Michael Cohen, President Donald Trump’s former lawyer, released his new tell-all, “Disloyal,” on Tuesday. There were a number of big takeaways from the book, including Cohen’s claims that Trump made racist remarks about Black and Latino Americans as well as world leaders of color.
Cohen — who pleaded guilty in 2018 of lying to Congress, tax evasion and campaign finance fraud involving hush-money payments to women who said they had had extramarital affairs with Trump — saw his book shoot to the top of the Amazon best-seller list, in part thanks to revelations like the ones below.
1. “Only the Blacks”
According to Cohen, Trump commented while driving through a neighborhood in Chicago, “Only the Blacks could live this way.” Cohen discussed that comment in an interview with NBC News’ Lester Holt, saying he pushed back on the assertion.
2. Black-run countries are all “s—holes”
Cohen also said that following the 2013 death of former South African President Nelson Mandela, Trump “asked me if I had known of any country that’s run by a Black that’s not an s—hole.”When Cohen suggested America, referencing then-president Barack Obama, Trump was displeased, he said. That leads to…
3. The “Faux-Bama” stand-in
Trump hated Obama so much, according to his former fixer, that he once filmed a video in which he berated and then “fired” an actor hired to impersonate the 44th president. Cohen said that Trump “ritualistically belittled” the actor, described as “Faux-Bama,” and then fired him. Cohen doesn’t say when the event took place or who the actor was, but he did include a photo, which was published by CNN ahead of the book’s release.
4. Lying to Melania
Cohen also told Holt that he was asked to lie to first lady Melania Trump about the alleged affairs. “I would lie to her and I would lie to her at sort of the request of — and for the benefit of — Mr. Trump, my boss,” he told Holt. He added, “The one thing I can tell you about our first lady, Melania Trump, is that she knew I was lying the whole time but she had enough class not to call me out on it.”
5. Asset inflation
Cohen doesn’t shy away from assertions he’s made in the past, either, about Trump inflating his assets to be counted on the list of the world’s richest people (which Cohen said in 2019 during testimony before the House Oversight Committee) or poll-rigging done by Trump’s campaign in 2016 (which he tweeted about in 2019).
As NBC News noted, the White House has dismissed Cohen’s tell-all, saying the former fixer “readily admits to lying routinely but expects people to believe him now so that he can make money from book sales.”