were mine and constituted my reality and life. During my years with Trump, to give one example, I fell out of touch with my sisters and younger brother, as I imagined myself becoming a big shot. I’d made my fortune out of taxi medallions, a business viewed as sketchy if not lower class. On Park Avenue, where I lived, I was definitely nouveau riche, but I had big plans that didn’t include being excluded from the elite. I had a narrative: I wanted to climb the highest mountains of Manhattan’s skyscraping ambition, to inhabit the world from the vantage point of private jets and billion-dollar deals, and I was willing to do whatever it took to get there. Then there was my own considerable ego, short temper, and willingness to deceive to get ahead, regardless of the consequences.

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.

Before I could read my opening statement to the Oversight Committee on the day of my public testimony, the Republicans started to play procedural games. It was clearly an attempt to rattle me, I thought, a spectacle that only demeaned them and the institution itself. As I started to answer questions, it was evident that the Republicans didn’t want to hear a word I had to say, no matter how true or how critical to the future of the country. For all the hard truths I spoke about Trump, I wasn’t entirely critical of him, nor will I be in these pages. I said I know Trump as a human being, not a cartoon character on television, and that means I know he’s full of contradictions.

“Mr. Trump is an enigma,” I testified to the committee. “He is complicated, as am I. He does both good and bad, as do we all. But the bad far outweighs the good, and since taking office, he has become the worst version of himself. He is capable of behaving kindly, but he is not kind. He is capable of committing acts of generosity, but he is not generous. He is capable of being loyal, but he is fundamentally disloyal.”

“Liar, liar, pants on fire,” one of the Republicans taunted me, perfectly expressing the stupidity and lunacy of his party’s antics. To drive this point home, they actually made a sign with a picture of me on it. In bold letters, the sign proclaimed, “Liar, Liar Pants on Fire.”

I recognized the childish games, replete with a Trump-like slogan, because I had played them myself. In the pitiful sight of Republicans throwing aside their dignity and duty in an effort to grovel at Trump’s feet, I saw myself and understood their motives. My insatiable desire to please Trump to gain power for myself, the fatal flaw that led to my ruination, was a Faustian bargain: I would do anything to accumulate, wield, maintain, exert, exploit power. In this way, Donald Trump and I were the most alike; in this naked lust for power, the President and I were soul mates. I was so vulnerable to his magnetic force because he offered an intoxicating cocktail of power, strength, celebrity, and a complete disregard for the rules and realities that govern our lives. To Trump, life was a game and all that mattered was winning. In these dangerous days, I see the Republican Party and Trump’s followers threatening the constitution—which is in far greater peril than is commonly understood—and following one of the worst impulses of humankind: the desire for power at all costs.

“To those who support the President and his rhetoric, as I once did, I pray the country doesn’t make the same mistakes as I have made or pay the heavy price that my family and I are paying,” I testified to Congress, exhorting them to learn from my example.

“Given my experience working for Mr. Trump, I fear that if he loses the election in 2020 that there will never be a peaceful transition of power,” I concluded. “This is why I agreed to appear before you today.”

Representative Elijah Cummings had the final word, as chair of the Oversight Committee. I sat in silence, listening to this now deceased man with decades of experience in the civil rights movement and other forms of public service, who as a lawyer had represented disgraced lawyers like me. He understood that even the least of us deserve the opportunity to seek penance, redemption, and a second chance in life. Cummings was the lone politician I encountered in all my travails who took an interest in me as a human being. When I reported to serve my sentence, he even took steps to ensure my security in prison. It was a selfless act of kindness for which I will always be grateful.

“I know this has been hard,” Cummings said to me and the nation, his words hitting me like a kick in the gut. “I know you’ve faced a lot. I know that you are worried about your family. But this is a part of your destiny. And hopefully this portion of your destiny will lead to a better Michael Cohen, a better Donald Trump, a better United States of America, and a better world. And I mean that from the depths of my heart.”

Representative Cummings concluded by saying, “We are better than this.”

Amen, I thought.

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 pit bull 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.

Michael Cohen
Otisville Federal Prison, Otisville, New York, March 11, 2020

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Skyhorse Publishing; 1st edition (September 8, 2020)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 432 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1510764690
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1510764699
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.36 pounds
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6 x 1.27 x 9 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #9,910 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #19 in Political Corruption & Misconduct
- #20 in US Presidents
- #487 in Memoirs (Books)

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REELECT OR LOCKUP? Lawyer's "Trump Truths" Bedevil Betrayed Base of "Losers & Suckers"

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on September 8, 2020

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This is a very important, timely and recommended book, especially if you are a US patriot preparing to vote by Nov. 3 and are concerned about reelecting the President!

