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Feb. 27, 2019 - The Ben Shapiro Show

49:51

Cohen Of Shame | Ep. 726

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	Michael Cohen heads to the Hill to testify against President Trump.
	Controversy continues over Trump's national emergency declaration and Trump's in Vietnam to meet with the North Koreans.
	I'm Ben Shapiro.
	This is The Ben Shapiro Show.
	Well, it's a big morning, and I understand that there are people who are watching the Cohen testimony live, but we're breaking it down for you here because he already pre-released all of his testimony.
	I don't think there's going to be a lot new beyond his testimony that he has already released, so we're going to get through all of that this morning.
	We are also going to get into the possibility of nuclear war between India and Pakistan, which is like the third biggest story of the day.
	We can get to all of that in just one second.
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	All right, the big news of the morning, of course.
	Michael Cohen heads to the Hill.
	Now, this is his only public testimony.
	He testified before the Senate Intelligence Committee Yesterday, that was behind closed doors.
	And then there is the the Senate committee that he's going to speak to tomorrow that is also behind closed doors.
	Today is the only public testimony that Michael Cohen will be giving.
	Suffice it to say, Republicans are very unhappy with Michael Cohen.
	Democrats basically have stopped visiting Pornhub for the day because the Cohen testimony is on live on C-SPAN.
	So there's plenty to watch if you are a Democrat.
	We're going to go through Michael Cohen's testimony right now.
	So he released, he pre-released his written testimony.
	This is normal in congressional hearings.
	You release a written version of the testimony that is given to members of the committee so they can prepare Their questions.
	I would not expect that the questions are going to elicit much in the way of new information.
	Basically Republicans are going to try to impeach the witness and Democrats are going to try to build up his credibility.
	That's essentially how the day is going to go on the Hill.
	But here is what Michael Cohen testified.
	He began by asking the committee to ensure that his family be protected from presidential threats and that the committee be sensitive to the questions pertaining to ongoing investigations.
	The reason he says this is because over the last several weeks, the president of the United States has tweeted out stuff about Michael Cohen's father-in-law.
	And then last night, Matt Gaetz, who is a Republican from Florida, tweeted something out that is quite wild.
	He tweeted out, Do your wife and father-in-law know about your girlfriends?
	Maybe tonight would be a good time for a chat.
	I wonder if she'll remain faithful when you're in prison.
	She's about to learn a lot.
	And then, weirdly enough, Matt Getz went and actually got Frank Pantangeli's brother to sit behind Michael Cohen in the witness hearing.
	This is not a good look.
	It's actually a violation of law.
	You are not allowed to threaten a witness.
	It's pretty obvious this is called threatening a witness.
	Here was Matt Getzman doing the same thing on the House floor.
	I guess tomorrow we will find out if there is anyone that Michael Cohen hasn't lied to.
	We already know he lied to Congress.
	We already know he lied to law enforcement, lied to the IRS, lied to three banks, and he's going to prison for his lies.
	And so I guess it will be relevant for us to determine, like, Does he lie to his own family?
	Does he lie to his financiers?
	Does he lie to his financiers who are members of his family?
	And it'll be one heck of an inquiry for us, because this is someone who has tangled such a web of lies that he is not to be believed, and I think it is entirely appropriate.
	For any member of this body to challenge the truthfulness and veracity and character for the people who have a history of lying and have a future that undoubtedly contains nothing but lies.
	I mean, not to put too fine a point on it, but it's very weird to go after Michael Cohen's personal life with regard to his girlfriends while defending the President of the United States, who literally has slept with everything.
	Okay, that's, that's, that's...
	The reason that we're having a hearing today is because President Trump shtooped a porn star back in 2006 and then tried to pay her off with $130,000 via Michael Cohen.
	Like, this is a very weird line of attack.
	Nancy Pelosi then, of course, got up and warned Matt Gaetz and suggested that the Ethics Committee could be looking into all of this.
	She said, I encourage all members to be mindful that comments made on social media or in the press can adversely affect the ability of House committees to obtain the truthful and complete information necessary to fulfill their duties.
	OK, so that was the lead up to Michael Cohen's testimony this morning.
	And it's not a good look.
	OK, that's not something Republicans should be engaged in.
	Not only that, I mean, it's disgusting, frankly, to be threatening witnesses with, by the way, nudge nudge, you may have girlfriends and your wife doesn't know about like, come on, come on.
	Here's the truth.
	It is not very difficult to impeach Michael Cohen as a witness.
	He's a convicted perjurer.
	He pled guilty to perjuring himself before Congress.
	If you want to cast doubt on his accounts, all you have to do is say, right, last time you were here, you were lying to us and you're going to jail over it.
	So I'm going to go with no on everything you say, unless you've got some corroborating evidence.
	OK, in any case, Michael Cohen goes before the committee and he talks about President Trump.
	Now, most of what he had to say is just simple gossip.
	Most of it doesn't go to actual crime.
	It's essentially juicy stuff that makes people feel the way they've already felt about Trump.
	So if you're a big Trump fan, you're going to dismiss most of this as bitter grapes from Michael Cohen, as sour grapes from Michael Cohen.
	That he essentially is just digging up everything bad he can say about Trump so that he can rehabilitate himself in the eyes of the media and in the eyes of the left.
	So he can get that strange new respect that James Comey and former FBI acting director Andrew McCabe have gotten from the left.
	And so if you're a Republican, that's basically where you're going to go with this.
	If you're a Democrat, you're going to say, right, this is what I always knew about Trump.
	I always knew he was a racist and a liar and a cheat.
	Now, if you're somebody like me and you tend to believe that the president has some fundamental lacks of character, because he does.
	If you're somebody who looks at this as objectively as possible, There are three baskets into which Cohen's testimony falls.
	One is legal problems, like legal impeachable problems for the president.
	There's not much in the way of that in this testimony.
