The Tough Get Cohen

Discover the dark arts of tabloid media and their chokehold on political campaigns as we dissect the 'catch and kill' strategies that shielded figures like Donald Trump from scandalous headlines. Our journey through the shadows unveils the hefty sums exchanged to silence stories and the disturbing dance of truth and deception that whirls around power corridors. We're not just talking about hushed whispers; we delve into the unsettling intersection of personal indiscretions and public perception, where lie detector tests come to the fore in confirming the salacious.

Feel the discomfort as we recount Trump's bizarre commentary about his daughter Ivanka and his transactional view on relationships. The episode doesn't shy away from the gritty details of Michael Cohen's testimony or the strategic plays to bury stories beneath a mountain of cash and denial. Through the fog of war in political reputation management, we see the patterns emerge—burned bridges, self-sabotage, and the long-term fallout of Trump's take-no-prisoners approach, deftly juxtaposed against the similar patterns of figures like Drake in the music industry.

Finally, we cast a critical eye on the courtroom drama and the media circus that envelops it, focusing on Michael Cohen's pivot from a fiery legal eagle to a composed figure facing down his former boss. The episode rounds off with a contentious discussion about the legitimacy of Maggie Haberman's Pulitzer Prize, challenging the notions of journalistic integrity amidst the smoke and mirrors of political reporting. It's an episode packed with controversy, insight, and a raw look behind the curtain of power's compromising embrace.

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:25

One, two about their opponents and Cohen gave an example that David Pecker and Dylan Howard offered up some stories about Hillary Clinton wearing thick eyeglasses, suggesting that she had a brain injury of some sort, and a story about Marco Rubio in a swimming pool with several men doing a drug binge, which is just absolutely wild.

Speaker 3: 0:50

That's why I never believed the stuff about the rumors he had an affair that Trump had planted in. What was it in the Post? What were we talking about? Whatever, and that's why I didn't believe any rumors about marco rubio being with women he lived with that guy.

Speaker 2: 1:11

They were room.

Speaker 1: 1:11

I can't even remember his name I don't even remember any stories about marco rubio being.

Speaker 2: 1:16

I did a story about him and he ended up getting caught up with some but him and marco rubio roommates, and I'm like okay.

Speaker 1: 1:24

Yeah, typically. Yeah, you know, if you're well off and you're in the political landscape, you don't typically roommate with dudes. I mean not that we're judging, like I don't care, but you know straight dudes in politics. Anyway, that's beyond the veil of this podcast, um, but yeah, he specifically validated the conversation or the testimony of david pecker and he was saying, quote, what was discussed was the power of the national inquire.

Speaker 1: 1:54

Being at the cast register of so many supermarkets and bodegas, if we could place positive stories about trump, that would be beneficial, and if we could place negative stories about some of the other candidates, that would also be beneficial. And that was co negative stories about some of the other candidates, that would also be beneficial. And that was Cohen describing David Pecker's role with the campaign, unofficially, quote, unquote. And then Cohen also said that Pecker offered to keep an eye out for anything negative about Trump. And this is, you know, being part of the tabloid industry.

Speaker 1: 2:21

You get a lot of leads on these stories in advance, before they come out. Yeah, of course, and this is how they arrange catch and kill for these other stories. Um, and then there was also this story about the doorman, dino, judan, rather um, that had a story about a trump fathering a child with a you know trump organization employee that they determined to be false. Now we don't know like the actual false falsity or you know the factual nature of the story, but they didn't believe it was true they were still willing to pay to make it go away yeah, trump told cohen to make it go away.

Speaker 1: 3:02

And then the thing is, if you think about them paying $30,000 for a story that they deem to not be true, like what does that say about them paying $150,000 to Karen McDougal and $130,000 to Stormy Daniels? It kind of puts that into perspective, right, and then also with this story about the doorman, right, and then also with this story about the doorman. Now I have heard it proposed that he took a lie detector test, and the lie detector test I'm the way it was inferred is that the doorman believed that the story that he had been telling was true, and that doesn't mean it was actually factual.

Speaker 2: 3:45

But if you believe it, you will pass the lie detector test Exactly.

