A Thirsty Michael Cohen Tries To Get Back Into Trump’s Good Graces

Michael Cohen, who once called President Donald Trump a racist and a con man and whose testimony helped make him a convicted felon, appears to be firmly back on the side of his former boss.

Cohen, the president’s former attorney and “fixer” who now hosts a radio show in New York City, previewed a portion of an interview with Trump on Thursday that made it clear that any animosity between the two men is now in the past.

The once-pugnacious Cohen treated the president with reverence, calling him “sir,” lobbing no tough questions and appealing to their shared history.

“Boss, you remember when I was by your side, I literally used to analyze the polls, right?” he said at one point.

The segment, the men’s first public encounter together in eight years, consisted mostly of Trump touting familiar grievances and false and misleading statistics without interruption.

It didn’t include any discussion about whether Trump would pardon Cohen, who served a three-year prison sentence for falsifying business documents while working for the Trump Organization.

It did, however, give a glimpse into how Cohen could be working to regain the president’s favor: namely, by flattering him and providing him with a friendly media soap box.

The president indicated that he had accepted Cohen’s return to the fold: “I respect the fact that you recanted everything you said.”

The interview marked a remarkable transformation for Cohen, who worked doggedly to solve any and all problems as Trump’s personal attorney before becoming one of his fiercest critics — going so far as to testify against him in court and before Congress.

Cohen was the star witness in a 2024 hush money case against Trump, in which he said Trump had ordered him to pay porn star Stormy Daniels $130,000 so she wouldn’t go public with an alleged sexual encounter between herself and Trump in the final weeks before the 2016 election. That case resulted in Trump, then a candidate, becoming the first former president convicted of a felony.

And Cohen, who told Congress in 2024 that he lied and bullied while working for the Trump Organization, had displayed little restraint in denigrating his former boss outside the courtroom. Trump similarly took a harsh tone for his former ally, calling him on one occasion a “rat.”

Little time was spent on the past during their interview on New York’s WABC, with Cohen preferring to focus on the Iran War and the midterm elections.

Trump, for his part, stuck to well-trodden material, repeating claims that the Iran War is seeing good progress, taking credit for investments in the U.S. and touting reduced crossings at the southern border.

Cohen, meanwhile, maintained an air of reverence for his former employer.

“Reunited and it feels so good,” he remarked at the end of the interview.

Though the interview didn’t include any discussion of a potential pardon, Cohen did tell CNN’s Jake Tapper shortly before the interview Thursday that he would follow up Friday with the Trump administration about his pardon application. Cohen had previously applied for clemency from the Biden administration.