The Foreword to former Trump fixer Michael Cohen's book "Disloyal" has been released. Here's a sampling:
There are reasons why there has never been an intimate portrait of Donald Trump, the man. In part, it’s because he has a million acquaintances, pals and hangers on, but no real friends. He has no one he trusts to keep his secrets. For ten years, he certainly had me, and I was always there for him, and look what happened to me. I urge you to really consider that fact: Trump has no true friends. He has lived his entire life avoiding and evading taking responsibility for his actions. He crushed or cheated all who stood in his way, but I know where the skeletons are buried because I was the one who buried them. I was the one who most encouraged him to run for president in 2011, and then again in 2015, carefully orchestrating the famous trip down the escalator in Trump Tower for him to announce his candidacy. When Trump wanted to reach Russian President Vladimir Putin, via a secret back channel, I was tasked with making the connection in my Keystone Kop fashion. I stiffed contractors on his behalf, ripped off his business partners, lied to his wife Melania to hide his sexual infidelities, and bullied and screamed at anyone who threatened Trump’s path to power. From golden showers in a sex club in Vegas, to tax fraud, to deals with corrupt officials from the former Soviet Union, to catch and kill conspiracies to silence Trump’s clandestine lovers, I wasn’t just a witness to the president’s rise—I was an active and eager participant. [snip]
... As the months passed by and I thought about the man I knew so well, I became even more convinced that Trump will never leave office peacefully. The types of scandals that have surfaced in recent months will only continue to emerge with greater and greater levels of treachery and deceit. If Trump wins another four years, these scandals will prove to only be the tip of the iceberg. I’m certain that Trump knows he will face prison time if he leaves office, the inevitable cold Karma to the notorious chants of “Lock Her Up!” But that is the Trump I know in a nutshell. He projects his own sins and crimes onto others, partly to distract and confuse but mostly because he thinks everyone is as corrupt and shameless and ruthless as he is; a poisonous mindset I know all too well. Whoever follows Trump into the White House, if the President doesn’t manage to make himself the leader for life, as he has started to joke about—and Trump never actually jokes- will discover a tangle of frauds and scams and lawlessness. Trump and his minions will do anything to cover up that reality, and I mean anything.There are other passages in the Foreword that hint at more sleaze to be revealed, as if more evidence of Trump's malignant narcissism, venality and amorality were needed. Of course, none of this should be surprising to anyone who has been paying attention for the past 4 or more years.
But here's a takeaway from how he describes the fealty of Republicans toward this rotten p.o.s.: the one trait they are most attracted to is his ruthlessness. They believe his ruthless amorality is his greatest strength, because it allows him to pursue raw power on their behalf, regardless of niceties like the truth, the Constitution, the law, the general welfare, etc. He's their means to an end -- political power regardless of popular sentiment, from the town halls to the state legislatures to the governorships to the national government. That's all they've been interested in for decades -- power simply for the sake of power, not to govern in the best interests of the people, but to use power to comfort the comfortable and to afflict those who don't look or believe or think like them.
Cohen's book, when it's released, will be yet another in a long series of narratives about the rotten p.o.s. that's occupying the White (Supremacist) House. But it will also be another mirror held up to his malignant party and all who support him, all the time knowing what he's done to our country and what he's still capable of doing.
BONUS: It appears that the hashtag #UrineTroubleTrump is trending, along with #GoldenShowersTrump, after Cohen's tease about the Las Vegas escapade.