Speaker 1: 3:49

So if you believe something that hasn't necessarily been authenticated and you take a lie detector test, you can pass the lie detector test, but that information turned out to not actually be factual. So we're going to give Trump the benefit of the doubt on this one and say that the doorman may not have necessarily known all of the details of the situation, but he would have been told by the that doorman I'm sure has seen a lot of shit, so to him he was thinking that's not out of the ordinary.

Speaker 1: 4:24

Yeah, can't rule it out. Can't rule it out, right, he's like, I see you trying to do some shit, so it's totally feasible.

Speaker 2: 4:31

He's knocked up on the maze. He's like I can see it yeah.

Speaker 1: 4:37

Totally reasonable. Cohen also talked about Karen McDougal and when her story was being shopped around and he was asked about whether he thought the impact of the story would be, and Cohen said it would be significant and he told Trump immediately after he got off the phone with AMI, after Pecker told him the story was being shopped around the phone with AMI, after Pecker told him the story was being shopped around. And when he asked Trump whether he knew McDougal, trump's response was she's really beautiful.

Speaker 2: 5:14

Well, I guess it's better than being told you look like his daughter.

Speaker 1: 5:17

I mean it's just okay fair enough, that was some creepy shit.

Speaker 2: 5:21

Again, I was trying to say I just yeah.

Speaker 1: 5:23

Yeah.

Speaker 2: 5:25

That's what every girl wants to hear before a guy puts his penis in her.

Speaker 1: 5:29

Yeah, you know, you remind me of my daughter. You remind me of my daughter. Yeah, doesn't that make? Get you all hot and bothered? No, it's fucking creepy pedophile shit. But no, just responding to Cohen's question with she's beautiful is just a ridiculous answer. But clearly he knew who she was. If he knew she was physically attractive, that's my ex-wife, that's Marla. No, sorry, he just can't tell anyone.

Speaker 2: 6:01

Marla was a blonde and I think Karen McDougal she's a think karen mcdougall she's a brunette, right yeah, she's, yeah, she's a dark hair well, she's in that picture with melania and ivanka and trump playboy bunny when they're in their little bunny outfits. I don't know if they were at the mansion or the bunny club, but right now she looks.

Speaker 1: 6:24

I mean, I guess if Ivanka was a brunette, I mean she kind of would, for example. This is weird. I don't know how we got off into it. I don't like comparing physical features of women. Yeah, this is not really the pathway that I wanted to go down.

Speaker 2: 6:39

This is not the way. Maybe that's why he didn't last so long, because he'd been.

Speaker 1: 6:43

Yeah, you, you know he really gets it out for his daughter.

Speaker 3: 6:46

He couldn't hang yeah, I thought you're gonna stop okay, I'm sorry.

Speaker 2: 6:51

Incest is never funny look, but never funny.

Speaker 1: 6:55

We don't know for a fact that trump's ever slept with his daughter.

Speaker 2: 6:58

We're just no, no, no, but, but even in the mind it's oh, just yeah the trump is fantasizing about his daughter as he's banging a porn star, he has some weird shit and then he said it publicly so many times in interviews like how well. I mean okay, that's the other thing right, what so?

Speaker 1: 7:19

when stormy is talking about that in court, like maybe to the jury, it's probably like huh, that's strange, but to us we're like no, he said it all of. He says it every. We said it on tv, he said it on stern show. It's just some weird shit, man. Exactly he says it like it's totally normal, like no one would ever bat an eye.

Speaker 3: 7:39

I can't like, I'm sorry, any person. I, if they, if their father said that about them, that would even like, even the one time, would just be like yeah, if you're not in the audio, the visual medium. I was making a, an appalled face it was.

Speaker 2: 7:59

It was more. It was appalled and disgusting together at the same time. Yes, it was a disgusted, and appalled yeah both of it just dad like good dad stuff it might be more just so, like you know, he was like well, if she wasn't my daughter, we'd probably be, I'd be dating her yeah, you know, he told oprah just casual, just throwing it out there all casual, casual, like it's totally cool, like this is how we just roll, like this Nobody kicks it.

Speaker 1: 8:28

Like this dog. This is some weird shit, just very strange man. I, just this guy.

Speaker 2: 8:35

I didn't know he even had any other kids until he was president. They would only be like with Ivanka. They were on and Don Jr and Don Jr.

Speaker 1: 8:45

Don Jr would be hanging around, he'd be on the show and shit. But yeah, that's just. That was so wild alright, move on.

