Disloyal: A Memoir

by Michael Cohen

  We all stood in awkward silence, staring at our shoes, feeling sorry for the son and his perfectly innocent question.

  “God damn it,” Trump said with a heavy sigh, as if his son wasn’t present. “The kid has the worst fucking judgment of anyone I have ever met. What a stupid thing to say—to put that thought in my head.”

  Don Jr. said nothing, also inspecting his shoes, and no doubt desperate to flee. The hurt was evident in his face and demeanor, even though this was hardly the first time I’d heard Trump insult his son and remark on his supposed lack of intelligence. I often wondered why the son stayed around in the face of the abuse of his father, though I knew the answer, because Don Jr. had told me the story. A true outdoorsman who would be most at peace raising cattle and hunting buffalo in Montana, after college he’d gotten a job as a bartender and enjoyed the work and the separation from his distant father. But after a couple of years, the elder Trump presented his son with an ultimatum: work for the family business or be cut off entirely—in effect disowned and disinherited if he didn’t serve at the beck and call of his father. Don Jr. hated real estate, office politics, the whole circus that surrounded his old man, but he didn’t want to be exiled, so he resolved to tough out the worst parts of being a Trump, including being humiliated in front of a group of colleagues by his own father. I really felt for him in that moment, as his father fixed his tie and adopted his scowling stage presence to enter what amounted to the twenty-first century version of the Roman Forum, the roar of the crowd above now echoing in the hallways.

  “Are you okay?” I asked Don Jr. as we made our way to the ring and were out of the earshot of the Boss.

  “I’m all good,” he replied, putting on a brave face. “We have a tortuous relationship. It’s not the first time he’s said that, and it won’t be the last.”

  The location in Wisconsin was no coincidence, as an epicenter of Middle America, and I’ve often wondered how many swing voters Trump might have won that night at the Resch Center, with over 10,000 fans screaming and yelling like lunatics as Trump appeared walking towards the ring for the bout, dressed in a pink tie, black suit, and black knee-length overcoat, his face set in a grimace that made him look like an overgrown version of Bart Simpson. Trump loved being the heel—wrestling parlance for the bad guy—knowing that the script called for him to win, naturally, and then engage in the emasculating and mock spectacle of selling the RAW Company back to McMahon for a quick, hefty profit.

  Trump slapping McMahon was supposed to get the bout off to a frenzy-making start, but the Boss got swept up in the moment as everyone watched him strut up to McMahon and then ferociously slap him in the face. Trump slapping McMahon shocked the crowd as they watched the skit play out on the jumbotron, hearing the thunderous slap while the camera zoomed in on the five finger, or Triple F, imprint on McMahon’s cheek.

  I’d never seen the Boss look so happy. He loved trafficking in violence, or the threat of violence, as could be seen during the election campaign, when he implored his followers to beat up a protestor at a rally in Las Vegas in 2016.

  “I’d like to punch him in the face,” candidate Trump said as the protestor was roughed up.

  The crowd in Wisconsin went wild, as they say, and in this case that was exactly what the insane intensity of the live audience felt like as they cheered on Trump—a wealthy celebrity who viewed their form of entertainment as worthy of his attention.

  So, WWE Raw was part of my job description, too, and I loved it. Life with Trump was filled with improbable, even unbelievable events that contained their own logic but mostly revolved around an ancient Roman piece of wisdom: carpe diem. When Trump dispatched me to Fresno, in northern California, to try to secure the right to develop a giant golf project called Running Horse, I embraced the outrageous and audacious approach of Mr. Trump and immediately started promoting our bid the way P. T. Barnum would have: I went on radio stations, extolling the awesome super-luxury nature of Trump’s courses, how we would build condos and gated communities and a PGA Championship-level course on the 1,000 acre site. I set about trying to convince the Fresno City Council that they should finance the cost of the development out of a bond issuance, explaining that the Trump Organization was bringing unparalleled expertise and excellence that would lift the economy of the entire region. I checked in with Trump multiple times a day as he urged me to even greater bombastic heights, but as the weeks passed, it became evident that I wasn’t going to convince the local political class, including a rising star in the Republican Party named Devin Nunes, to make the population pay for a billionaire’s golf course.