	We'll get to that.
	Basket number two is stuff that is upsetting, but not impeachable.
	And basket number three is stuff that is just funny as hell.
	Okay, and really, there are those three categories in this testimony.
	All three are here.
	So let's go through Michael Cohen's testimony.
	We're going to do it in shorter fashion, so you don't actually have to listen to Michael Cohen's interminable recitation of his own testimony, because number one, I read faster than he does, and number two, I cut out all the self-congratulatory nonsense.
	So Michael Cohen led off by saying that many people doubt and attack his credibility.
	He says, it is for this reason I have incorporated into this opening statement documents that are irrefutable and demonstrate that the information you will hear is truthful and accurate.
	That is true about some of the things he says.
	It is not true about others of the things he says.
	So his most damning claims about President Trump, the only one that is really backbanging documentary evidence, is stuff we already knew, like President Trump signing checks to Michael Cohen to essentially reimburse him for paying off Stormy Daniels in the middle of the election cycle.
	That stuff has some documentary evidence, but we knew that already.
	The most damning claims, the stuff where he suggests that Trump knew about WikiLeaks and Julian Assange, which we'll get to in a second, or the stuff where he suggests that Trump knew about the Trump Tower meeting, there's no documentation of that whatsoever.
	Not only that, but the language Trump even used, according to Michael Cohen's own recitation of the facts, is substantially vague enough that it makes it very difficult to believe that Trump was actively involved, for example, in Russian collusion.
	In any case, Cohen says, never in a million years did I imagine when I accepted a job in 2007 to work for President Trump that he would one day run for president, launch a campaign on a platform of hate and intolerance, and actually win.
	Now, this is Cohen's pitch for, guys, you really should love me.
	Like, please love me.
	This is his pitch to Elijah Cummings and the Democratic members of the House.
	Love me.
	I said the president's a racist and that he's hateful and intolerant.
	Love me!
	Well, if you thought all this stuff, dude, then why were you on his campaign as one of his leads on TV?
	I love all the people who leave and then they're like, oh yeah, it was hate and intolerance.
	That was the real problem here with Trump.
	You were fine with it for years.
	Like, you were fine with it for a long, long time, dude.
	Like, all the way through the campaign and then beyond the campaign.
	He says, I regret the day I said yes to Mr. Trump.
	I regret all the help and support I gave him along the way.
	He said he's ashamed of his own failings.
	He says, I'm ashamed of my weakness and misplaced loyalty.
	I'm ashamed I chose to take part in concealing Mr. Trump's illicit acts rather than listening to my own conscience.
	I am ashamed, says Michael Cohen, because I know what Mr. Trump is.
	He is a racist.
	He is a conman.
	He is a cheat.
	That, of course, is going to be the punchline and that will be the headline in the New York Times.
	Trump's personal attorney colon Trump racist conman cheat.
	That's going to be the line and he knows it.
	He says, Michael Cohen says, that Trump was a presidential candidate who knew that Roger Stone was talking with Julian Assange about a WikiLeaks drop of Democratic National Committee emails.
	Now...
	The implication here is that it would be illegal for Trump to know about it.
	Now, there are two claims that are being made.
	One, he knew that Roger Stone was talking to Assange about the WikiLeaks drop.
	Two, the claim made by Democrats is that Trump was actually helping coordinate with WikiLeaks, i.e.
	the Russian government, the drop of the emails.
	Nothing, nothing in Cohen's account backs claim number two.
	So there's evidence for claim number one, namely his testimony, that Stone had told Trump that WikiLeaks was going to drop the emails.
	There is nothing to claim number two, which is that Trump was then telling WikiLeaks when and where to release the emails.
	As we'll get to, this may be yucky, but it is not, in fact, illegal, and in fact, it really isn't even atypical in American politics.
	Cohen says, A copy of a check Mr. Trump wrote from his personal bank account after he became president to reimburse me for the hush money payments I made to cover up his affair with an adult film star and prevent damage to his campaign.
	Copies of financial statements for 2011 to 2013 that he gave to such institutions as Deutsche Bank.
	A copy of an article with Mr. Trump's handwriting on it that reported on the auction of a portrait of himself.
	He arranged for the bidder ahead of time and then reimbursed the bidder from the account of his non-profit charitable foundation, with the picture now hanging in one of his country clubs.
	He's under investigation by the New York AG for the misuse of Trump Foundation funds, which is why the Trump Foundation has been temporarily shuttered.
	Copies of letters, says Cohen, I wrote at Mr. Trump's direction that threatened his high school, colleges, and the college board not to release his grades or SAT scores.
	Okay, that's just hilarious.
	Like, I'm sorry, like, that part, remember, there are the three baskets.
	Illegal, bad, hilarious.
	That last one kind of falls into hilarious.
	Like, Trump was so insecure that he had Michael Cohen sending letters to Wharton saying, don't release my grades, guys.
	Like, don't do it.
	But writing into his college to suggest that he may not release his SAT scores, wrote into Fordham and said, don't release my SAT score.
	Don't do it.
	I'm so brilliant.
	I think it would just embarrass others if they knew what my SAT scores were.
	Come on, that's funny stuff.
	Okay, I'm gonna get to more of Michael Cohen's testimony, why it's important, why it's not important, in just one second.
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	Okay, so, Michael Cohen's testimony continues.
	He talks about how these are steps along the way, a pathway of redemption to him.
	No, these are the first steps toward a book proposal that he will presumably write after he leaves jail.
	And then he talks about why he lied to Congress.
	He says that he lied to Congress about Trump negotiating the Moscow Tower deal.
	Now, here is the most important line of the entire testimony, and the one that will be most likely to be ignored.
	Quote, Mr. Trump did not directly tell me to lie to Congress.
	That's not how he operates.
	Well, if he didn't tell you to lie to Congress, and you don't have evidence of him instructing you to commit perjury or obstruction of justice, you got nothing.