Speaker 3: 8:57

I'm sleepy, let's go.

Speaker 1: 8:59

Sorry but yeah, he was saying that it's 11.50.

Speaker 1: 9:03

Yes, I'm sure the audience cares what time it is that we're recording. Trump basically asked him to kill that story with Karen McDougal and AMI, supposedly, was going to pay for it and he was telling David Pecker that Trump would pay him back. And that's well because Trump was stringing him along. That's why Michael Cohen recorded that conversation of Trump about setting up the LLC so they could funnel the money to AMI, so he could take that tape to Pecker to make him feel more comfortable that Trump wasn't going to try and screw him out of the money which Trump did eventually still not pay him back. Try and screw him out of the money which Trump did, eventually still not paying back.

Speaker 2: 9:45

You know what I'm not. You know what I'm going to blame Packer because he'd known Trump for 20, 30 years. He knew who that motherfucker was, so that he really thought that he was going to get paid. Like I'm not, I'm really not feeling sorry for you because you're not going to tell me that you knew him and as dirty as the dirty bird that he was yeah known for stepping decades that you were really feeling some type of way that you got fucked but you heard the way pecker talked.

Speaker 1: 10:11

Well, I mean, I heard, but like you read about the way pecker looked up to trump, so it was kind of one of those. It's one of those relationships where pecker thought of trump as a mentor, which again is some crazy shit.

Speaker 2: 10:22

But I mean, it's just what, no?

Speaker 1: 10:24

i't know, just the way, the thinking, his daughter's attractive I don't know Pedophile mentor, I don't know, maybe he saw Trump as job security.

Speaker 2: 10:34

Maybe he thought if I help get Trump elected, that's going to secure me as like the go-to for the store. You know what I mean.

Speaker 1: 10:43

Like like his, his proximity to the power, and that if I take care of him, he's gonna take care of me, and then I'm gonna have a president like in my pocket, like right, that's, that's huge but the thing is, if trump had just paid uh pecker back for the carrie mcdougal shit, pecker probably would have paid off Stormy Daniels, and then that probably like once Robert Mueller started investigating Trump-Russia connections, it's entirely possible that if they had done that correctly, mueller never would have discovered these payments, it never would have spawned this investigation off to SDNY, cohen never would have been indicted, and then this never would have been handed this investigation off to SDNY and Cohen never would have been indicted, and then this never would have been handed off to Manhattan after Trump left office and Trump wouldn't be on trial. So this is Trump like Trump's bad behavior coming back to bite him in the ass, this whole not paying people thing.

Speaker 2: 11:39

He's that kid that you say tie your shoes, you're going to trip. Tie your shoes, you're going to trip and fall. Gonna trip. Tie your shoes, you're gonna trip and fall. Yeah, tie your shoes, you're gonna trip and fall. But doesn't want to be told anything and then steps on their shoelaces and trips and fucking falls like that's. He doesn't have an ability to to not like throw himself under the bus or do things that are so incredibly stupid Self-sabotaging.

Speaker 1: 12:08

Yes, he sabotages himself all the time and we'll get to just a little bit more of that shortly. But also this thing with not paying people. I guess if he had managed to pull off having Cohen string Stormy Daniels along until after the election, he would have paid. He also would have been on trial. Or if he had just never paid Cohen back, he wouldn't be on trial. So there are all these ways in which Trump's I guess, his inane sense of trying to screw people actually could have got him off, except he eventually gave in and pay, reimbursed Cohen, which is just wild.

Speaker 1: 12:41

Of all the so, all the details of the trial, the one that really sticks out, you know Trump not putting his name on anything. He doesn't use emails. He doesn't use his phone. Half the time he's calling from other people's phones. He doesn't use text messages. He didn't sign the NDA. He had Cohen take care of the David Denison part, had Cohen take care of the David Denison part. But he's such a fucking penny pincher and he has to manage every little cent that comes out of the Trump organization. He had to personally sign those checks to Michael Cohen instead of having someone else at the Trump organization sign them for him and that's what bit him in the ass. Because it's indisputable that Trump was unaware of and that's what bit him in the ass. Because it's indisputable that Trump was unaware of the plot to keep the story from coming out before the election. And it's indisputable that he paid Cohen back because he signed the checks. And the crazy shit about the checks is it's not like they came to Trump from the Trump organization to the White House. No, they went to his bodyguards house and the bodyguard personally brought them bitches all the way up to DC to have Trump sign them by hand. It's wild.

Speaker 1: 13:55

So when Cohen talked about how Trump was well, first of all, when the Stormy Daniels story broke or rather, when Michael Cohen learned that Stormy Daniels was shopping her story in 2011, he went to Trump's office and told him about the conversation A conversation he had with Dylan Howard and Trump asked if he knew who she was, and Cohen said at the trial that Trump told him he didn't know Stormy Daniels. Cohen relayed the story about this 2006 golf outing at Lake Tahoe. Cohen was instructed by Trump to basically kill the story, to basically kill the story, and at this golf outing, Trump told Cohen that he and Ben Roethlisberger had met Stormy Daniels there and that she was more fond of him than Big Ben. And which is just some again, some more creepy shit. This is, look, you know, this is Trump's need to feel like he's, you know, big, bad, bad, alpha male dude or whatever. But that anyone would prefer Trump over Big Ben is absolutely fucking ridiculous. But also, don't Big Ben got an issue with like some sexual assault in his past too?

Speaker 2: 15:24

Sexual assault and he was spreading herpes around passed too. So it's sexual assault and he was spreading herpes around. I wouldn't even, I wouldn't brag about anything referring to a bit of a competition in the between stds well, the womanizing department okay well, the guy yeah, so just Okay Well yeah, so just, it sure is some weird shit, man Very weird. Predators find each other man, they do.

Speaker 1: 15:55

So in 2016, when the story resurfaced that that Stormy Daniels was trying to shop her story around, trump was upset with Cohen. He was like I thought you took care of this and he was basically, you know, telling him to just make sure it was handled. And Trump was quite upset. He was saying this is a disaster, a total disaster. Women will hate me, guys will think it's cool, but this is going to be a disaster for the campaign. And as we talked about this, is Trump thinking that like dudes will be okay with the idea that Trump's like slaying bitches or whatever? But again, once we heard the story from Stormy Daniels, it is actually just sad and gross the way it played out in his hotel room.

Speaker 2: 16:38

It really was. It was disturbing on so many levels, just as a woman in general, yeah, and that behavior in you know it does you know display a pattern of his behavior and his feeling of entitlement. You know, yeah, and as most mediocre people, white man he failed to meet any expectation or to come through with anything like. He is just all around a gross ass loser he's yeah, I think there's okay.

Speaker 1: 17:19

So there's one thing that I find just abhorrent about trump more than any other. It is that trump is always trying to figure out how he can take things from people without ever giving anything back, and that is like the worst type of possible person to be around, because it inevitably you will end up losing something. Uh, because they are not willing to like contribute, the greater good right they always. They're a drain. They suck the value out of every interaction and relationship. And I was talking about this with Ben. So, if you don't listen to this and you don't know, ben from Midas Touch hit me up out of the blue one day. He was like hey, man, have you ever thought about making videos? I was like huh what? Yeah, you want to make videos for uh, contribute to our network. And I was like uh, okay, um, you know he was talking about like you know, we can compensate you, cut you in on, um, some of the revenue sharing. And I was like hey, you know I, you guys, do great work. I am happy to just contribute however I can, because I'm the type of person who wants to give as much as possible, uh, on the front end, so people understand the value that I bring to a situation so that they'll want to reciprocate like altruism.

Speaker 1: 18:42

But trump is like the total opposite, where he's like I don't want to give anything, if at all possible, and I just want to extract. But the problem with that is you burn fucking bridges and we see this happen at every turn with Trump. He's burned nearly every bridge possible. Now he's got like a whole new set of dudes around him sucking up to him because his position in the Republican Party. But it's kind of like this Drake situation. I don't know how familiar you are with what's going on with Drake in the rap game right now, but this dude's been at the top of the game for damn near 20 years now. Why don't nobody like Drake? People who actually work in the music industry Motherfuckers don't like that dude.

Speaker 2: 19:23

That is a good point D. I never really thought about that. I didn't even really think about that, but you're right.

Speaker 1: 19:30

None of the dudes Drake fucked with when he was coming up rocked with him no more. All of his athlete you know a lot of his athlete friends don't rock with him no more. Why, james Harden don't like Drake no more.