  Soon after the Running Horse project fell apart, I was assigned to a project in the Meadowlands in New Jersey, for the development of a 1,000-apartment golf course community to be built on a massive landfill near the Hudson River. The proposal was failing, and needed a brand name to revive it, and so entered Donald Trump’s personal attorney. The idea was to create the technology to properly vent the landfill so the methane and other gases didn’t cause an explosion, and then have a world-class course within easy driving distance from Manhattan, enabling Wall Street players to hit the links any time they wanted. But chasing deals was a tricky and uncertain matter with many more failures than successes, no matter what Trump claims about winning all the time, and this idea didn’t pan out either.

  Trump didn’t take setbacks well, to put it mildly; his form of leadership revolved around anger, fury, rage, and always chaotic blaming and shaming. I was no different than the Trump children, who caught hell when they brought a deal to their father that wasn’t a home run, or didn’t happen at all, though that was inevitable. I had befriended a Saudi prince who wanted to invest his family’s billions in the United States, so I introduced him to Trump in the Boss’s office, but nothing came of that, apart from the pair of diamond-crusted sunglasses my Arab acquaintance gave me.

  To be on the receiving end of a Trump tirade, in the aftermath of the financial crisis, was nobody’s idea of a bargain. He belittled me and shouted and mocked the smallest aspects of my appearance or manner, in a way that would normally drive any sensible employee to seek another job. But the magnetic pull of Trump was irresistible for me: for every ridiculous rant, there was a WrestleMania, or a head of state stopping by the office, or a tabloid rumor about an Apprentice sexual scandal to put down, and the sheer pace and variety of life in the swirling tornado that always surrounded him was addictive. I was like a junkie, mainlining the excitement and the rush of people and money and craziness, about as far from my staid white-shoe law firm existence of recent times as can be imagined. When Trump hinted to my colleague George Sorial that I ought to quit and work elsewhere, I immediately went into the Boss’s office and asked if he wanted me to go. I was fine with leaving if that was what he wanted, I said, but he backed down right away, maybe to avoid direct conflict, which he despised, but mostly because he knew he’d stumbled into a useful and effective advocate willing to do what was required, come what may, which was a rare and valuable commodity.

  There was also the fact that I took on the slimiest assignments without complaint. One of the worst was cleaning up the mess in the aftermath of a clusterfuck known as the Trump Network. This brilliant idea started soon after I began to work for Trump, and essentially involved a couple of operators who sold vitamins and supposed health pills and supplements who approached the Boss about a multi-level marketing scheme. The structure was like Amway, with each commission-based salesperson paying the person above them in the pyramid, thus the pejorative term “pyramid scheme” to describe what was really a scam. The way to keep the Ponzi scheme ticking along was to have more and more salespeople signing up, to continually increase the payments being kicked up the ladder. But the problem was the most basic of any business: the products didn’t sell. I’m not sure if it was quality, or whether or not the vitamins actually did anything, or bad marketing, or bad design, or the Trump brand having no earthl
y relevance to a health-based product, but the company was a total failure and I was tasked with exiting the Boss in a cost-effective and timely fashion.

  Trump Suits, Trump Ties, on and on it went with the product lines. When the clothing company that made Trump Suits approached the company about partnering on a line of Trump-endorsed pay-per-view mixed martial arts promotions to be called Affliction Entertainment, the Boss assigned me to lead the initiative. Like Trump, I liked fighting in business but also in the ring—only in my case that meant actual combat. Muay Thai, the Thai form of boxing, is sometimes called the “art of eight limbs,” referring to the elbows, hands, shins, and knees, all deployed to defeat your opponent, which was a pretty good analogy for what it was like working for and with Donald J. Trump.

