Michael Cohen’s Testimony Shows Trump Thinks Don Jr. Has ‘The Worst Judgement of Anyone in the World’
Occasionally, our president has a bona fide Good Take. It is exceedingly rare, but it does happen-like, say, when he weighed in on the Cincinatti Zoo's decision to put down the gorilla Harambe after a child broke into the enclosure, using the kind of nuance and compassion you'd hope from someone we granted the vast powers of the American presidency. Don't hold your breath until the next one.
Still, the prepared remarks of Michael Cohen, Trump's longtime personal fixer, have been released prior to his public testimony before Congress this fine Wednesday. And in among the barbs there's a bona fide Good Take from many months ago.
According to Cohen, it's about his son-Donald Trump, Jr.
What struck me as I looked back and thought about that exchange between Don Jr. and his father was, first, that Mr. Trump had frequently told me and others that his son Don Jr. had the worst judgment of anyone in the world.
Considering this is the same Junior who dressed like this for a photo shoot-and sat like this on a stump, and made this face-that seems like a decent call.
Why would you agree @DonaldJTrumpJr to be sitting on a dead tree stump, surrounded by barren trees? Talk about hopeless pic.twitter.com/bzo3BOdkwk
- Roland Scahill (@rolandscahill) March 18, 2017
Presumably, this is what he looks like this morning. That's if he's not cruising Instagram, adding to the dark void of bad decisions-often chronicled by Ashley Feinberg-on his account there. Like many of his father's followers, Junior also seems to revel in his performative cruelty. That includes a Trail of Tears joke targeting Elizabeth Warren that Junior thought was insufficient, so he posted an Instagram highlighting a response from some Conservative Thought Leader spelling out the joke in even more despicable terms.
But more to the point, this is the same Junior who tweeted out his own incriminating emails about the infamous Trump Tower Meeting. Remember that? The New York Times dug up that Junior, the Son-in-Law-in-Chief Jared Kushner, and soon-to-be-jailed campaign manager Paul Manafort had a meeting with a Russian lawyer-and plenty of others-in Trump Tower in June 2016. When first caught, Junior said the meeting was about "Russian adoption."
(In a way, it was: Vladimir Putin banned American families from adopting Russian orphans after the U.S. imposed sanctions on him and his oligarch friends through the Magnitsky Act. Putin wants these and other sanctions repealed. But that is not what Junior was trying to communicate through the statement.)
Then, when the Times called Junior to ask for comment because they'd obtained emails showing he knew it advance it was a "Russian government lawyer" offering "dirt" on Hillary Clinton, he...tweeted out the emails himself. He said it was "in the interest of transparency," having repeatedly obfuscated about the same subject until he was forced into a corner. The email subject line was "Russia - Clinton - private and confidential." The person pushing the meeting, music publicist Rob Goldstone, said in the email it was "part of Russia and its government's support for Mr. Trump."
This meeting was the topic for this section of Cohen's prepared remarks.
Questions have been raised about whether I know of direct evidence that Mr. Trump or his campaign colluded with Russia. I do not. I want to be clear. But, I have my suspicions.
Sometime in the summer of 2017, I read all over the media that there had been a meeting in Trump Tower in June 2016 involving Don Jr. and others from the campaign with Russians, including a representative of the Russian government, and an email setting up the meeting with the subject line, “Dirt on Hillary Clinton.” Something clicked in my mind. I remember being in the room with Mr. Trump, probably in early June 2016, when something peculiar happened. Don Jr. came into the room and walked behind his father’s desk – which in itself was unusual. People didn’t just walk behind Mr. Trump’s desk to talk to him. I recalled 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.”
What struck me as I looked back and thought about that exchange between Don Jr. and his father was, first, that Mr. Trump had frequently told me and others that his son Don Jr. had the worst judgment of anyone in the world. And also, that Don Jr. would never set up any meeting of any significance alone – and certainly not without checking with his father.
I also knew that nothing went on in Trump world, especially the campaign, without Mr. Trump’s knowledge and approval. So, I concluded that Don Jr. was referring to that June 2016 Trump Tower meeting about dirt on Hillary with the Russian representative when he walked behind his dad’s desk that day -- and that Mr. Trump knew that was the meeting Don Jr. was talking about when he said, “That’s good…let me know.”
While there's plenty of reason to believe Trump the Elder did know about the Trump Tower Meeting-not least because the Washington Post reported Senior dictated Junior's initial statement that the meeting was about adoption, not the campaign-this doesn't seem like the strongest evidence. It's based on what seems like rough Cohen memories and a rougher timeline and news reports and a whisper he thinks he overheard.
What's certain is that this will not be good for Junior's psyche, at least as publicly presented. So much of that disastrous social media activity is a flailing attempt to get his father's attention and approval, a desperate plea for recognition from a man he reportedly once hated. He's also reportedly been telling people he expects to be indicted.
What's exceedingly clear is that Saturday Night Live's take on the Trump family-that Junior is the smart one and Eric is the stupid one-was absolutely atrocious. Repeal and replace it. Eric might be the only one who makes it out of this tangled mess of ratfucking and, perhaps, outright criminality. Well, Tiffany should be fine, too.
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