I considered calling this post The Return Of The Prodigal Sycophant but I haven’t done a malaka of the week post in nearly a month. It’s also Cohen’s second bite at the sour malakatude apple, the first came way back in 2015. He’s back in the news in the most humiliating way imaginable. And that is why Michael Cohen is malaka of the week.
I’m surprised that anyone is surprised that Michael Cohen is crawling back to Donald Trump. He was an unlikely resistance hero to begin with. His entire life revolved around the Kaiser of Chaos before their massive falling out. He was a reluctant foe but never reticent. Reticence isn’t his jam, malakatude is.
Cohen has been slipping back into Trump’s good graces for much of the year. In July, Cohen got a gig as a radio big mouth on a NYC station owned by a Trump ally who I refuse to call a countryman, John Catsimatidis. During the Cohen-Trump breakup that wouldn’t have happened, but everything is transactional for both Trump and his former fixer. Just ask his co-author:
“Everything is transactional,” said Brian Karem, a journalist who helped Mr. Cohen write the second of his books assailing Mr. Trump. “It’s the weirdest example yet of the transactional nature of the president of the United States and those around him. Who knows him better than Michael? I’m just surprised that it took him this long. The first thing I said was, ‘Wow, it took you long enough.’”
The show is called When You Know, You Know. The Insult Comedian phoned in to the show, afterwards claiming that Cohen had recanted his testimony in Trump’s hush money trial. That was, once again, a lie:
In his eagerness to return to the president’s good graces, Mr. Cohen now says that he “felt pressured and coerced” by prosecutors to testify. But he has not actually disavowed anything that he swore to under oath about Mr. Trump’s hush money scheme to cover up an affair with an adult film actress or about his former boss’s efforts to defraud his lenders.”
Cohen’s turn against Trump was always about self-preservation. He wasn’t contrite, he was calculating. Cohen claimed he’d flee the country if Trump won in 2024. He did not. He lacked the cold hard cash to become a bona fide MAGA exile. He just wanted to see the back of Todd Blanche and MAGA’S retribution squad:
It looks like Blanche was about to slap Cohen in that courtroom sketch. Many want to slap Cohen for crawling back to Trump. I’ll stick to calling him out for his weasley malakatude.
I don’t expect Cohen to recant his testimony. It could lead to perjury charges and the other evidence in the case is strong. Additionally, Trump can’t pardon him over state perjury charges and New York officials have stronger backbones than Colorado Gov Jared Polis who commuted the sentence of election denier Tina Peters on state charges under pressure from the White House. The gubernatorial malakatude, it burns.
My position on Michael Cohen in his renegade phase is simple and pragmatic: The enemy of my enemy is my acquaintance. I’ll never say friend because I always thought Cohen was a Trump Mini-Me at heart. And that is why Michael Cohen is malaka of the week.
The last word goes to Tom Petty:
