Michael Cohen Went Viral in 2016. That Moment Offers a Dire Warning for Republicans.
Michael Cohen, who carries the permanent expression of someone who's woken up in a strange bathtub with a kidney missing, ended his public testimony on Wednesday utterly defeated and exhausted:
"My loyalty to Mr. Trump has cost me everything," Trump’s former personal attorney said, welling up, "my family’s happiness, friendships, my law license, my company, my livelihood, my honor, my reputation and, soon, my freedom."
This Michael Cohen-slumped in a chair, his red-rimmed eyes sunk even deeper into his long face than usual, his voice meek and repentant-is a lifetime away from the Michael Cohen that went viral in August 2016, when he “says who’d” his way through an interview with Briana Keilar on CNN's The Situation Room. That Michael Cohen was AWOL from Capitol Hill this week, but to truly understand his testimony, and how it may help predict the future of the Republican Party in its current form, we need to go back in time and find him.
Revisiting Cohen's "says who" video in 2019 is a revelation: Contained within the three minutes and forty one seconds is a microcosm of the entire 2016 election (the prominent box counting down the seconds to the Green Party Town Hall is a real kick in the hindsight, just to start out) and a tour de force of the real Michael Cohen.
Cohen landed on The Situation Room because there was drama in the Trump campaign (or, more accurately, more than usual). Just two and a half months before Election Day, the Trump team announced that Steve Bannon and KellyAnne Conway would be joining the campaign as chief executive and campaign manager. Paul Manafort, who had successfully steered the campaign through the primaries, would remain as campaign chairman.
Was Manafort on his way out? Was the campaign-which was slumping in the polls-in disarray? Those were the questions that CNN's Keilar wanted to know. She didn't get very far in asking them, because Cohen just starts talking right over her.
"I gotta stop you for one second. Because there's no shakeup. Look at the words that you use and you blast at the bottom in your banner: ‘shakeup,’ ‘overhaul,’ ‘dramatic,’ ‘desperate measures.’ There are no desperate measures. You just literally read the memo that you received that Paul Manafort sent out that stating he's not going anywhere and the campaign is on its way to victory."
Of course, Paul Manafort was going somewhere. Two days later he'd resign from the campaign, unable to escape the New York Times story that had dropped a few days prior that he'd received $12.7 million in cash payments from the Ukraine's pro-Russian political party from 2007 to 2012.
Since then, Paul Manafort has emerged as a central figure in the Mueller investigation precisely because of his Russian-connected work in the Ukraine (for which it's now thought that he made $60 million). But back in the simpler days of 2016 he was "part of the existing group of winners that Mr. Trump has hired for the campaign," according to Cohen.
Now Manafort is going to jail, probably for the rest of his life.
Back in 2016, Cohen goes on to yell in his distinctive monotone New York drawl for a full minute and twenty seconds before Keilar is able to interrupt a diatribe about the "hundreds and hundreds" of people working at the Clinton campaign and regain her show.
She raises a hand and says, "You say it's not a shakeup, but you guys are down."
Cohen immediately responds with: "Says who?"
Keilar looks confused for a moment and Cohen says again, "Says who?"
"Polls," she responds. "Most of them…All of them?"
Five full seconds of silence follows which Cohen breaks, once again, with a deadpan "says who."
It's become a punchline since then-my own podcast is named after this moment-but it captures exactly the Michael Cohen that was absent from Capitol Hill this week: the man that would say and do anything to defend the honor of Mistuh Trumb. Watching Cohen's sad sandwich performance on Wednesday you'd forget that Says Who Cohen ever existed.
Trying to deny that that Michael Cohen existed was high on the agenda for Republicans on Wednesday. Instead they tried to portray him as a liar and a cheat just in it for himself, running taxicab scams, lying on bank loans, and trying to score the biggest score of all: a book deal. But it wasn't just that Michael Cohen was out for himself-the real Michel Cohen, Says Who Michael Cohen, was lying and cheating for Donald J Trump.
Lying for Trump was why Cohen was on Capitol Hill this week and why he's going to jail in May. And that's why the Republicans lines of attacks fell short on Wednesday: not wanting to lay a finger on Trump, they had to keep away from half of the shit that makes Michael Cohen Michael Cohen.
Back on CNN in 2016, Cohen, full of the self-assurance of someone who believes his own lies claims, "In all fairness he's going to end up winning this election come November." Back in August 2016 that statement seemed more absurd than prescient. He turned out to be exactly right.
Now, in 2019, Cohen has a different message: "I did the same thing that you’re doing now for 10 years," Cohen told the committee, all the bluster of Says Who Cohen gone from his voice. "I protected Mr. Trump for 10 years. The more people that follow Mr. Trump, as I did blindly, are going to follow the same consequences that I’m suffering."
Let's hope he's right this time, too.
Dan Sinker is a journalist, cultural critical, and talks about politics on the "Says Who" podcast.
('You Might Also Like',)