Trump and Michael Cohen Reunite On-Air After Decade of Bitter Enmity — 'Forgiveness Doesn't Require Amnesia'
The president's former fixer-turned-star witness against him sits down with Trump for a joint radio interview tonight, their first conversation since Cohen's guilty plea and testimony helped convict his old boss.
Donald Trump and Michael Cohen — the president's former personal lawyer and fixer who later became the star witness in the criminal case that made Trump a convicted felon — sat down together for a radio interview set to air Thursday evening, their first public conversation in nearly a decade.
The interview, split into two parts, aired the first half at 6 p.m. ET on New York's 77WABC, with the remainder set to run Sunday on Cohen's own podcast, "When You Know… You Know." According to Fox News' reporting on the reunion, Cohen said the sit-down came together after a "White House friend and insider" texted him that Trump had expressed "genuine empathy for the hell I was being dragged through" — and that Trump agreed almost immediately it was time to talk.
From star witness to reconciled ally
The two men's falling-out was one of the ugliest of Trump's political life. Cohen pleaded guilty in August 2018 to eight federal counts, including campaign-finance violations tied to hush-money payments made to women who alleged affairs with Trump, and later became the central witness against his former boss in the New York hush-money criminal trial. Earlier this year, Cohen had claimed prosecutors "pressured and coerced" him into testimony damaging to Trump — a claim that adds an odd wrinkle to Thursday's reconciliation.
FORGIVENESS DOESN'T REQUIRE AMNESIA
In a Substack post ahead of the broadcast, Cohen framed the reunion in explicitly religious terms, citing the Bible's book of Colossians and writing that "reconciliation doesn't mean rewriting history," according to Forbes' coverage of his remarks. He said he has fielded a wave of hate mail over the decision to reconcile, much of it from people identifying as Christian.
The reunion was independently confirmed by CNN and The Hill, both of which noted the extraordinary optics of a former "fixer" turned prosecution witness returning to friendly terms with the man he helped convict.
What Trump and Cohen actually discussed on air was not yet known at the time of publication. The second half of the interview airs Sunday at 5 p.m. ET.