	So this is why when we talk about the basket of legal problems for Trump, Cohen didn't say anything with regard to Russia or perjury that actually implicates Trump.
	And that's a problem for Democrats.
	They're going to focus in on all the bad stuff Trump has said and done over the course of his career.
	And let's face it.
	Is anyone surprised by any of these things by the revelation that Trump stops women and then pays them off by the revelation that Trump says politically incorrect and or racist things in private?
	Like, is anybody shocked by any of these things, really?
	But even if those are true, right, which we don't know because the only person testifying is now a convicted perjurer.
	But.
	If Trump did not instruct Cohen to lie to Congress, then he is not responsible for Cohen's perjury.
	Cohen says, Okay, well, it is true that Trump lied over and over and over about Russia, ongoing business, and all of that.
	Not perjury.
	Not a crime.
	Candidates lie to the American people all the time.
	Doesn't mean it's good.
	As I have said 1,000 times in this segment alone, President Trump is a man with a deep lack of character.
	That is obvious.
	He is not a good man, President Trump.
	He may do some good things that you like.
	He may do some good things that I like.
	You may be happy that he's president.
	I'm happy Hillary Clinton is not president.
	There are a lot of things to like about President Trump, but it is difficult to claim that he is an honest good man because I don't think that that's the case, frankly.
	Is that criminal?
	Is it criminal to not be an honest good man?
	If it were, half the presidents who have ever been president would have been in jail.
	Because, come on.
	We're going to get to more of Michael Cohen's testimony here in one second.
	So, Michael Cohen continues.
	He says there are at least a half dozen times between the Iowa caucus in January 2016 and the end of June when Trump would ask me, how's it going in Russia, referring to the Moscow Tower project.
	You need to know that Mr. Trump's personal lawyers reviewed and edited my statement to Congress about the timing of the Moscow Tower negotiations before I gave it.
	To be clear, Mr. Trump knew of and directed the Trump Moscow negotiations throughout the campaign and lied about it.
	He lied about it because he never expected to win the election.
	Okay, this is another really important line from Michael Cohen.
	Trump lied about this stuff because he never expected to win the election.
	So, the going democratic theory was that Trump made a deal with Russia for a quid pro quo.
	You say yes to my Moscow Tower deal, and when I win election, I will give you X, Y, and Z. But if Trump never expected to win election, what's the quid pro quo?
	What is the illegal quid pro quo?
	Is it that he said nice things about Vladimir Putin?
	Because it's not illegal.
	It may be dumb, but it's not illegal to say nice things about Vladimir Putin.
	So if the idea is Russian collusion and Trump didn't expect to win, what's the illegal pro quo?
	The answer is, there wasn't one, so far as we can tell from any of the evidence that Michael Cohen is releasing.
	Cohen says, Trump also lied about it because he stood to make hundreds of millions of dollars on the Moscow real estate project.
	And so I lied about it, too, because Mr. Trump had made clear to me, through his personal statements to me that we both knew were false, and through his lies to the country, that he wanted me to lie.
	Okay, that's plausible.
	It is plausible that Trump wanted him to lie.
	But if he did not instruct you to lie or threaten you with consequences for telling the truth, then that is not obstruction of justice or subordination of perjury.
	Over the past two years, says Michael Cohen, I've been smeared as a rat by the President of the United States.
	The truth is much different.
	Let me take a brief moment to introduce myself.
	And that's when Michael Cohen lays out his whole life.
	And he talks about how wonderful a guy he is.
	He says he's always tried to live a life of loyalty, friendship, generosity, and compassion.
	And then he drops what I think was the most disgusting line of his testimony.
	He says, my father survived the Holocaust thanks to the compassion and selfless acts of others.
	He was helped by many who put themselves in harm's way to do what they knew was right.
	That is why my first instinct has always been to help those in need.
	Dude, do not compare yourself to people who helped save people from the Holocaust.
	Like, come on.
	Like, don't even go there.
	You are a gross, greasy fixer for a real estate swindler for years.
	Don't, like, come.
	Come the hell on.
	And this is where Michael Cohen's testimony begins to break down for me, frankly, is that we all know that he's a convicted liar.
	We know that he's willing to cheat and cut corners.
	We know all that stuff.
	But if he wants us to believe that he is now completely contrite and he's coming clean because he wants to unburden himself, then leading off with, I'm just like the people who tried to, like, my instincts were shaped by my father's Holocaust survivorship.
	Give me a break.
	So Michael Cohen then continues, he says, So what exactly did he know about Mr. Trump that was absolutely wrong?
	at times, at times, oh, at times.
	It is even more painful to admit that many times I ignored my conscience and acted loyal to a man when I should not have.
	Sitting here today, it seems unbelievable.
	I was so mesmerized by Donald Trump that I was willing to do things for him I knew were absolutely wrong.
	So what exactly did he know about Mr. Trump that was absolutely wrong?
	So he says that President Trump is an enigma.
	He says he's complicated.
	He says he has both good and bad qualities, but his bad far outweighs his good.
	This is the National Enquirer portion of the testimony, the part where it's bad but gossipy.
	It's, as I said, three buckets.
	Illegal, bad, hilarious.
	This is the stuff that falls into the bad category for President Trump because it will make headlines and it's difficult to refute these claims.
	Why?
	Because it's a he-said-he-said situation.
	Michael Cohen will claim that Trump said something.
	Trump will claim Trump did not say something.
	People who like President Trump will believe Trump.
	People who hate Trump will believe Cohen.
	It's that easy.
	So, Cohen says, Donald Trump is a man who ran for office to make his brand great, not to make our country great.
	He had no desire or intention to lead this nation, only to market himself and to build his wealth and power.
	Trump would often say the campaign was going to be the greatest infomercial in political history.
	Do I believe this is true?
	Yeah, probably.