It is important because no other Donald Trump "tell-all" book has been written by a lawyer who served closely for a dozen years, until 2018, as Trump's main confidante and fixer. As Trump and most clients know, if you really want a lawyer's help, you have to disclose to him fully all material facts and client objectives to get actionable advice.

For example, you can listen firsthand to Trump's recorded remarks to Cohen and reliance on Cohen's advice by simply "googling" --- Michael Cohen Donald Trump Tape --- about Trump's desperate efforts just before the 2016 elections to hide, illegally, his porn star cover-up payoffs from his betrayed base and his supine spouse, Melania.

This book is timely because it may be the last chance for millions in Trump's betrayed base to face facts and to avoid being Donald's "losers and suckers" a second time --- Trump's Chumps in spades. In his first term, Trump promised much, but delivered little, other than to his most wealthy supporters. He has instead delivered to his base and to most Americans an out-of-control pandemic, an economic depression and weakened national security that will all only get worse if Trump retains power, legally of otherwise.

A list of some of his many failed 2016 promises are available by simply "googling" --- trump-promises-check -- .

The fact is that this economy just isn’t working for most Americans, who are facing very hard times that are just getting more unbearable — thanks to four years of self-interested political decisions by Trump and his spineless Republican allies. For a fuller, but brief, look at the dismal prospects for most Americans if Trump is reelected, simply "google" --- Gross Domestic Misery Is Rising --- .

As Trump's well-respected co-author of "Art of the Deal" indicated recently, Trump really views his gullible base voters as "losers and suckers", yet many of them still blindly follow him to their increasing personal detriment. Indeed, Cohen writes in this book about the Trumpian view of his base: “The cosmic joke {after the 2016 election} was that Trump convinced a vast swath of working-class white folks in the Midwest that he cared about their well-being .... The truth was that he couldn’t care less.”

Even Trump's Christian base were conned. They have forgotten Jesus' warning in Matt 7:15 about the likes of Trump, “Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ravenous wolves." Donald, in his phony "I made my fortune on my own" disguise, could surely teach some wolves how to be even more ravenous, no?

Cohen is hardly a likeable guy, to be sure. While Cohen's own self admissions of lying earlier and often for Trump may give some readers pause, it is evident to me, however, as an experienced lawyer and former high school chum of Rudy Giuliani, that Cohen's disclosures in this book of Trump's continuous corruption, etc., are mainly credible, especially since AG Bill Barr hovers over Cohen's book disclosures and can be expected to return Cohen to solitary confinement again if he lies in this book .

Speaking of "jailing" Cohen, my Harvard Law mentor, Archibald Cox, who later as Watergate Prosecutor backed jailing almost 50 of Nixon's Republican accomplices, would be astonished by the one-man crime wave that is our current President. That said, it is also evident that many more than 50 of Trump's accomplices, including Barr, Guiliani, Pence, McConnell, McCarthy, Ryan, Pompeo, Mnuchin, Azar, Conway, Hicks, DeJoy, et al., personally fear a comprehensive post-election criminal investigation, by a judicially appointed independent counsel, of Trump's unprecedented wrongdoings that they appear to have aided and abetted for their personal benefit from all indications.

Significantly, Cohen states in the book: "In some ways, I knew him {Trump} 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." Cohen covers in detail the "good, the bad and the ugly", and substantiates ad nauseum his many accusations against Trump.

More recently, Cohen indicated to NBC's Lester Holt that Trump will do anything, including rigging the 2020 election and even having the USA go to war, to help win reelection. Only by winning reelection can Trump even hope to head off some of the likely criminal prosecutions that he and his many Republican aiders and abettors are already at significant risk of.

Trump knows well his remaining choice is likely between spending more years in the White House or the rest of his life in prison! If Trump were to live in the White House to 2024, he knows he can before then try to follow his pal, Putin's example and seek to become President for life. Or he may seek to try to get one of his untalented children elected in 2024. These ineffective and unprincipled children have shown that these apples do not fall far from the tree, notwithstanding the cruel and shameful behavior Trump has publicly exhibited to their mothers.

