top of page

Editorial: The Scorpion and The Frog



In general Michael Cohen corroborated everything we've known about Trump from his days as a sh*tty Manhattan developer to his days as a sh*tty President of the United States. He's a liar, a con man, and a racist (in no particular order). He ran his entire campaign as a publicity stunt to build his flailing brand back up. He didn't expect to win because he didn't think Americans were dumb enough to elect him. There was no plan for what happened if he won. He committed crimes flagrantly while running for office including crimes specifically related to how he won the office, and whether it was a political calculation or just a lifetime of getting away with it, he didn't give a sh*t about the potential consequences. Everyone who has come into his orbit has been laid low by the egomania and the win-at-all-costs mentality. He's ultimately a bully covering up for deep-seated insecurities about why his racist slumlord father never loved him. He had Cohen threaten something like 500 different organizations over 10 years from journalists ("Tread very f*cking lightly") to the College Board and Trump's various alma maters not to release his SATs confirming he's a dumb-dumb.


Cohen made compelling and truthful arguments that match what's been publicly reported for months. He brought detailed evidence and referenced other people who can corroborate his claims (or risk perjury by refuting them). Trump's crimes as a private citizen and as President extend to his business taxes, his "charity" organization, and his campaign. He won't release his taxes because he's afraid of getting audited and the IRS figuring out exactly how many millions of dollars he's stolen from the American taxpayers who now pay his salary. Cohen gave the responsible members of the committee (the Democrats) reason to issue a dozen more subpoenas and for the House Financial Services committee to subpoena Trump's taxes. Cohen displayed the contrition of someone who bought in on the myth of Donald J Trump only to get laid low when the Feds came knocking. He's not a hero by any stretch of the imagination and he likely deserves worse than what he got. Yesterday wasn't even close to a culmination but it was a good beginning.


Michael Cohen relentlessly hammered the point that Trump didn't expect to win because he didn't think there were enough Americans dumb enough to believe he was a viable candidate and not a carnival barker

The Republicans on the committee were laughably uninterested in the job of the committee. They repeatedly cited other concerns like the debt, pregnant women, the border non-crisis, and - weirdly - their President's policy of kidnapping children at the border. All of these are valid concerns! But the job of the House Oversight Committee is to...provide oversight of the executive branch.


Jim Jordan - the Representative credibly accused of covering up a sexual assault scandal - used his opening remarks to spew forth QAnon nonsense that was hard for [me] to navigate. Basically: Tom Steyer is a Jewish billionaire who kicked the tires on a run for the White House but decided instead to try and get Trump impeached. Lanny Davis, Michael Cohen's attorney, worked for the Clintons once upon a time. Apparently Steyer hosted rallies in Elijah Cummings' Congressional District. Further, Cohen SPOKE TO Elijah Cummings prior to testifying. Ergo - and this was a real goddamned question asked by the GOP - is Tom Steyer paying Lanny Davis's legal fees to represent Cohen as part of a Deep State Jew plot to overthrow the President and provide false grounds for his impeachment? If you think I'm making any of this up, watch Jordan's opening remarks.


The GOP refused to ask a single question about the President and chose instead to focus on how the former Vice Chair of the RNC's finance committee and closest advisor to the GOP President spent the better part of a decade engaged in criminal activities for his personal enrichment. While it's true that not *every* crime that Cohen committed was on behalf of the President, it's also true that HE COMMITTED CRIMES AT THE DIRECTION OF THE PRESIDENT. One frequent topic of conversation was the idea that Cohen might get a book deal at some point or - and this was a head-scratcher - use his time in front of Congress as a launching point for political office in New York.


Mark Meadows also used a significant amount of time to pretend that Cohen had lied on a document requiring the disclosure of any contracts with foreign GOVERNMENTS. After recess, Katie Hill pointed out that Mark Meadows doesn't understand the difference between a government and a private company.


At one point the GOP decided to hammer on the idea that Cohen "illegally wiretapped" the President. This misunderstands both the law and the mechanics of a wiretap. Hilariously, the reason that Cohen's recordings are completely legal and not in violation of attorney-client privilege is that New York made the state a single-party consent state when it comes to phone recordings so they could get the mafia on the record. And it's not covered by privilege because it was in furtherance of several different criminal conspiracies. Cohen also revealed that Jay Sekulow, among others, edited his Congressional testimony, which opens them all up to criminal prosecution.


In typical fashion Trump said Cohen is a dirty disgusting rat bastard liar who can't be trusted EXCEPT for the parts where Cohen said he couldn't prove collusion with Russia happened. One of my favorite parts is where Cohen said that Don Junior would have had to run the Vesilnetskaya meeting past his father because Senior said his own son had "some of the worst judgment" he'd ever seen in anyone.


Will the credible and backed-up testimony of the President's longtime fixer do anything to penetrate the subservient and obsequious party that's abandoned even the notion of oversight of the executive branch? Feels unlikely. But to hear so much of it from the mouth of someone who was pretty remarkable. Makes you wonder how tough Stone, Kushner, Junior, Daughter-Wife, etc, will be. It also made plain that the Southern District of New York is in the middle of building a case out against the President, although for which one of his many crimes remains to be seen.


Will we ever actually impeach Trump and hold him accountable? Hard to say. The armor plating of the Fox News distortion field is strong. Do we now have in the Congressional record more than enough evidence to begin impeachment proceedings? Based on my reading of the Constitution (which is woefully vague and defines impeachable offenses only as "high crimes or misdemeanors"), and history (what we know Trump did is worse than what Clinton was impeached for and is pretty close to on the level with what Nixon was impeached for). He committed felonies to get the office, full-stop. He's been implicated in those felonies by federal prosecutors. Everything from his business to his charity to his campaign to his inauguration is under investigation. He's violating the Emoluments Clause on a daily basis (the subject of multiple other lawsuits that are working their way through the courts). Half a dozen of his known associates have gone to jail for crimes they committed before or while working for him. The only thing keeping Jared and Junior from federal indictments are probably procedural decisions.


Oh, and in closing, I'd like to state again for the record that Michael Cohen relentlessly hammered the point that Trump didn't expect to win because he didn't think there were enough Americans dumb enough to believe he was a viable candidate and not a carnival barker. So anyone that voted for him and anyone that's backing him up in Congress and denying the obvious reality of the situation - that they're complicit in what's functionally a criminal enterprise literally operating from the Oval Office - has some real soul-searching to do.


As for the rest of us, we just get each and every one of these motherf*ckers out of office. The GOP isn't willingly going to restore their party's sanity. They learned nothing from the midterms. It's on us.

bottom of page