	He never expected to win the primary.
	He never expected to win the general.
	The campaign was a marketing opportunity.
	Again, I think that's probably true as well.
	Is any of that illegal?
	No.
	Is it bad?
	Meh.
	I think everybody sort of acknowledged this at the time.
	There are true believers in President Trump who believe that everything the man does, he does for honorable reasons.
	And then there are people who believe that Trump is a self-motivated actor and has been throughout his career.
	But does that change what he's done as president?
	Does it mean that it's bad that he's president?
	No.
	Cohen then continues, he says, I knew early on in my work for Mr. Trump, he would direct me to lie to further his business interests.
	I'm ashamed to say that when it was for a real estate mogul in the private sector, I considered it trivial.
	As president, I consider it significant and dangerous.
	He says that people lied on his behalf, et cetera, et cetera.
	And then he says that Trump knew about the release of the hacked DNC emails.
	Now, this is the bucket that should be illegal, but here's the problem.
	He doesn't actually allege illegal activity.
	Cohen says, As I stated earlier, Mr. Trump knew from Roger Stone in advance about the WikiLeaks drop of emails.
	In July 2016, days before the Democratic convention, I was in Mr. Trump's office when his secretary announced that Roger Stone was on the phone.
	Mr. Trump put Mr. Stone on the speakerphone.
	Mr. Stone told Mr. Trump that he had just gotten off the phone with Julian Assange and that Mr. Assange told Mr. Stone that within a couple of days there would be a massive dump of emails that would damage Hillary Clinton's campaign.
	Mr. Trump responded by stating to the effect of, Wouldn't that be great?
	Not illegal.
	Not illegal.
	If somebody got on the phone with you and they said, your political opponent's about to be hit with a wave of bad news, no matter where it comes from, and you say, wouldn't that be terrific?
	Not illegal.
	And by the way, pretty demonstrative of the fact that Trump was not openly coordinating with Roger Stone or Julian Assange or WikiLeaks or the Russian government.
	Wouldn't that be great is an expression of surprise.
	As in like, that would be kind of awesome if they dropped a bunch of oppo on Hillary, wouldn't it?
	Nothing illegal, frankly, not even anything that bad there.
	Like, what's he supposed to do at that point?
	Notify the FBI that he thinks that Julian Assange is going to release WikiLeaks emails?
	Again, like, it's gonna be released two days from now.
	I guess he could notify the FBI, but it's not coordination.
	It's not coordination.
	Knowing about something, and not doing anything about it, and not coordinating about it, if somebody says to you, two days from now, two days from now, somebody's gonna do something bad to your business opponent, and you're like, oh, well, that'd be kinda fun.
	Does it make you great?
	No.
	Does it make you kind of bad?
	A little.
	Is that illegal?
	That does not fall into the illegal basket.
	Then Cohen says that Trump is a racist.
	So Cohen says, Mr. Trump is a racist.
	The country has seen Mr. Trump court white supremacists and bigots.
	You have heard him call poorer countries bleepholes.
	Well, as far as him courting white supremacists and bigots, I was very, very critical of President Trump in 2016 for winking and nodding at the alt-right.
	In fact, one of the reasons I didn't vote for Trump in 2016 was that interview that he did with Jake Tapper where he suddenly forgot what the KKK was and who David Duke was five minutes before the Louisiana primary.
	So, I have been very critical.
	I ripped President Trump a new one after Charlottesville.
	So, I am warm to the idea that President Trump has been too soft on groups of people that he finds benefit him politically, even if they happen to be gross.
	But Cohen using the bleep holes example as evidence of racism, I never really bought that argument.
	If you say that a particular area of the world, like a particular country, is a bad place to live because it is run poorly, that does not make it racist.
	Like, I think LA, frankly, is kind of a bleephole, and I live here.
	And that has nothing to do with the race of the people who run the city.
	Mayor Garcetti is a half-Jewish, half-Italian guy, I think?
	In private, says Michael Cohen, he's even worse.
	And here's where we get to the stuff that is bad for Trump.
	It doesn't fall into illegal and it doesn't fall into funny.
	It's just bad.
	He once asked me if I could name a country run by a black person that wasn't a bleephole.
	This is when Barack Obama was president of the United States.
	This is what Michael Cohen says.
	While we were once driving through a struggling neighborhood in Chicago, he commented that only black people could live that way.
	And he told me that black people would never vote for him because they were too stupid.
	And yet I continued to work for him.
	Which does raise the question why you continue to work for him, but nonetheless, nonetheless, those are bad allegations for President Trump.
	Those will make a lot of headlines, and there is no way for Trump to refute that other than by saying, I didn't say that.
	So, that's gonna be a he said, he said, put that in the bad category for Trump, as opposed to the illegal or the hilarious category.
	Then there is more not great stuff for Trump, but it's not really, it kind of falls into the hilarious just because we already knew this about Trump.
	So, he says, Cohen says, Mr. Trump is a cheat.
	As previously stated, I'm giving the committee today three years of President Trump's financial statements from 2011 to 2013, which he gave to Deutsche Bank to inquire about a loan to buy the Buffalo Bills and to Forbes.
	It was my experience that Mr. Trump inflated his total assets when it served his purposes, such as trying to be listed among the wealthiest people in Forbes, and deflated his assets to reduce his real estate taxes.
	And then it talks about how he inflated and deflated his assets for public purposes again.
	That's mostly hilarious because, again, it's like a cheap tactic, and we all know that Trump has been doing this for years.
	Trump has been saying he's worth $10 billion for years.
	It is absolutely untrue.
	And he does that routinely.
	And then he probably properly reports his income to the government.
	If not, then the IRS could simply go after him, presumably, and audit him.
	He says he's under audit right now.
	Mr. Trump, then we get to something that is in the bad category and maybe the illegal category.
	That is his use of a private charity to benefit himself, self-dealing via charity.