Cohen's numerous and colorful descriptions of Trump's nonstop political, business and personal misbehavior just confirm the recently reported assessments of Trump's older sister, longtime Federal Judge Maryanne Trump Barry, and his niece, psychologist, Dr. Mary Trump. Their reported assessment is that Trump is, and at least as an adult always has been, in effect, an unprincipled, cruel, unfeeling and unreformable liar and con man obsessed with winning power and making money --- no matter who gets hurt.

The overlapping comments of Cohen and Donald's sister and niece confirm to me that the best way to understand Donald's past behavior, and to predict his future behavior, is to determine what strategies he may think will advance his personal interests the most, even if the strategies are unlawful and may continue to harm seriously millions of Americans suffering from illness and poverty. He wants to stay out of jail, even at any cost to others!

Mary Trump, recently when asked on TV about her response to the recent "Atlantic" article reporting on Trump's shameful and unpatriotic trashing of the military and of veterans as "losers and suckers", responded by saying of her uncle, “Anybody who is surprised by Donald’s comments is once again letting him off the hook when he has time after time demonstrated himself to be nothing but an anti-American, anti-military traitor to this country.” "Traitor", WOW, but unsurprising!

Trump's constant aiding of Putin, which Cohen helps explain more fully as based a lot on Trump's greed and jealousy, really is a betrayal of the USA. Russia has been the USA's most dangerous enemy for over 75 years, but Trump seems determined to build a Trump Tower in Moscow, no matter what the military security harm to the USA and to all Americans!

This book reports on so many of Trump's misdeeds, many of which are reported for the first time, while others previously reported on are described often in greater detail. What is most important, however, is that Cohen was often an "eyewitness", if not a "co-perpetrator", of the misdeeds!

So why does this book matter so much? It matters because it, in effect, is a stark warning of what further irreparable harm Trump can and likely will do if he is reelected this November without any need to control himself for another election in 2024! Even if you, as an American citizen, personally survive this pandemic, depression and foreign subversion, will you survive the next pandemic, depression or foreign subversion under a "liberated" Trump? Please think about this!

Even with a safe and effective Covid vaccine, Trump has so confused Americans by his lies about, and mismanagement of, the pandemic, that it is now uncertain whether the needed number of Americans will take the vaccine to avoid future widespread outbreaks in the USA and abroad. To be sure, the tens of thousands of Americans who have already died, and will continue to die, significantly because Trump set a bad example and avoided wearing a facemask that might harm his hairdo, will be forever lost.

Interestingly, Cohen was appointed to the Republican Finance Committee by Trump, along with other "only the best" promised by Trump: Steve Wynn, Elliot Broidy and Louis DeJoy.

Wynn was forced to resign from his RNC post following sexual misconduct allegations.

Elliott Broidy, who raised millions for Trump’s inaugural, reportedly may be charged soon with violating foreign lobbying laws for his efforts on behalf of China to get the Chinese, Guo Wengui, extradited to China.

Louis DeJoy, the nation's current postmaster general, who appears to be helping Trump sabotage pre-election the US postal system, is also facing serious criminal law questions about his key employees' contributions to Trump's 2016 campaign. Three times as many Democrats are expected to vote by mail, so Trump wants to disenfranchise them at all costs, even by burying their ballots in overload bins until after the election.

Cohen claims that "Donald Trump's presidency is a product of the free press, ... . Not free as in freedom of expression, I mean free as unpaid for. Rallies broadcast live, tweets, press conferences, idiotic interviews, 24-7 wall-to-wall coverage, all without spending a penny. The free press gave America Trump... Right, left, moderate, tabloid, broadsheet, television, radio, Internet, Facebook -- that is who elected Trump and might well elect him again." Some truth to that, no?

A bipartisan group of over 100 current and former senior government and campaign leaders and other experts recently issued a comprehensive analysis of how Trump can unlawfully try to stay in power even if he loses in the November election. Every US patriot and voter should read at least the short summary of this report simply by "googling"---preventing+a+disrupted+presidential+election+and+transition ---.

Cohen's unprecedented book makes it clear that all Americans should vote as soon as legally possible and should also do their best to get their relatives and friends to vote soon as well. All of their lives and livelihoods truly may hang in the balance!

