Michael Cohen’s Congressional Confession Reveals the Void in America’s Soul

“When we're dancing with the angels, the question will be asked, in 2019, what did we do to make sure we kept our democracy intact?”  -- Representative Elijah Cummings  

Testimony from Trump attorney and ‘fixer’ Michael Cohen in front of the House Oversight Committee on Wednesday didn’t meet the high bar for crime-proving content set by former Nixon attorney John Dean during the Watergate era.

It did, however, have plenty of drama, and much of the truth revealed came from what wasn’t said. The predicted bombshells didn’t drop, but there were plenty of hand grenades being thrown.

What the public should have learned about --if they were paying attention-- was a pattern of behavior predicated on the concept of not having to live by any code of decency.

The Republicans on the committee, as former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie noted, didn’t even try to defend the president on the substance of allegations, some of which were backed by documents. Their role was to continually --and loudly-- complain about Cohen’s character. When they weren’t calling him a liar, they were grasping at straws hoping to disparage his motivations.

The irony of the situation, namely Trump’s longtime and close association with Cohen, wasn’t apparent to the defenders of the president. Can you say "Birds of a feather?"

Democrats on the committee mostly put in a mediocre performance, pontificating instead of prosecuting. Congressman Cummings presence was all the moral authority needed. Too many Dems were seeking the recognition associated with getting a fifteen second scolding played on the evening news.

Fortunately, the more junior members of the committee used their time to get in questions along the lines of ‘who, what, where, when and why.’ The groundwork was laid for subpoenas of tax returns and financial statements, along with getting the names of people with knowledge of what happened and when.

Here's Mark Sumner from Daily Kos with the wrap up:

The final six Democrats to speak all laid bricks not in a wall, but on a path that shows the way to get at the truth about Trump. At the same time, they showed that they are not there for either self-promotion or entertainment, either of themselves or of their “colleagues” on the other side of the aisle. If Ranking Member Jim Jordan was still wearing the same sneer at the end of the hearing as he had been at its opening, it was only because he didn’t have the brains to notice what had just happened.

There was some terrific writing arising from the inflamed passions/anticipation of the day.

Joan Walsh at The Nation - Michael Cohen Destroyed Not Just Trump but Also His House GOP Defenders

...as the House Oversight Committee hearing began, GOP ranking member Jim Jordan and Freedom Caucus wingnut Mark Meadows did all they could to smear Cohen and shut it down—ostensibly because the committee received Cohen’s written testimony later than required. Chair Elijah Cummings and his fellow Democrats thwarted them. “The days of this committee protecting the president at all costs are over,” Cummings declared.

Amen. Elections have consequences.

The minor GOP mafiosi had been defeated, but they would not be silenced. They used all of their time, all day, to defend Trump and demean Cohen, as well as Cummings and the Democrats, but they ultimately failed. Every time they smeared Cohen as a liar and a fraud, they implicitly reminded us that Trump employed this liar and a fraud as an attorney for 10 years. It was not a good look for them.

Molly Jong-Fast at The Independent-- The Michael Cohen hearing was the perfect metaphor for the maggot-eaten rotting corpse of the Republican party under Trump

There were many moments of epic failure for House Republicans during the whole charade. One of the more pathetic was when Congressman Mark Meadows brought Eric Trump’s wedding planner Lynne Patton to stand behind him so that the American people could see that Donald Trump was not a racist because his second son’s wedding planner is black. This is a few steps more pathetic than the “I can’t be racist because I have a black friend” defence. It’s also the most relevant Eric Trump has ever been.

https://twitter.com/MuslimIQ/status/1100890089012514816

Another extremely questionable moment came when Representative Gosar (who is most famous for being a dentist and having his six siblings campaign for his opponent) presented an enormous sign that said “Liar Liar pants on fire”.  At one point Gosar backed up what his sign was proclaiming by adding: ”You’re a pathological liar. You don’t know truth from falsehood.”

Cohen responded, “Are you referring to me or the president?”