	Mr. Trump directed me to find a straw bidder to purchase a portrait of him that was being auctioned at an Art Hamptons event.
	The objective was to ensure that his portrait, which was going to be auctioned last, would go for the highest price of any portrait that afternoon.
	The portrait was purchased by the Fakebidder for $60,000.
	Mr. Trump directed the Trump Foundation, which is supposed to be a charitable organization, to repay the Fakebidder despite keeping the art for himself.
	Okay, so that one actually falls into all three categories.
	It may be illegal to sign a check from your foundation to buy a portrait that you then exhibit in your own private holdings.
	In your country club, right?
	That may be illegal.
	It's also bad in the sense that you shouldn't use charities that way, so it doesn't look very good.
	It's also hilarious in the fact that Trump is such an egotist that he wanted to make sure that the portrait of him was the highest bid item of the evening.
	Like, who does that?
	Legitimately, who does that?
	It's like me going on eBay and finding somebody who's auctioning off one of my books and then me jacking up the bidding simply so that I can say that it bid for like $1,000.
	It's so silly and so ridiculous.
	And then Cohen suggests that Trump is a con man.
	And this is where he gets to the Stormy Daniels stuff.
	He says, I'm giving the committee today a copy of the $130,000 wire transfer from me to Stormy Daniels' attorney during the closing days of the presidential campaign that was demanded by Ms.
	Clifford, that's Stormy Daniels, to maintain her silence about her affair with Mr. Trump.
	Mr. Trump directed me to use my own personal funds from a home equity line of credit to avoid any money being traced back to him that could negatively impact his campaign.
	I did that too, without bothering to consider whether that was improper, much less whether it was the right thing to do, or how it would impact me, my family, or the public.
	So, a couple of things here.
	Now this is an actual allegation of illegal activity.
	He's suggesting that Trump knew campaign law, and that Trump was explicitly telling him to avoid campaign disclosures by using his home equity line of credit so that nothing could be traced back to him that could negatively impact his campaign.
	And those words negatively impact his campaign are also important because if he had just told Michael Cohen to pay off this lady, having nothing to do with the campaign, it can't be considered a campaign expenditure.
	Now, as I said yesterday on the program, it may still not be considered a campaign expenditure because are you actually allowed to use campaign funds to pay off your girlfriends?
	John Edwards' case suggests maybe not, but in any case, this is at least a legal allegation.
	Like, this actually has some legal importance.
	As Exhibit 5 to my testimony shows, says Cohen, I'm providing a copy of a $35,000 check Trump personally signed from his personal bank account on August 1st, 2017 when he was President of the United States pursuant to the cover-up, which was the basis of my guilty plea to reimburse me for the illegal hush money I paid on his behalf.
	Again, the idea here is that President Trump was doing all of this to avoid campaign finance law.
	Maybe that's true.
	Maybe that's not.
	The SDNY is probably going to prosecute that.
	But it's a shaky legal theory.
	It may hold up.
	Is it scummy behavior?
	Yeah.
	Is it bad behavior?
	Yeah.
	Is it anything shocking from President Trump, who presumably was paying off women for years?
	I mean, I'd be shocked if this is the only time Trump paid off a woman.
	In fact, we know it's not.
	He did to Karen McDougal, too.
	I'd be shocked if Trump only paid off women during the campaign.
	That doesn't hold with what we know about Trump, who is apparently using the National Enquirer as a go-between to buy off stories as early as 2011.
	Because he did it to Stormy Daniels, I believe, in 2011.
	And then, Cohen says that Trump is a con man.
	Here we get to the hilarious category.
	He says, I'm talking about a man who declares himself brilliant, but directed me to threaten his high school, his colleges, and the college board to never release his grades or SAT scores.
	I will admit, when I watched Cohen testify about this, I laughed out loud.
	That is hi-larious.
	Because, again, it just goes to the fact that Trump is a massive egotist.
	And he writes a letter to Fordham going, If you release my grades, I will come after you so hard it'll be unbelievable.
	You won't know it hit you.
	You won't know.
	At all.
	He went after Wharton.
	He went after his high school.
	I mean, honestly, now I want to know what his SAT scores were.
	If you're threatening people not to release your SAT scores, I'm going to go with it wasn't a 1600.
	Maybe it's just me.
	But if I had a 1600 on the SATs, by the way, I believe I got a 1420 on the SATs.
	I was also 14 at the time.
	But in any case, I'm just putting that out there.
	So, you know, I'm not threatening the SAT board to not release my SAT scores.
	The president of the United States threatening people not to release his SAT scores is just fantastic.
	And then Cohen points out that at the time Trump was talking about Obama and ripping him for not releasing his grades and calling Obama a terrible student, which is just, again, Trump has no shame.
	And that is obvious.
	So this one goes in the hilarious category.
	OK, and then he says, then he gets to the main point here.
	Questions have been raised about whether I know of direct evidence that Mr. Trump or his campaign colluded with Russia.
	I do not.
	So why are we here?
	Why are you here to testify, sir?
	You say that you can provide no evidence that the president actually colluded with Russia, no evidence that the president actively worked with Wikileaks.
	You're saying the same stuff we already know from SDNY about all the campaign finance stuff.
	So what are you doing here?
	And the answer, of course, is that Democrats want headlines so they can distract from their own incompetence and garbage legislation.
	Cohen shifts the headlines.
	Look, that's their political job.
	This is what you do when you're a member of a partisan party.
	You make sure that you humiliate the president of the other party as much as possible.
	So I'm not going to blame Democrats for doing what Democrats do.
	It's like blaming the sun for rising in the morning.
	None of this is a shock.
	But if Cohen has nothing about the Russian collusion stuff, why are we here?
	Why are we listening to you, you convicted perjurer, former scumbag?
	What are we doing here?