As important as removing Trump, though, voters need as well to remove in this election all Republican candidates for the US Senate and House, as well as Republican candidates for governor and for all state legislatures. The next US president, Congress and each state governor and legislature will promptly need, by new laws and also when necessary, by new amendments to the US Constitution, to make sure the likes of Trump are never elected again.

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As a life-long Republican, I am grateful that Michael Cohen wrote this book

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on September 8, 2020

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Disloyal is eye-opening. I’m very glad that Michael Cohen persevered and it was published. What I have seen of Trump in the news, especially over the past couple of years with his tweets and off-the-cuff remarks, has led me to question his mental competence (as well leaving me stunned that no one has taken his phone away from him). I’m one of the caregivers for my dad-in-law, who suffers from narcissism and dementia, among other things, and their behaviors are alarmingly alike.

Back to the book. At first, I had trouble at believing Cohen, because I misread something in the book, and I had to wrangle my brain past what I thought was a misquote to continue reading the book. (I was wrong about the error. I want to thank the commenters who pointed that out.) However, I continued reading on and was glad that I did.

When I can see how willing Cohen is willing to reveal his shame at his behavior and crimes and how much of his behavior he is testifying to, I have to believe that anyone willing to speak that much truth about their own wrong behavior and mindset is being truthful when they are talking about Trump. (Cohen owns his behavior and greed for power even as he explains Trump’s influence.) I truly believe that there are people who are so charismatic that they pull others into their cult of personality. I think you could base a good doctoral dissertation on the psychological aspects of being pulled into Trump’s orbit and essentially brainwashed.

If you want all the stories, read the book. If you care about integrity, read the book. Judge for yourself.

As I said, I am a lifelong Republican. I have voted Republican since the year I tromped through the snow in New Hampshire with other college students campaigning for Reagan. This may be the first general election that I do not vote for the Republican candidate. (Truthfully, I’m not fond of Biden, either, but currently he seems the lesser evil.) Trump was never the picture of my ideal political candidate; I was hoping for a qualified candidate or a complete overhaul of the American political system (which I vastly prefer). I actually cannot believe the Republican party nominated Trump again. I was and am still flabbergasted. Reading Cohen’s book only emphasizes that everything I thought was true and worse.

While I’m convinced that Trump has always been a conniving, amoral narcissist that Cohen has represented honestly, I believe that now Trump has serious cognitive issues as well based on his bizarre utterances. (One telling example: that Trump thought that simple cognitive test was hard and was confused enough that he thought that acing it meant that he was very intelligent. I can attest from watching my dad that a person can have serious cognitive deficits and still ace that test easily.)

Highly recommended for those with open minds or a desire to see the Republican party nominate someone who deserves to be President.

A few quotes:

“I saw this all the time in Trump, as he sought praise and then offered praise in return, as if the act of bestowing his half-true approval lent the observation more gravitas.”

“He wanted all of his interactions with the press to be manipulated for maximum benefit, no matter the underlying truth, and in a postmodern society where the representation of the thing was more important than the thing itself, at least in Trump’s intuitive way of seeing power and spin, that meant a relentless willingness to lie, exaggerate, mislead, and above all brag and boast and boost.”

“The fact that I was willing to literally physically fight and punch another man in the face on behalf of Mr. Trump should give you a sense of the lengths that I was willing to go to please the Boss, much to the ongoing and growing disgust of my wife and kids.”

“I knew he was a liar and a master manipulator, along with the myriad less-than-sterling characteristics I had witnessed over the years, but I believed his positive qualities outweighed the downsides and perfection shouldn’t be the enemy of good.”

“I was like Gollum in The Lord of the Rings, lusting after the power that would come from possessing the White House—“my precious”—and I was more than willing to lie, cheat, and bully to win. Trump was the only person I had ever encountered who I believed could actually pull off that feat, and I recognized early the raw talent and charisma and pure ruthless ambition to succeed he possessed. I saw what others didn’t, what others thought was a joke, at their own peril, and that was my true motive. I knew Trump would do whatever was necessary to win. I just lacked the imagination and moral purpose to actually think about what that would mean for America, the world, for me, and for my family. Because here’s the thing: When you sell your soul, you do exactly that: sell your soul.”

“… the truth was that the media’s psychotic fascination with Trump was one of the biggest—maybe the biggest—cause for his rise to power.”

