I’m reading Michael Cohen’s book, “Disloyal” because nobody knows more about Trump’s dealings than his personal lawyer and vicious attack dog sent out to swindle and destroy on his behalf – Michael Cohen. He went to jail for lying on behalf of Trump. He has things to say.
The book is certainly about the depravity of Trump, but it is also a book about his own depravity and how he came to be Trump’s slave. He asks and tries to answer the question – how did he end up stooping so low as to do the terrible things that Trump demanded. His best answer is the one that I think tells us why the millions of Trump cultists are Trump’s cult. After he explained his behavior with a list of more acceptable, policy driven reasons, he came upon the humiliating truth:
“But here’s the ugly truth—a motive I share with deep and abiding regret and shame, and one only unearthed after much soul searching and reflection as I painted the walls in prison and stared at the ceiling from my bunk. The real real truth about why I wanted Trump to be president was because I wanted the power that he would bring to me. I wanted to be able to crush my enemies and rule the world.”
That seems like hyperbole but I don’t think it is. Someone else recently wrote the reason the Trump cult adores Trump is because he hates the same people they do. And they want him to crush them on their behalf.
Here are a few other of his descriptions of his descent into Trump hell.
His first meeting, Trump congratulated Cohen for getting such a good deal on the apartments he bought in Trump Tower. The truth was that Cohen didn’t get a deal, he just paid the asking price.
“But there it was: within the first few seconds of our meeting, Donald Trump had lied to me, directly, demonstrably and without doubt. What was I supposed to do, if I had possessed the wherewithal to gather my wits and take on the implications? Call Trump on it? The lie seemed silly, harmless, and childish, the kind of fib that was pointless to contest; it occurred to me that Trump might actually believe it, too. In a matter of a couple of sentences, with no conscious thought or understanding of what was actually happening, I had given my unspoken consent to start to play along in a charade that I would come to learn was all-devouring and deadly serious”….
Elsewhere:
“I confess I never really did understand why pleasing Trump meant so much to me, and others. To this day I don’t have the full answer. In a matter of a couple of months, I had started falling under the spell of Donald Trump. The question no longer was what I would do for Trump—the question was what I wouldn’t do….
Like a confidence artist, Trump was showing me that he inhabited a different type of reality, one that he would share with me alone, a world that was filled with wonder and excitement and power and intrigue and adulation. All I had to do was do what I was told, without question or a second thought. I didn’t just accept this invitation; I leapt at it. I wasn’t Trump’s mark as much as I was his acolyte, a willing participant in a fantasy that heightened my senses and my sense of self…. “Stay close, my man,” Trump whispered to me in the lobby. “These are Trump people. Isn’t this something?”
Elsewhere Cohen said that Trump was a master at spotting those who would be subservient to him. Look at the news. You see these people lying for Trump every day. They have sold their integrity, honor, and souls to a soulless and bottomless pit of greed, hostility, and grandiose ego.
Cohen, Michael. Disloyal: A Memoir: The True Story of the Former Personal Attorney to President Donald J. Trump Skyhorse. Kindle Edition.