	Basically, all Cohen can testify to is that he read all over the media that in the summer of 2017, there had been a meeting in Trump Tower in June 2016.
	This is the famous Trump Tower meeting with Don Jr.
	and a cutout lawyer for the Russians.
	And that there had been lead up to the meeting about dirt on Hillary Clinton.
	And Cohen says, something clicked in my mind.
	I remember being in the room with Mr. Trump, probably in early June 2016, so he can't even date it.
	Really?
	When something peculiar happened, Don Jr. came into the room and walked behind his father's desk, which in itself was unusual.
	People just didn't walk behind Trump's desk to talk to him.
	Really?
	I recall Don Jr. leaning over to his father and speaking in a low voice, which I could clearly hear and saying, the meeting is all set.
	I remember Mr. Trump saying, OK, good.
	Let me know.
	And then he says, well, that was clearly about the Trump Tower meeting.
	Is it?
	Or are you making a bunch of suppositions?
	I mean, that is some flimsy legal nonsense.
	So, again, is any of this stuff particularly damning for Trump, like more damning than anything we knew before?
	No, it really isn't.
	Is it going to generate a bunch of bad headlines for President Trump?
	Of course.
	Is the RNC handling this about the worst way they possibly can?
	Yeah.
	So we'll get to that in just one second.
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	So as I say, nothing that Cohen says in the end is going to be severely damaging to Trump.
	None of it is great for Trump because when people get up in public and say bad things about you, that's never wonderful for Trump.
	That's never great for Trump.
	But it is also true that the RNC has handled this in the worst possible way.
	The RNC has become quite Trumpy.
	The problem is that strategic punchback would be good.
	All you have to say about Michael Cohen is the guy is a convicted perjurer who is self-interested in all of his testimony.
	He now has an incentive to make things up about Trump.
	He has an incentive to remember every bad thing in the worst possible light for President Trump because that's how he's getting a plea deal.
	That's all you have to say.
	Instead, the RNC actually cut a commercial saying, have fun in prison to Michael Cohen, which is just delightful.
	He's going to do everything that he promised.
	He's going to bring success and he's going to make America great.
	Principled.
	Donald Trump speaks from the heart.
	Empathetic, kind.
	He's going to stay true to who he is.
	He's going to be an amazing president.
	Humble, honest, and genuine.
	Mr. Trump's memory is fantastic, and I've never come across a situation where Mr. Trump has said something that's not accurate.
	All Donald Trump wants to do is make this country great.
	I'm sorry, the RNC's incompetent.
	That is such a self-own.
	So you cut an entire commercial about this guy, you say he's a liar, saying nice things about Trump?
	That is your proof that he is a liar?
	Guys, do better.
	I mean, hello?
	Pretty amazing.
	By the way, Cohen has also testified that he would not call anything regarding President Trump and Russia actual collusion.
	Why are we here?
	What are we talking about?
	What are we talking about?
	Also, Republicans are doing a good job.
	Representative Jim Jordan, who was on the program last week, we talked a little bit about Michael Cohen appearing before the House Oversight Committee.
	He pointed out that Michael Cohen is not just a liar with regard to President Trump or the Trump Tower meeting, that Michael Cohen is indeed a very bad man.
	I mean, he's going to jail not only because of his activities with regard to President Trump or lying to Congress, he's going to jail because he was involved in a taxi medallion fraud scheme.
	I mean, the guy is a gross human.
	He's a bad human.
	Now, again, none of that means that Trump is clean, but it does mean that if you're going to find a witness to go after President Trump, Democrats, you may want to do better than that.
	It's it's really yuck.
	Yuck.
	OK, so with all of that said, controversy continues to rage over President Trump's visit to North Korea, the president of the United States in Vietnam right now.
	And apparently he is watching all of this from afar.
	We'll get to that in just one second.
	The president is in Vietnam.
	It is unclear that anything of worth is going to happen in Vietnam.
	I'm highly doubtful that anything of worth will happen.
	Apparently he's staying up all night to watch Cohen's testimony, which again, the fact that that's been leaked is not great for the president.
	you actually do not want it known that you are so bothered about what Michael Cohen is going to say that you're staying up all night watching it.
	The proper response is, why would I care what Michael Cohen has to say?
	Dude's a liar.
	He's going to jail for perjury.
	So I'm not losing one wink of sleep over Michael Cohen.
	Nonetheless, the president apparently is watching that from afar.
	I would not expect big things from the Vietnam contingent, from the Vietnam meetings that are happening right now, simply because North Korea has lied often, continuously, all the time about making a deal with the United States, and they never have really done so. all the time about making a deal with the United Right now, according to CNN, President Trump departed dinner with North Korea.
	Korea's Kim Jong-un at the Metropole Hotel.
	Trump left the hotel one hour and 42 minutes after the dinner began.
	The two are supposed to meet tomorrow for extended bilateral meetings before President Trump departs in the evening for Washington.
	Also, there will be a Trump press conference per Trump this evening.
	They are waiting on the official schedule with the timing.
	Meanwhile, hilariously enough, the prospect of nuclear war is like tertiary in the news.
	It's the third thing in the news.
	There's a massive possibility of an escalation of conflict between Pakistan and India to nuclear armed powers, According to FoxNews.com, tension between two of the world's nuclear powers were raised dramatically on Wednesday after Pakistan's Air Force said it shot down two Indian warplanes that crossed the disputed Kashmir border and captured each of the aircraft's pilots.
	And there's actual video.
	of people on the ground in Pakistan beating up one of the Indian pilots, which does not seem like it complies with the Geneva Conventions.
	Police officials in Indian-occupied Kashmir told Reuters that two Indian pilots and a civilian on the ground died when the planes crashed.
	The officials did not confirm the planes were shot down by Pakistani forces.
	One of the pilots, named as Wing Commander Abhinandan Vartaman, was subsequently shown in a video.
	India's government said it objected to Pakistan's vulgar display.