“Not that Trump deserved the admiration and support of the devout folks he’d just met. Trump’s true feelings about the encounter with the evangelicals, and the laying on of hands, a supposedly sincere and pious summoning of the will of God, were revealed as I entered Trump’s office at the end of the day to have a final recap of his thoughts on the laying on of hands ceremony. ‘Can you believe that #%&?’ Trump said, with incredulity, referring to the ritual and the evangelicals. ‘Can you believe people believe that #%&?’”

ETA: Tried to make part of the review more coherent and corrected an error pointed out by commenters.

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Top reviews from other countries

Amazon Customer

What a book!

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on September 8, 2020

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Michael Cohen's book is amazing. I finished the whole book in 6 hours. It is un-putdown-able. Seeing Trump's presidential actions from across the pond is one thing, but reading about his pre-presidential behaviour from his closest colleague is quite another. I thought I wouldn't be shocked at anything that I would read in the book but I was wrong. There are so many stories in the book that made me wonder how anyone could actually support him continuously. I can't even understand the blind support M.Cohen provided to Trump despite knowing what he was doing was wrong. Glad to see that Michael Cohen realised his follies and has now told us this story.

I was tempted to buy John Bolton's and Mary Trump's books as well. But after reading Michael Cohen's book, I feel I have had enough of Trump. I wonder if someone could get Rhona Graff to write a book too.

41 people found this helpful

bettyparry

I USED TO BE A TRUMP CULT MEMBER BUT I'M ALLRIGHT NOW.

