In an interview with NBC, President Trump’s former lawyer Michael Cohen says Trump regularly exhibited racist behavior in his presence. It’s one of several bombshells that Cohen teased from his memoir “Disloyal,” which was released Tuesday.
When asked by anchor Lester Holt if he ever witnessed Trump exhibiting racism or making racist slurs, Cohen replied, “Unfortunately, all too many times.”
Cohen described a time Trump “asked me if I had known of any country that’s run by ‘a Black’ that’s not an s—hole,” after learning that former South Africa president Nelson Mandela had passed away.
Cohen had replied America, referencing Trump’s predecessor Barack Obama. Trump, he claimed, was displeased. In a tidbit released ahead of the book’s publication, Cohen previously said Trump dislikes Obama so much 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 has been published by CNN.
Cohen — who pleaded guilty in 2018 to lying to Congress, tax evasion and campaign finance fraud involving hush-money payments to women who said they had affairs with Trump — also told Holt he was asked by Trump to lie to first lady Melania Trump about the alleged affairs.
He also said Trump arbitrarily inflated his worth to appear higher on the Forbes 500 list.
“Disloyal” has already climbed to the top of Amazon’s best-seller list.
Watch Cohen’s interview with Holt below, via NBC News.
The highly anticipated new memoir from President Trump’s former lawyer, Michael Cohen, is out today, and it casts the president as a “master manipulator.” @LesterHoltNBC spoke exclusively to Cohen, who says Trump would “manipulate ballots” to stay in office. pic.twitter.com/OcUzKZ1H2E
— TODAY (@TODAYshow) September 8, 2020