	He was seen in two videos, one where he appeared blindfolded and bloodied.
	And then a second one showing him in custody with the blindfolds removed, appearing visibly more relaxed, even complimenting his captors on a fantastic cup of tea.
	Ravish Kumar is a spokesperson for India's Ministry of External Affairs, also claims an Indian plane shot down a Pakistani jet fighter, although Pakistan denied any of its jets had been hit, and photographic evidence had yet to emerge.
	Obviously, this is just another example of tensions being raised.
	Are we in real danger of nuclear war here?
	Highly, highly doubtful, given the fact that These tensions are raised on a fairly regular basis.
	With that said, is that a bit of a big story?
	Yeah, it's a bit of a big story.
	In smaller news, apparently AOC is very upset today.
	Why?
	Because someone took a photograph of one of her staffers eating a hamburger.
	So, somebody actually took a picture of her sitting with one of her staffers and pointed out that her staffer is eating hamburgers.
	And Ocasio-Cortez, of course, has said that her staffers should not, in fact, eat hamburgers.
	That people should not eat hamburgers.
	It's a very bad thing to eat hamburgers.
	AOC then fought back by saying, She said, tonight a dude was creepily and obviously taking a picture of me while pretending he wasn't and I had to break his imaginary fourth wall and say, hi, I'm a person.
	This is weird.
	Okay, so just to get this straight, the media who will dutifully repeat her talking point?
	Dutifully repeat that talking point.
	These are the same people who are fine with Ted Cruz and his wife being attacked in a restaurant by a bunch of protesters.
	But if you take a picture of her chief of staff eating a giant hamburger, like a day after AOC says we shouldn't eat hamburgers, then that is very bad.
	That's how we know that things are bad.
	We know that things are bad because someone took a picture of AOC.
	Very, very terrible stuff.
	So, that is the latest from AOC.
	Also, a hilarious story from AOC.
	The Washington Examiner is saying that AOC, who is bragging about raising her lowest wage at the office to $52,000 a year, actually did this because it allowed members of her staff to avoid financial disclosures.
	According to the Washington Examiner, AOC's decision to cap her office salaries at 80 grand will let her chief of staff and senior employees avoid public transparency laws that would require them to reveal outside income gifts and stock trading activity.
	The New York Democrat announced last week she would institute a living wage in her office, paying staff members a minimum of $52,000 a year and a maximum of $80,000 a year.
	Under federal law, congressional employees who earn more than $126,000 a year, which includes most chiefs of staff, must submit public financial disclosure forms that detail outside income they earn, stock investments, debt, gifts, or paid trips.
	They are given by outside sources.
	Of course, her chief of staff is a guy named Sycat Chakrabarty, and he would be shielded from public disclosure laws because he's not going to be paid enough.
	So, is that the real reason that she's doing all of this?
	Who the hell knows?
	But it is sort of weird that the average salary for a chief of staff in the House was $147,000 in 2015, but Ocasio-Cortez is going to cap her senior staff salaries at $80,000, and now they'll be able to earn outside income without publicly revealing the amount or the source.
	So good stuff from the very non-swampy, very fresh-faced AOC.
	By the way, you wonder why the Democrats are so eager to push on Michael Cohen and push Michael Cohen to the top of the news?
	Maybe it's because they can't stop their own congresspeople from saying inane things.
	For example, Representative Mary Gay Scanlon said yesterday, said yesterday in committee hearing, that the border agents for the United States are akin to Nazi collaborators.
	I've been struck a couple times by the denial of humanity of many of these families and children.
	When the issue is framed as an invasion by aliens, and when we refer to children as UACs, it's easier to pretend they're not human or worthy of compassion.
	This hearing is a recognition and an insistence on that humanity.
	A recognition that the Flores decision also addressed, and a recognition that just following orders is no more an excuse today than it was back in Germany.
	Don't worry, Democrats are not extreme at all.
	They're just comparing ICE agents to Nazi collaborators.
	Yeah, they're not extreme at all.
	I wonder why they're getting Michael Cohen to testify.
	That wasn't the only crazy statement yesterday, by the way.
	There's another Democratic congressman who suggested that, I believe this is Hank Thompson, who suggested that the only way to prevent all gun violence is to take away every gun.
	Every day, 170 felons and 50 domestic abusers are stopped from buying a gun at licensed dealers because of the background check.
	It works.
	We know it works.
	There's a lot of evidence out there that clarifies the fact that it works.
	And as far as anybody who says, well, this bill wouldn't have solved this incident, The only thing that will solve everyone is to do away with guns.
	So are you telling me that the critics of my bill want to do away with all guns?
	Um, okay, so this is wild stuff.
	That's Mike Thompson, by the way, a representative from California.
	Okay, time for some things I like and then some things that I hate.
	So, things that I like.
	Last night, I went to a private screening for a movie called We Die Young.
	Now, it's not a perfect movie.
	It's coming out video-on-demand on Friday.
	It is also available in select theaters across the country.
	It's worth the watch.
	The reason it's worth the watch is because it is an actual take on MS-13.
	So you've heard President Trump talk about the dangers of MS-13, what they do, how brutal they are.
	The depiction of MS-13 in this movie is excellent.
	And the movie's called We Die Young, and it's Jean-Claude Van Damme, but it's Van Damme playing kind of a different part.
	It's not Van Damme kicking people in the face.
	Van Damme plays an ex-Marine who was wounded in combat, and now he has to help out a couple of kids who are being victimized by the MS-13 cartel.
	Some of the performances in this are really fantastic.
	David Castellanada, who plays the leader of the MS-13 gang, is really terrific.
	It's worth a watch, so if you're looking for something to do on a Friday night, and you want a realistic take on MS-13, go check out We Die Young.
	Definitely worth the watch.
	Go give it a look.
	Okay, other things that I like.