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on September 16, 2020

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This is a man who admits he was a member of the Trump cult for years. Cohen throughout the book clarifies his guilt and remorse for his actions whilst he was Trump’s fixer. This was over and above the pressure he got over the years from his wife and children to leave Trump. Watching his daughter go into court every day on crutches showed how much she loved and stood by him after all the family had been thro. Watching Trump over the years I was convinced that what you see is what you get, a disgusting human being. But I always thought with Cohen that the bluff, tough guy persona was an act and that there was someone else underneath. Now that he admits he’s left the cult, there’s no one worse than an ex- cult member; the equivalent of an ex-smoker who now is vehemently anti-smoking. Cohen is full of and what I believe is genuinely remorseful and brave to take on the most powerful person on the planet; this includes death threats from his followers.
The FOREWORD explains what he went thru when he testified in front of congress and the stress he was under from the Republican senators who he says are cult followers. They are following Trump mainly out of fear and/or to keep in power. From Gaetz’s pathetic texts to him, to them trying to deny him his First Amendment rights. He says to the reader, you will not like me or the things that I did, but to fully understand Trump you need to deal with people like me and to know the things that he did in secret. Chapter 1. THE APPRENTICE. He starts in 2006 and how he got involved with Trump and the very dirty deeds he did on his behalf to get well in with him. The first thing Trump said to him was the special deal he gave him for the apartments he’d bought in a Trump building. Cohen says he knew it was a lie but played along. (As Comey said, he takes small bites of your soul until he owns you completely). “some primal instinct revelled in the power I possessed if only by proxy and proximity to Trump”.
CHAPTER 2. THE FIXER. “I became his spokesman, thus pit-bull and lawless lawyer…it was physical, emotional, not quite spiritual, but a deep longing and need that Trump filled for me.” He talks about the contracts he cancelled and his bankruptcies which stiffed small companies, “turning union members into another class of stiffed debtors”. He makes clear Trump’s not interested in the little man as he claims, he’s only interested how he can make money off them. CHAPTER 3 EL CARIBE. Cohen talks of his Jewish family upbringing and escape from the Nazis in Poland. He had a middle-class Jewish upbringing but loved working in the El Caribe country club in his teens. He loved the gangsters there and how they operated and wanted to be like them with their power and swagger. “I would practice law, I determined as a kid, but I’d practice it as a gangster”.
CHAPTER 4. LAURA. He talks about how he met his wife, got his degree and became a millionaire partly thru his taxi business as well as the law. He gives details of his life before Trump and buying units in Trump Tower and 1 in Trump Palace. He ran for political office as a Republican but admits he failed miserably. “Laura and I purchased 3 units in Trump Park Avenue..that was life and it was a great one and then the Trump family summoned me unto my destiny and my downfall”. CHAPTER 5 CATCH AND TWIST. “It was obvious that my role as Trump’s personal attorney was essentially managing chaos, as he was always enveloped by crisis and teetering on the brink of disaster. It was exhausting, but also exhilarating”. Cohen talks in detail of some of the sexual assaults Trump committed and how they caught and killed them, ie. he and David Pecker. A constant point he makes is “and the truth didn’t really matter”. “Jill Harth knew that through my office, Trump could crush her like an insect-that was the subtext, and even as we talked politely, the stranglehold of money and power was on her throat”. .. “yes, much of what I did was morally and legally and ethically repulsive and soulless… I loved old jokes; (such as) where the circus worker is shovelling elephant sxxt and someone asks him why he doesn’t find a better job. What, he asks, and leave show business? That was my job; shovelling sxxt but part of the show…throw it in my face he was so much richer than me, but it fed his need to demean people around him, success was always a zero-sum game to him, and he and he alone had to be the winner….i was like Howdy Doody, a ventriloquist doll speaking for the Boss and faithfully saying precisely what he would say, no matter how crass or stupid…his form of leadership revolved around anger, fury, RAGE, and always chaotic blaming and shaming…the lengths I was willing to go to please the Boss, much to the ongoing and growing disgust of my wife and kids….but as a way to stay close to his celebrity and glamour and power”.
CHAPTER 6 TRUMP FOR PRESIDENT (PART1). “in 2000, Trump again flirted with the idea of aiming for the presidency.. Reform Party but the Boss quickly dropped out… the ugly truth is that I wanted Trump to be president was because I wanted the power that he would bring to me..i was more than willing to lie, cheat, and bully to win…when you sell your soul, you do exactly that, sell your soul” He talks about 2008 and Obama becoming President and winning the Nobel Prize and how Trump was demented with jealousy and hatred. Cohen talks of how he kept on at Trump to run for years and finally got him to realize that he had a good shot. Cohen obviously now fully regrets it. “we lose, so what? This can be the greatest infomercial in the history of politics(says Trump)..how did Trump come to command 26% of Republican voters in the spring of 2011? The short answer Birtherism”. Cohen mentions several jokes which Trump hated such as when he was marrying Melania, “prompting the President of NBC, Jeff Zucker, to apologize for not being able to make it to the wedding- but I’ll catch the next one, he said”. Cohen gives further details of the dirty and immoral things Trump did usually assisted by Cohen, and how Stone got involved. Cohen makes it clear that he didn’t get on from the start with Stone and Lewandoski to despising. “So how did the amoral Trump come to be beloved by evangelical voters, a question that remains one of the abiding mysteries to this day…he didn’t care about religion..he’d say whatever they wanted to hear, and they’d here what they wanted to hear…that was Trump’s rat-like cunning.” He goes on to talk about the Falwell’s involvement with the 2 of them, and the scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours that took place between the 4 of them.