Speaker 2: 19:43

So, that's why he's always with these random yes type of dudes around him.

Speaker 1: 19:49

Well, yeah, he's got his yes man but like you know, he messed around with little wayne's girl while little wayne was locked up, burnt that bridge. You know birdman having trouble with his finances. Why, drake, if drake's supposed to be balling, why can't? Why can't? Why he can't help out Birdman with his crib, right? You know Rick Ross, you know him and Drake used to kick it. Now Rick Ross out here dropping like why don't nobody like Drake? And you know again, if you're not overly familiar with this part of the problem with Drake is he just be smashing everybody's girl behind his back and then nobody likes that, like you can talk about. You know, in the music industry you don't own us Drink if you want to.

Speaker 1: 20:34

Well, look, that is totally fine. But what I'm saying is well like say, if you had a homegirl.

Speaker 3: 20:41

I had to get incredulous about that. I have no intention.

Speaker 1: 20:44

No, no, no, no, no. I know what you're saying. Sorry, Drake, intention no, no, no, no, no. I know what you're saying. No, I, yes, sorry Drake, I get heartbroken, um, but no, but what I'm saying is is like, in reality, if you had a home girl who was in every turn trying to bang everybody's dude, they were in a relationship with you would be like I refuse to hang out with this girl. Now you might you might not judge that specific behavior and say that she's a terrible, but you wouldn't want to hang out with a girl like that, I would imagine, and that's the kind of dude that Drake is oh, but it seems like.

Speaker 3: 21:17

Do you think he's specifically pursuing the girls?

Speaker 1: 21:22

Yes, I'm not talking about like oh it's Drake, and then girls fall into his lap. I'm talking about, dude, will see you out with a girl and then he'll circle back and wait till you're not with the girl and try and hit her up and get her to bed.

Speaker 3: 21:35

That's the type of dude. That's the type of shit Drake be doing. I have had a friend like that, yeah again.

Speaker 1: 21:41

So, but the bigger point was just like Drake, trump burns all his bridges. This fucking just I don't know this this behavior where he needs to like extract as much value out of the situation well, because he has so many people around him and he he doesn't even have like loyalty or affection for his family.

Speaker 2: 22:05

So as long as there are others, around him to tell him what he needs to hear and make him feel good. He doesn't care who it is. So when he burns these bridges, like he doesn't, he doesn't care because this person's here, this person's here to kiss his ass, this person's here. So everybody is expendable to him here. So everybody is expendable to him, like everybody is expendable. He has no loyalty to anyone. And you could be with him for years. Look at all of the people that have been around him, how long he and cohen had been. I, when I say friends, I'm using that loosely, but you know what I mean like no, cohen respected that dude.

Speaker 1: 22:49

He looked up to him. He said he loved working for him, it was his dream job and he burned a bridge with a dude like that.

Speaker 2: 22:54

It's incredible he can't help himself, he can't help himself.

Speaker 1: 22:58

He cannot, and if you just look at the trial here, the only people who are showing up to support him and they've only showed up recently here are the people who need him politically. Mike johnson and you know his potential running mates.

Speaker 2: 23:14

but, yeah, no, trump is the kind of person that feels like you should want to do this for free because I'm that important. But, seriously, there are people like that that feel like, are you getting naked donut? But there are people that feel like that they feel like just being around me should be payment enough. And that's Trump's mentality. Yeah, that's his mentality.

Speaker 1: 23:40

At some point, like if you're going to expect people to put in work for you over the course of the long term. You got to make sure everybody eat. You got to take care of your peoples or they will not be your people yeah, and then eventually earn loyalty, right, sorry, you're just talking about burning your bridges.

Speaker 3: 24:02

I'll just stick, you know, go on. What's going on?

Speaker 1: 24:06

yeah, um, there was an interesting conversation that trump I mean rather michael cohen had about melania, where he was talking about how he called trump on october 17th 2016 to let him know that stormy daniels was going to take her story to the daily mail. And then it coincided he got trump's voicemail, so he left a message, but the the following day, melania Trump texted Michael Cohen specifically saying, quote Good morning, michael. Can you please call DT on a cell phone? Thanks, and Cohen wrote back, of course, always been this defense that, like trump, was trying to hide this affair from his wife, and that sounds sensible on the surface. But if that's the case, why do you have a melania as the middle man between michael cohen and donald trump to cover up the story of this affair?