This story by Annalisa Morelli at Quartz is worth it for the headline alone - Cohen’s hearing is a parade of hysterical men who couldn’t control their emotions

Will Bunch at The Philadelphia Inquirer brought forward the Real Truth of the Day - Michael Cohen reveals Trump’s dark secret: He thinks Americans are suckers

But Cohen’s most damaging statements weren’t unexpected revelations — just a Trump insider confirming what many of us have seen from afar from Day One. And the biggest questions Wednesday were the ones that go beyond the purview of a congressional committee.

How did the American political system get so broken that a con man bragging about his “infomercial” while grossly inflating his wealth could win the 62 million votes he needed to leverage the Electoral College? Or get those votes when the racism that Cohen saw on a daily basis was so obvious to many of the rest of us? What is the body politic supposed to do about a president so fundamentally unfit for the job?

"I want to warn you,” Cohen testified. “The more people who follow Mr. Trump blindly are going to suffer the same consequences I have." His words were likely intended for the president’s inner circle, but it also felt like a warning for America.

Cohen is off to prison in May, hoping to come out in a couple of years as “an average nobody” who’ll “get to live the rest of [his] life like a schnook." But how on Earth will we ever repair the nation of schnooks that so easily bought into a fraud like Donald Trump?

Never Trump conservative columnist Jennifer Rubin at the Washington Post - The mob analogy got a whole lot stronger

If all that sounds familiar, you might be a fan of mob movies. In Cohen’s telling, Trump sits atop a kind of crime factory mowing down red lines daily, operating above and beyond the law to enrich its top boss and depending on the ultimate loyalty of underlings. Reporters have often commented that Trump publicly speaks in language a crime boss would use (e.g., deploring “flipping”). That may not be a coincidence. Trump’s self-image and organization are very much styled after a Hollywood movie portrayal of a gangster and his crime family.

As in the movies, the organization breaks down when someone becomes a “rat,” a cooperating witness. You have to find someone deep in the organization to provide insight into the day-to-day operation, to break the code, as Cohen said. These people are criminals, which is why they have access to even bigger criminals. Saying Cohen is a convicted perjurer is like saying Sammy “The Bull” Gravano was a felon. Well, duh. How else were the feds going to catch up to John Gotti and dozens of other mobsters?

Here’s a headline via Media Matters about the president’s defenders - NRATV host: House of Representatives is “nothing short of a torture chamber designed to inflict harm, pain and ultimate destruction on President Trump”

https://twitter.com/mateagold/status/1100948047863918592

Finally...

President Trump on Michael Cohen hearing:

"I think having a fake hearing like that and having it in the middle of this very important summit is really a terrible thing. They could've made it two days later or next week and it would have been even better."

From Michael Cohen’s closing remarks:

If Trump loses in 2020, “there will never be a peaceful transition of power.”

Congressman Elijah Cummings’ closing statement.

I've sat here and listened to all of this and it's very painful. You made a lot of mistakes, Mr. Cohen, and you've admitted that. You know that one of the saddest part of this whole thing is that some innocent people are hurting, too, and that's your family...I don't know where you go from here...We are better than this. As a country, we are so much better than this...It sounds like you're crying out for a new normal, to get back to normal. It sounds to me like you want to make sure that our democracy stays intact. I'm hoping that the things you said today will help us to get back there.

I mean, come on, now. When you've got in the Washington Post, our president has made 8,713 false or misleading statement...It sounds like you got caught up in it and some kind of way...President called you a "rat." We're better than that...You know what hurt me? That picture of you leaving the courthouse and, I guess it was your daughter, had braces on. Man, that hurt me…

When we're dancing with the angels, the question will be asked, in 2019, what did we do to make sure we kept our democracy intact? Did we stand on the sidelines and do nothing? Did we play games, and I'm tired of these statements where, "Oh, this is the first hearing..." This is not the first hearing. The first hearing was in regard to prescription drugs. Remember? A lady sat there, and her daughter died because she couldn't get $333 a month in insulin. That was our first hearing. Second hearing, HR 1, voting rights. Corruption in government. Come on now. We can do more than one thing and we have got to get back to normal.

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Email me at DougPorter@WordsAndDeedsBlog.com