  As the Chief Operating Officer of Affliction Entertainment, I was charged with making sure Trump got his cut of the proceeds, even if the company fell apart, as it soon did; the Boss didn’t want to share the losses, of course, but he wanted what he considered his guarantee for putting his name all over the rings used for the two promotions that actually got produced. One evening, I was in the Hamptons having a heated discussion about Trump’s fees with the president of Affliction and the distribution partners who had done business with Affliction Entertainment. Things quickly got out of hand in the limo we were riding in along Montauk Highway and a fistfight broke out between us. The fact that I was willing to literally physically fight and punch another man in the face on behalf of Mr. Trump should give you a sense of the lengths that I was willing to go to please the Boss, much to the ongoing and growing disgust of my wife and kids. But I couldn’t quit working for Trump, I knew—not for the money, as most think, but because by then I was obsessed with him, not as an acolyte or hanger-on, but as a way to stay close to his celebrity and glamor and power.

  I was the canary in the coal mine for the millions of Americans who are still mesmerized by the power of Trump.

  Chapter Six

  Trump For President (Part One)

  There are many ways to track the beginnings of Donald Trump’s presidential ambitions, dating back to the 1980s, when he toyed with a run and started taking out full-page ads in The New York Times as a forum to air his public-policy positions. In those early manifestations of Trump’s aspirations, he revealed an uncanny knack for channeling the fears and resentments of the age, even as he displayed a hair-trigger approach to negotiating when he advised Ronald Reagan’s Secretary of State to start talks with the Soviet Union by banging his fist on the table and shouting, “Fuck you!”

  Just one example was Trump’s call in 1989 for the death penalty for the Central Park Five, a group of black kids convicted of the rape of a white female jogger in Manhattan’s famous park. The fact that the kids were exonerated years later, when it was proven beyond doubt that they were not guilty, didn’t prompt Trump to back down or admit a mistake; he’d understood instinctively that the racial anxiety and resentments then gripping New York City would provide a potent symbol that he hoped to ride to power. That was always Trump’s way, learned at the feet of Roy Cohn, his first attack-dog attorney: Never apologize, and never admit to error or weakness. Never. Ever. Not even in the time of Coronavirus, as the world would discover.

  In 2000, Trump again flirted with the idea of aiming for the presidency, this time as a candidate for the small and fractious Reform Party. Trump’s candidacy was touted by his old friend, David Pecker, a connection I would come to increasingly lean on. The Reform Party had been founded by billionaire and failed presidential candidate Ross Perot, and it lacked a coherent philosophy, which actually suited Trump well, but it was constantly besieged by infighting and feuds and the Boss quickly dropped out.

  Ever since I signed on with the Trump Organization in 2007, I had wanted the Boss to run for president, and I told him so again and again. I thought Trump was a visionary, with a no-nonsense attitude and the charisma to attract all kinds of voters. I saw many times that he had a natural ease with working-class folks, especially his fans—like those who watched The Apprentice and Celebrity Apprentice and WWE—provided they were kept at a distance.

  In the years since, I have asked myself why I wanted so badly for Trump to become president. I developed a slew of answers and justifications over time: I thought he would rise to the office and it would bring out the best in him. I thought his brand of straight talk and no-bullshit honesty would rid the country of the scourge of political correctness. I thought his business acumen and way of seeing the world would offer a bracing change for the country and help fix our failing infrastructure. I thought his America First political stance would make the country stronger, and I thought his original and unique approaches to trade and taxes would transform society, for the good. I thought his aversion to the nonstop, unending wars in the Middle East would restore sanity to foreign policy.

  Those were the things I told myself as I nagged and wheedled and tried to convince him to take the idea of running for the White House seriously. I knew he was a liar and a master manipulator, along with the myriad less-than-sterling characteristics I had witnessed over the years, but I believed his positive qualities outweighed the downsides and perfection shouldn’t be the enemy of good.

  But here’s the ugly truth—a motive I share with deep and abiding regret and shame, and one only unearthed after much soul searching and reflection as I painted the walls in prison and stared at the ceiling from my bunk. The real real truth about why I wanted Trump to be president was because I wanted the power that he would bring to me. I wanted to be able to crush my enemies and rule the world. I know it sounds crazy, but look at what Trump is doing now: running the world, into the ground, but still, he literally rules. Underneath all the layers of delusion and wishful thinking and willful ignorance and stupidity, I was like Gollum in The Lord of the Rings, lusting after the power that would come from possessing the White House—“my precious”—and I was more than willing to lie, cheat, and bully to win. Trump was the only person I had ever encountered who I believed could actually pull off that feat, and I recognized early the raw talent and charisma and pure ruthless ambition to succeed he possessed. I saw what others didn’t, what others thought was a joke, at their own peril, and that was my true motive. I knew Trump would do whatever was necessary to win. I just lacked the imagination and moral purpose to actually think about what that would mean for America, the world, for me, and for my family.