CHAPTER 7 STORMY WEATHER (PART 1). He goes into detail over Stormy Daniels intricacies. “Pro-wrestling, porn stars, KFChicken-there was constancy to his appetites…CHAPTER 8 THAT’S WHAT FRIENDS ARE FOR. “Why does Trump have no friends?” Talks about how Trump stitches up Mrs Kluge and benefits enormously as a result but gets her to think that he has done her a big favour. “and so it came to pass. Trump bought the house for $6.7million, making the total price $13m, when the asking price was more than $100m…Because get this, Trump made Patricia Kluge think he’d done her a favour, seriously. She was bankrupted and walked away without a penny”. He talks about the Doral golf club and how Ivanka stitched Cohen up over it, in other words, she’s a mini-me of her father. “under the spell of a cult leader. How did Jim Jones get his followers in Guyana to drink the poisoned Kool-Aid and commit mass suicide. He compares Trump’s followers to J Jones’s followers and the blind devotion he felt. He looks at the cult followers on his prison tv, people like Hannity and Limbaugh, “or the pathetic spectacle of Guiliani committing hara-kiri for Trump, just like I used to do…all of the staff at the Trump Organization routinely joked about how any given day could be your last” (sounds like his cabinet in the White House). Cohen goes into detail about a paint job which clarifies Trump is immoral and a cheapskate but the chaos he causes he blames on others. (His quote of, no I don’t take any responsibility when asked of the Covid deaths). “the lie turned into a delusion turned into a supposed reality and then a grievance, followed by more lies, more bullying, and ultimately the ruthlessness unleashed on folks with no clue about the depravity and dishonesty of the TV star and self-styled mogul…the lack of ethics applied equally to his 3 children, all of them are like jackals when it comes to harming innocent businesspeople.”
CHAPTER 9 THE END OF THE WORLD. Talks of the Trump University scam disaster and how Cohen stitched the students up in Trump’s favour. He goes on to talk about the Agalarovs in Russia who Trump got involved with. Cohen talks about the extremely vulgar shows he went to with the Boss which the Boss absolutely loved. Melania, “just another deal, plain and simple. I can always get another wife Trump said.” Cohen talks about how his family were always on at him to leave Trump and accused him of having Stockholm Syndrome and which he finally accepts now. CHAPTER 10 HOW TO FIX A POLL. Cohen talks of a 2014 on-line poll where the Boss is very low in it and how Cohen was told to fix it for the Boss and does. More examples on how pathetically cheapskate the Boss is. More on the Falwells. CHAPTER 11. TRUMP FOR PRESIDENT (PART2). How the family treat and view Tiffany his “other” daughter. He talks about how Trump manipulates the media for his own ends. Also his academic results and hiding them. Corey Lewandowski joins the show and mutual hate between the 2 of them. Cohen gives a lot of background on him and how he operated. The build up to the declaration of the Boss running to a Neil Young song. “I went along with the madness, thinking Trump was my ticket to the White House”….”Americans line up for hours in the driving snow to hear Trump’s hour long stream-of-consciousness comedy act-because that’s what he is, a stand-up comic, with a grotesque sense of humour”. He talks about Corey and him locking horns over the Boss. The Megyn Kelly interview and how they twisted it to Trump’s favour. “As I’ve been saying since the beginning, Trump was a mobster, plain and simple, and I had just participated in political and personal blackmail”.
CHAPTER 12. RUSSIA (PART 1). He brings in Felix Sater, not a nice man, “a wannabe, a hanger-on and a fantasist. In other words, a perfect partner for Trump.” The discussion of the Trump hotel in Moscow. How to get Putin involved and the oligarchs to pay for it. His love for Putin as the dictator with total control over a nation, in other words what Trump wanted for USA. I believe the following, “the Trump campaign wasn’t organized enough to have secure back channels to the Kremlin…what appeared to be collusion was really a confluence of shared interests to harm Clinton”. (which was the position taken by Mueller). “as the election wore on, I began to believe that Trump secretly wanted Putin’s kind of power for himself…to Trump, his voters are his audience, his chumps, his patsies, his base” CHAPTER 13. RUSSIA, IF YOU’RE LISTENING (PART 2)…”the infighting and backstabbing and leaking that were endemic revealed a candidate who didn’t have the first clue about how to run a disciplined presidential campaign, let alone a nation….the persona of the criminal train wreck named Paul Manafort…a Russian lawyer was offering “dirt” on H Clinton to Jared, Don Jr., and the genius P Manafort. ( which as we now know is illegal).
CHAPTER 14 HURRICANE STORMY (PART 2). He talks about raising money for the campaign… “putting lipstick on a racist, chauvinist pig would be another way of putting it…the reason cults exist is because the cult leader has manifested his own crazy ways of seeing the world”. He goes on to talk about how they destroyed his Republican opponents with fake stories in the National Enquirer and Fox and Friends. “he was now the candidate..amazed, what had started as a lark and a PR stunt had turned into a triumph”. He then goes into detail on Karen McDougal and the machinations he had to go thro to cover Trump’s tracks; then the Access Hollywood tape. All thru it all, everybody assumed Clinton would win especially Team Trump. CHAPTER 15 ELECTION NIGHT. Cohen’s daughter went with him to see Trump lose. He begins to realize that he’s on the way out by the pitiful annual bonus he got Xmas 2016. Also the fact that he knew he wasn’t going to be repaid some dirty money he’d paid for Trump. Cohen goes into how he checked up on the peepee tape and is convinced it doesn’t exist.
Chapter 16 TYPHOON STORMY (PART 3). The story comes out in January 2018 and the storm unleashed, and his hatred for Mike Avenatti, the lawyer. Avenatti kept running down Cohen as a crooked lawyer fixing dirty deeds for Trump . He also said that Cohen would flip and he was right. Cohen writing a book on Trump as a follow up to Art Of The Deal. “I was sure that Trump had my back and Stormy would be a storm in a teacup..April 9, 2018 and the FBI (are at his door and all is downhill from here.) The place is full of agents and he phones President Trump, “I have your back”… that was the last time I ever spoke to Donald Trump”. CHAPTER 17 THE CONVICTION MACHINE . Cohen realized he was being dumped by Trump, “Trump stopped paying my lawyer” etc. He goes thru all the legal stuff over his alleged crimes. CHAPTER 18 OTISVILLE FEDERAL SATELLITE CAMP. May 2019 he goes to jail. “like the worst summer camp…I had to go thru the William Barr Dept of Justice kangaroo-court process…as Michelle Obama stated, Being President doesn’t change who you are, it reveals who you are.. EPILOGUE. JULY 9, 2020 he talks of how Trump and Barr try to take away his First Amendment rights. Ie. kill his book. Judge said he’d never seen a clause like it ever and dismissed the clause.
Cohen says that the conspiracy between Trump and Russia didn’t happen as Mueller said. The team were so disorganized that it was a joke. There was collusion between Manafort and Russians. Cohen would love to testify in a court of law against Trump and put him behind bars where he belongs. He’s very critical of the Steele Dossier. He makes no mention of whether Putin has leverage over Trump. The appendices in the kindle book are virtually unreadable. It’s well worth a read to see how a cult member leaves the cult and what he has to go thru. His family stuck by him as they knew the real Cohen behind the tough guy persona. Cohen says that the biggest factor for Trump winning was the media. It gave him so much copy for free. (all publicity is good publicity). His skill in playing the media for his own ends was the crucial factor. The book reminded me very much of the Lewis book IT CANT HAPPEN HERE.