	So, Meghan McCain is the only sane thing left about The View.
	Since they'll never have me on.
	And Meghan McCain, yesterday, went on an absolute tear against her co-hosts, talking about how Democrats refuse to vote in favor of federally penalizing infanticide, leaving babies to die who are born after botched abortions.
	Here is Meghan McCain just dumping on her fellow hosts, rightfully so.
	If Democrats want to win an election going forward, are you going to be the party of late-term abortion, the party of infanticide?
	Let me finish, please.
	Is this the platform you're going to have?
	Because when you're talking about children and you're talking about being pro-life, this is well out of the mainstream of where Americans are at.
	So you think a baby born from an abortion should be put down like a dog or a cat?
	This is why I need to push back on it.
	This is why I need to put it back.
	It's infanticide.
	The doctors who would not provide medical care for an aborted child who survived.
	That doctor should be punished.
	Okay, and you keep hearing people trying to make excuses for not voting for the bill.
	There is no excuse for not voting for the bill.
	Yesterday on the radio version of the program, the additional two hours we do later in the day that you can get only if you subscribe, Senator Ben Sasse stopped by from Nebraska.
	He's one of the co-sponsors of this bill.
	He explained what the bill does.
	The bill does not in any way violate a woman's quote-unquote right to choose.
	It doesn't even have to do with abortion.
	It says if a baby is born after an attempted abortion, you have to transfer the baby to the hospital and give it the same care you would give any other infant, and it penalizes doctors who fail to do so or who leave the baby on the table to die.
	That's all the bill does, and Democrats opposed it, which is insane.
	It is fully insane, and there's no excuse for it, and trying to paint it as a pro-choice issue is beyond crazy.
	Okay, so, good for Meghan McCain.
	Time for a couple of things that I hate.
	OK, so thing that I hate, number one, the Hollywood Reporter is that you knew this was coming.
	You knew it was just a matter of time until the left openly started defending Jussie Smollett.
	The reason that you knew this is because they were already on the verge of doing this when it came out that it was a hoax, that the whole thing was a hoax.
	Now, as I say, If you want to hear my fuller take on this, I was on Dr. Phil's show that is airing today with Andy Ngo of Quillette, as well as Sally Cohen, who's a left contributor for CNN, I believe.
	And we talked about hate crime hoaxes and we sort of went through all of the various issues surrounding hate crime hoaxes and hate crimes more generally.
	Well, the Hollywood Reporter is now headlining Hollywood Hoax, and then their suggestion is, I kid you not, that the reason that Jussie Smollett was doing all of this is because he was famous.
	Like, this is their actual contention.
	They are trying to suggest that being famous causes you, that fame causes you, to actually participate in race crime hoaxes.
	That's on their cover.
	It says, Jussie Smollett says he's the victim of a heinous hate crime, but career pressure and addictive fame may have driven him to do all of this.
	It's... what?
	So, being super famous, it says, Jussie Smollett says, he's the victim of a heinous hate crime, but career pressure and addictive fame may have driven the Empire Star to do something desperate.
	Really?
	Addictive fame?
	So, I've achieved a certain level of notoriety.
	I know I wake up every morning and I think, you know what I should probably do?
	Claim a hate crime.
	Just out of nowhere, just do it.
	I'm a Jew, I could probably get away with it, right?
	Like, I could probably just go out there and be like, you know, I was walking down the street, two o'clock in the morning, coming back from my kosher hot dog stand, and I was beat up by a couple of people who were screaming at me, you damn Jew.
	Every morning I have to convince myself it's a bad idea because I'm famous.
	It's the fame that makes me do it.
	It's the addictions of fame that make me hoax hate.
	What?
	What?
	So now he's a victim.
	He's a victim of his own fame.
	What absolute sheer garbage.
	That wasn't even the worst take on Jussie Smollett.
	The other one is still from The Hollywood Reporter, but it comes courtesy of Ellen Page, who is really, who has acted vilely with regard to this stuff.
	I mean, really acted vilely.
	Went on national television, blamed Mike Pence for a fake hate crime, and then suggested that Mike Pence's perspective on the sinfulness of homosexuality is responsible for vast swathes of hate crimes happening across the country.
	So she has an entire column today that is called hate violence is not a hoax.
	So in other words, I got the hate crime hoax wrong, but the general point, which is that hate crimes occurred, that's not wrong.
	You'll see this is something that folks on the left want.
	That's not the story.
	We all acknowledge that there are such things as hate crimes, although they are exceedingly rare.
	The number of actual federal hate crimes prosecuted in 27 and 2018 by the federal government is 50.
	This is a country of 337 million people.
	Can we stop pretending that around every corner lurks a MAGA-HEADED RACIST seeking to beat up a gay black guy?
	Like, it's just not true.
	This is an insanely tolerant, wonderful country, and I'm speaking as a Jew who hires security to go from place to place because I get death threats, okay?
	So, I am saying this is a wonderful, incredible, tolerant country.
	You know why?
	Because it is.
	And this notion that, well, you know, it was, at least, at least Jussie Smollett was a pathway to conversation.
	At least, what Jussie Smollett shows is not that Americans don't take hate crimes seriously enough.
	It's that we take hate crimes so seriously, we are even willing to grant credibility to some of the flimsiest, garbagiest stories ever told by people like Jussie Smollett.
	That's how seriously we take hate crimes.
	Is that the mark of a country that is deeply evil?
	And deeply terrible?
	And deeply hateful?
	I really don't think so.
	I really don't think so.
	Okay, so, as I say, tune in later today.
	We have two more hours.
	We'll be covering more of Michael Cohen's testimony, I am sure.
	Plus, go check out Dr. Phil today, because I think there was some spicy stuff in that episode.
	And we'll either see you here later today if you subscribe, or we'll see you here tomorrow.
	I'm Ben Shapiro.
	This is The Ben Shapiro Show.
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