Speaker 2: 25:02

good point that's crazy that's.

Speaker 1: 25:12

That's pretty funny. Um, and then also there's this. There's this side tangent of so, when the access hollywood tape dropped, melania was the one who had the idea of referring to it as locker room talk. So I mean she's I've said this forever like the people who try and give melania a pass, as though she's somehow above all of this. No, she's deep in it. She's as bad as the rest of them, and we've seen that with the. You know, I don't really care. Do you jack it on her trip to see the migrant kids that Trump stole from their families? Like this bitch is just as bad as the rest of her family.

Speaker 2: 25:55

And she turned the Rose Garden into the maze from the Shining. So that's all I had to say about that.

Speaker 1: 26:05

Fair enough, cohen also went on to talk about how Trump was totally involved at every level of the scheme to rope Daniels in, to try and silence her story and to delay the payments and initially having Cohen pay her the money and then be reimbursed. And all of that, there was this incident in November 4th of 2016. It was, was it like? A couple of days right before the election, where Wall Street and Hope Hicks about the situation and they told him to get control over the release of that article, his bodyguard cell phone and he was very upset because the negative story was, you know, it was about to potentially take his campaign right before the election because he thought women weren't going to vote for him if this story came out. And, like the fact that he wrote Hope Hicks into this is again, people want to give Hope Hicks credit for her testimony.

Speaker 3: 27:26

She was knee deep in this shit too, yeah, so yeah, there's just varying degrees of like what point people decided to stop being complicit or active participants. It's been different. It's been different for everybody.

Speaker 1: 27:45

But yeah, also, cohen testified about how um in in talking to david Pecker that he said basically that Jeff Sessions was Trump's attorney general and he was in Trump's pocket. And Cohen put a new gloss on that by telling prosecutors that he spoke to Trump before talking to Pecker and implied that Trump had told him to tell pecker don't worry about any of this, there won't be any blowback on you. Got it on under control over here at the white house. Um, he was also telling the jury about. So the fbi raided his place in new york in the hotel that he was staying while he was having his home renovated and he had a room booked at the lowes regency in manhattan, because his apartment flooded and fbi out the door like seven in the morning. He was like, oh, look, see who this is. There's a lot of people out in the hallway open the door and, um, the fbi agents had a search warrant where they took his phones and his electronic devices, his records and textbooks and such, and I think that's how they ended up in possession of the recording he had of Trump as well. But he said he was. You know, cohen in that position was super upset and concerned and angry and the prosecution asked if he was frightened. He was like, of course he was. And it was after that that Trump called him and left him a message for him to call Trump and let him know what was going on. And he said that Trump said to him don't worry, I'm the president of the United States, there's nothing here, everything's going to be OK. Stay tough, you're going to be OK. And this is Basically Trump tampering with a witness here, just more obstruction of justice, as if he didn't have like a running pattern of that with the Mueller investigation and then this, and in every turn Trump's doing his best to interfere with the workings of law enforcement as it pertains to any crimes he's involved in. But yeah, it's just, it's wild man, it's wild. But long story short of it, cohen's testimony again is riveting, as it might seem as related to you on this podcast is even more so.

Speaker 1: 30:18

In the courtroom, from what I hear, the jury was locked in. They were very interested in everything Cohen had to say. And Cohen is, you know, a lot of people think Cohen is this hothead, you know, asshole that flies off the rails and is just kind of incorrigible like Trump. But it's not actually the case. I don't know if you guys listen to his podcast, mia Coppa, or also he does a podcast with Ben Micellis called Political B-Down. As much of a hothead as Cohen is he's also you know he's he can be charming and funny and thoughtful and he is an intelligent person.

Speaker 1: 31:00

Say, if there's one thing you could say reliably about Michael Cohen is he ain't got no problem standing in front of a crowd or a room full of people delivering commentary about his actions when he worked for Trump and laying that out. And I mean in terms of having been called to testify. I don't think there's anybody who's spent more time in the last 10 years testifying in one form or another than Michael Cohen. So everyone who was worried about him blowing up on the stand like clearly you're not familiar with his work here lately the dude's been testified before Congress. You know the SDNY. He's worked with Manhattan DA's office multiple times. Just on and on, the dudes were Robert Mueller's special counsel. Investigation is on and on and on and on and on.