32 people found this helpful

Pat Barnett

I, too, needed a shower after reading this

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on September 26, 2020

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I have read several books about Trump now but how strange that none of them, except this one, even mention Michael Cohen. Even if Cohen didn’t bother to study at school, his editor should know the difference between ‘affect’ and ‘effect’ and that Jeffrey Epstein’s given name was not Jeffery - just plain sloppy! He ‘dialed her digits’ – what a strange statement! It is clear that no-one associated with this book speaks Spanish as El Caribe means the Caribbean so reading the El Caribe so often is irritating. Neither does anyone understand the meaning of ‘parsing’, ‘redout’ or ‘redoubt’. There is a pop star called Emin? The ‘lengths’ to which he would go had no ‘bottom’ - what does this mean? Dissent and descent are not the same, nor are envelops and envelopes and the word is consigliere not consigliore. There ‘were’ a bunch. Really? Sloppy editing made this foul book about two very unpleasant men a total waste of money, sorry I bothered. And why do some reviewers feel they have to précis the entire book when people just want to skim through reviews before reading a book?

24 people found this helpful

Ian James

Sleazy, Self-pitying, and a Gripping Read

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on September 10, 2020

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Cohen was Trump's sleazy fixer for a decade, complicit in ruining many people's lives, including honest trades people who were never paid for work done on Trump's properties. He reveals the sordid story of how he worked for Trump: the immorality, the bullying, the tawdry mendacity and the pandering to Trump's gargantuan ego. He comes a cropper as a consequence. Sentenced to three years jail, the run-up to his denouement is the most unsatisfactory and unexplored part of the sordid tale. While reading the book, I watched an interview with Cohen on CNN with Don Lemon. He was combative, self-serving, unpleasant. His vicious and selfish personality suited his employment during his years in Trump's employ. After reading the book, I needed a shower. It's a revealing book. The subject and author deserve to be despised.

13 people found this helpful

Evelyn W

Unique insight into the character and appeal of Trump

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on January 13, 2023

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This book far exceeded my expectations. In fact, I wasnt expecting to like or approve of this book because of the author, but Cohen does nothing to excuse his role in Trump's dealings both before and during his tumultuous presidency - in fact, he is pitiless against himself, showing how he personally damaged people and businesses in the service of Trump and I ended up rather admiring his courage. The book has a real ring of truth although Cohen does cover up a couple of issues (I suspect revealing them could put him at risk). This is the only book I've read which shows the psychological and moral hold which Trump has over his victims and explains how normal, well-meaning people can be deceived and sucked into it. We see how he attracted evangelical Christians, manipulated his popularity and crushed his enemies. This is a world of ruthless, shady business dealings and politics at their dirtiest. It is a riveting and alarming read with many lessons to be learned about the path of dictatorship.

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