  Because here’s the thing: When you sell your soul, you do exactly that: sell your soul.

  Although I never heard Trump use the N-word in my time spent with him, there were many times that he made racist comments. What he said in private was far worse than what he uttered in public. As an example: in September 2008, we were in Chicago for the “topping off” ceremony for The Trump International Hotel and Tower. Bill Rancic, who had won the first season of The Apprentice four years before, had been put in charge of the project. Trump reminisced to me about Rancic, who had been in a head-to-head with another contestant, Kwame Jackson. Kwame was not only a nice guy, but also a brilliant Harvard MBA graduate. Trump was explaining his back-and-forth about not picking Kwame.

  “There was no way I was going to let this black fag win,” he said to me.

  * * *

  The election of 2008 was a cataclysm for Trump, as he watched a young African American senator from Illinois defeat first Hillary Clinton and then John McCain. Barack Obama’s victory in many ways was the defining event of Donald Trump’s rise. There were really no words to describe Trump’s hatred and contempt for Barack Hussein Obama—always all three names and always with a disdainful emphasis on the middle. This was when I started to witness the increasingly reactionary and unhinged Archie Bunker racism that defined Trump and his views on modern America. He was friendly with many African American people, pretty much exclusively of the celebrity variety—of course, Trump really had no friends, only interests and desires and ambitions—and he wasn�
�t so stupid as to use the N-word, at least not in my presence. Mike Tyson, Don King, Oprah—those were the black folks he admired and embraced. Rich, famous, part of the peer group he inhabited. But, as a rule, Trump expressed low opinions of all black folks, from music to culture and politics. Africa was a hell-hole, he believed, and Nelson Mandela, to use but one example, was an object of contempt for Trump.

  “Tell me one country run by a black person that isn’t a shithole,” he would challenge me as he cursed out the stupidity of Obama. “They are all complete fucking toilets.”

  When Mandela passed away, years later, Trump told me he didn’t think the South African founding father and national hero was a real leader—not the kind he respected.

  “South Africa was once a beautiful country twenty, thirty years ago,” Trump said, endorsing Apartheid-era white rule. “Mandela fucked the whole country up. Now it’s a shithole. Fuck Mandela. He was no leader.”

  Don’t ask me how I squared this kind of racism with his qualifications to be president. I wanted power, as I’ve confessed, and that blinded me to just about everything awful and true and dangerous about Trump—my precious.

  Watching Obama’s Inauguration in 2008 with Trump, with the massive, adoring, joyful crowd on the Mall, incensed the Boss in a way I’d never seen before—he was literally losing his mind watching a handsome and self-evidently brilliant young black man take over, not only as Commander in Chief, but also as a moral world leader and guiding light. It was just too much for Trump. I thought I’d seen the worst of Trump then, but when Obama won the Nobel Prize, Trump went ballistic, as if the universe were playing some kind of trick on him to drive him out of his mind. It was almost like he was hearing voices, the way he ranted and raved about the idiotic Obama and how he was beloved by so many Americans. Trump mocked the way Obama talked, walked, even appeared, as if acting presidential was just that: an act. The shtick you see him pull at his rallies, when he mocks the idea of being “presidential” and says how easy it is to pretend to be a serious leader, walking like a robot and marching around like a fool and a phony, was first performed for yours truly in Trump’s office while I sat quietly listening to him go on and on and on about Obama and caricature his mannerisms. We even hired a Faux-Bama, or fake Obama, to record a video where Trump ritualistically belittled the first black president and then fired him, a kind of fantasy fulfillment that it was hard to imagine any adult would spend serious money living out—until he did the functional equivalent in the real world.