Speaker 1: 32:10

Yeah, I think he held it down and I think, with the bevy of evidence prosecutors introduced over the course of this trial everything that Cohen laid out over the last couple of days it appears as though he's probably going to survive this cross-examination. You know, getting off with a not guilty verdict. Now, maybe something could go horribly awry with a single member of the jury engaging in some jury nullification. But apart from some weird thing like that where, regardless of the evidence, one juror you know just won't agree to hold Trump accountable, it's probably going to be found guilty. And you know, there are a lot of lawyers who are sensationalist on TV that do that thing for show, and there are a lot of lawyers who also engage in the well, they basically, you know, take the right wing, right leaning side of things.

Speaker 1: 33:08

But I feel like anyone who looks at this testimony and doesn't approach it with the level of seriousness it deserves and won't tell you that in all likelihood, trump is doomed. Um, as far as the guilty plea goes, they're not. They're doing you a disservice. Um, so, as for our shithole of the week award, we've got a couple of candidates. It's going to be one of those dual sh shit hole of the week award where last week we didn't have the opportunity colitis so last week we didn't get the opportunity to talk about this, but uh, there was that revelation by um presidential candidate rfk j.

Speaker 1: 33:52

you might be familiar with his work, you know, former spousal abuser and all that good stuff probably the cause of his ex-wife committing suicide and you know, if you've seen him talk, you could understand why she wouldn't take herself out of commission. Well, it was revealed that not only had RFK Jr had a bout of what was it mercury poisoning, rfk jr had a bout of what was it mercury poisoning. He had also had an um, an instance where a parasite had entered his, entered his skull and ate away at some of his brain and just found it whenever, who knows how long um so yeah, rfk jr.

Speaker 1: 34:32

Yeah, mercury poisoning and literal brain worms.

Speaker 3: 34:35

So he's this like a mad hatter.

Speaker 1: 34:38

Yeah, he's like he's reinventing all of the ways you could possibly accumulate brain damage in one person. And you know he had an interesting conversation on MSNBC where he was asked about whether or not he would be willing to pardon January 6th insurrectionists. Again, it's very funny that this appears to be a regular occurring topic now, with our podcast being entitled Part of the Insurrection. But he couldn't rule it out, which just lets you know what side of the aisle he's playing to, which is probably why Trump's been on the attack here recently trying to disavow rfk jr at every turn. But yeah, uh, that's one half of your shithole of the week award, because dude is fucking crazy.

Speaker 1: 35:24

But also, uh, one of the revelations during michael cohen's cross examination today or was no One of the revelations during the direct examination of Michael Cohen today were some text messages between Michael Cohen and Maggie Haberman where he was asked who Maggie Haberman was and he was basically like oh, that's the New York Times reporter. She's basically the Trump's sonographer. She reports whatever we tell her to. So you know it didn't seem like we.

Speaker 3: 35:53

We needed evidence of that, but it's nice to have confirmation. Yeah, on the record in court.

Speaker 1: 35:58

Yes, with the text messages and all. She's been awfully quiet on the twitter, uh, as as of then. Um, because people are like they're roasting her ass, like can't you put out a diss song about her? Are they telling her she needs to give her Pulitzer back?

Speaker 2: 36:17

I don't hate that.

Speaker 1: 36:19

I don't either. Like you know, she won an award.

Speaker 2: 36:22

I love this for her. I love this for her.

Speaker 1: 36:24

Yeah, she won an award based on the journalistic endeavors involved reporting on the Trump administration and the Trump campaign, and all along she was basically in their pocket, the same way Jeff Sessions was when he was Trump's attorney general. So, Maggie Haberman RFK Jr, you are hereby awarded the Shithole of the Week Award. If you would like either of you, you can go ahead with your clothes and thoughts. Otherwise, I can wrap this up for you.

Speaker 3: 36:52

Let's just I'm done, Otherwise I can wrap this up for you.

Speaker 1: 36:55

Let's just I'm done Ty. What do you got to say in my speech? Yeah, Get it off your chest Ty.

Speaker 2: 37:02

Oh no, no, I was texting David. No, I was saying no, go ahead, because I'll save it for the next pod. I always have something to say.

Speaker 1: 37:12

Yeah, all right. Well, so long story, short here.