First Draft

I know you’ve all heard the story about Donald Trump, one of his ex-wives and the rape allegations made in a 1993 book. His ex has denied it, and I’ll let others deal with that aspect of the story. What I am interested in is the thuggish response of Trump’s lawyer, Michael Cohen. Strike the word lawyer, he comes off as more of a gangster’s mouthpiece than an attorney. (Cohen reminds me of Gotti’s lawyer Bruce Cutler, only with better hair.) And that is why Michael Cohen is malaka of the week.

Cohen is not only as arrogant and obnoxious as his client, he’s as ignorant. He claimed that marital rape is NOT illegal. He’s wrong about that. It has been against the law in New York state since 1984. Before I get to Cohen’s thuggish and boorish threats against two reporters, he issued a non-apology apology Tuesday but I think he’s only sorry for getting caught:

““As an attorney, husband and father there are many injustices that offend me but nothing more than charges of rape or racism. They hit me at my core. Rarely am I surprised by the press, but the gall of this particular reporter to make such a reprehensible and false allegation against Mr. Trump truly stunned me. In my moment of shock and anger, I made an inarticulate comment – which I do not believe — and which I apologize for entirely.”

Inarticulate is a good word to describe this tirade in apology drag. I’m uncertain as to what exactly Counselor Malaka is apologizing for. The rape mistake? Or is it over the mob lawyer style threats made against the reporters? Beats the hell outta me. He should apologize for both. Here are the malakatudinous threats in question:

“I will make sure that you and I meet one day while we’re in the courthouse,” Cohen threatened writers Tim Mak and Brandy Zadrozny, if they reported on the 1993 book “Lost Tycoon: The Many Lives of Donald J. Trump,” by Harry Hurt III. “And I will take you for every penny you still don’t have. And I will come after your Daily Beast and everybody else that you possibly know. So I’m warning you, tread very fucking lightly, because what I’m going to do to you is going to be fucking disgusting. You understand me?”

“You write a story that has Mr. Trump’s name in it, with the word ‘rape,’ and I’m going to mess your life up…for as long as you’re on this frickin’ planet…you’re going to have judgments against you, so much money, you’ll never know how to get out from underneath it.”

It’s a pity that Mr. Cohen wasn’t old enough to have worked for CREEP in 1972. He sounds like John Mitchell’s kind of guy. These threats reek of malakatude and everything about the legal profession that I despise. Cohen also lost his cool: competent counsel does not yell and scream threats, they get all icy and shit. The best way to stick a shystery shiv in is with a smile on your face.

If  Cohen’s non-apology apology is supposed to apply to his blustery threat against the reporters, I don’t buy it. He meant what he said when he said it. It’s the Trumpian style: talk big, yell, scream, bully, and call people LOSERS. The accumulation of malakatude will eventually catch up with Trump. I realize that’s an unfashionable view right now but the MSM depends on hive-mind thinking and I’m a lone wolf even if I rarely howl at the full moon:

Back to the Nixonian analogy. It’s an apt one since  Nixon tattoo wearing veteran GOP ratfucker and conspiracy theorist Roger Stone is in the Trump camp as a “strategist.”Stone is more of a saboteur than anything else. His presence as a Trump adviser is indicative of the kind of asshole that Trump is. Right now, he’s a popular asshole but a few more outbursts from malakas such as Michael Cohen and the Trump campaign will be sleeping with the fishes.

This seems like as good a place as any to tell a story about a lawyer I worked for as a young legal assistant. Let’s call him Phil. He was very intelligent and very angry. His face was always red and his eyes full of scorn for his inferiors, which seemed to be everyone who wasn’t a partner or well-heeled client. He was a very impatient man with an annoying habit of asking “Are we speaking the same language?” when hearing something that displeased him. One day I’d had enough. He said “Are we speaking the same language?” one time too often so I replied, “I’m speaking English. I don’t know what language you’re speaking.”

Phil threw me out of his office but didn’t fire me. The ways of the malaka can be mysterious and most high-powered lawyers are malakas, especially those with malakas as clients. And that is why Michael Cohen is malaka of the week.

Apology, my ass. I wonder what language he’s speaking…