Michael Cohen went looking for a pardon and found a whole redemption arc just lying around, free for the taking.
So there’s this whole deal, man, where the President of the United States calls into some guy’s AM radio show, and the guy used to write books calling the president a con man, and now the guy’s saying “sir” on tape like he’s reporting for duty. And the entire online resistance is walking around today with their jaws on the floor, man, like they just found out the rug they’d been standing on for six years had somebody’s whole personality tied up in it this whole time. It didn’t, though. It was always just a rug. You just liked what it did for the room.
Then and Now, Same Guy the Whole Time
Character’s flat. It’s the market for it that moves.
Back in 2020 the man wrote a whole book and the takeaway was, roughly, con man, mobster, racist, the ugly list, all of it. Sold pretty well. This week, on tape, calling the same guy “sir.” Not “I’ve had time to reflect and my views have evolved,” just “sir,” like he’s back on the clock, ready to cash the check. And here’s the thing that should bother you more than it seems to be bothering anybody: neither version was a performance. That’s the part nobody wants to sit with. He believed the book while he was writing it, and he believes the “sir” while he’s saying it, because the guy was never actually converting to anything. He was reading the room. Six years the room said hate him. This month the room started saying something else. Same tenant, new paint.
Everybody’s Shocked, Man, Just Shocked
A parade of people acting like they didn’t already know how this movie ends.
Watched a former GOP strategist go on the record comparing the whole reunion to an abuse victim crawling back to the guy who hurt her. Strong image. Not wrong, necessarily. Kind of funny coming from the same media ecosystem that had this dude on a book tour for half a decade calling it courage. George Conway got on TV and called it a “narcissistic lovefest,” which, yeah, correct, but my man, you’re describing the weather, not breaking news. And then there’s the guy who went out of his way to remind everybody that he, personally, was one of the few who actually pushed back on Cohen instead of nodding along, which is its own little genre now, “I was skeptical the whole time,” retroactively, once it’s safe to say so. Wrote that Cohen “conned so many liberals,” which, sure, but my dude, some of those liberals had the man on speed dial.
The Client Is Also the Client, Man
A fixer’s whole job is making somebody else’s problem disappear. Turns out he still had inventory.
Here’s the part that’s actually funny instead of just sad. Everybody’s out here calling this a grift like that’s a gotcha. It’s not a gotcha, man, it’s a fuckin’ job description. The guy spent twelve years professionally making Donald Trump’s problems go away. Then he spent eight years professionally making himself look like the guy who’d never do that again. And now, get this, he’s doing the exact same job he always did, except this time the client who needs the problem fixed is himself, and the problem that needs fixing is Michael Cohen’s standing with the one man who can hand out a pardon. Same skill set. Same posture. Same guy leaning over the desk saying let me handle this. He just finally ran out of other people’s messes and started billing himself.
Somebody’s Gonna Reach for the Big Explanation
Before anybody says it: no. It wasn’t a plan. Trump can’t hold a bit that long.
Somebody out there is already halfway to typing that this was the design all along, that Trump ran a years-long operation to humiliate the entire resistance media apparatus and Cohen was the plant. He didn’t, man. Look at the guy. He can’t sit through a briefing without going off script. You think he ran an eight-year sting? No. It’s simpler than that and dumber than that, which is worse, honestly, because it means nobody has to be a genius for this to keep happening. It just has to keep being profitable. But somebody, and I’d bet on the network that built him a whole branded show and then dropped him with a one-line memo, is going to reach for the genius-plan version anyway. Because “we got outmaneuvered by a mastermind” beats “we didn’t ask a single hard question for six years” every single time. Watch for it. It’s coming.
The Dude abides.