Source : INDIA TODAY NEWS
US President Donald Trump appeared on Michael Cohen’s radio show on Thursday in a striking public reunion with his former fixer-turned-foe, who had once called him a “Cheeto-dusted cartoon villain” and later testified against him in court and before Congress.
Part of the interview aired on Cohen’s 77 WABC radio programme on Thursday evening and the full conversation is due to be broadcast on Sunday. The exchange was notably friendly, with only brief references to their turbulent past. Shortly before it aired, Cohen told CNN he had resubmitted to the White House a pardon application that had been denied by the previous administration, had not yet received a response, and planned to follow up on Friday.
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During the interview, Trump told Cohen, “They weaponised you like nobody’s ever been weaponised, like few have been.” He added, “I respect the fact that you recanted everything you said. That’s a big thing that you did.” For Cohen, who served prison time over what he had described as helping cover up Trump’s “dirty deeds”, the truce marked the end of a behind-the-scenes detente that would once have seemed unlikely.
Cohen is the latest Trump loyalist to have had a public falling-out with the president and later returned to his good graces, among them Elon Musk and Florida Governor Ron DeSantis. But the break with Cohen had been especially personal. Cohen had once said he would “take a bullet” for Trump and stood by him during his political rise. After their split, Cohen’s testimony in Trump’s 2024 criminal hush-money trial helped secure Trump’s conviction as he sought a political comeback. Cohen has since criticised prosecutors in that case, helping open the way for a reconciliation.
Cohen said he and Trump had spoken several times over the past year and used the programme to explain his decision to move forward. “Forgiveness does not mean amnesia. It does not mean that the past did not happen. It does not mean the scars vanish, that the pain was fake or that I have forgotten a single second of what transpired, I have not. Forgiveness isn’t about erasing history,” he said. “It is about having the courage to decide that yesterday will no longer dictate tomorrow.” At one point, sounding nostalgic, he said, “Boss, remember when I was by your side.” The clip was introduced with the 1975 War song “Why Can’t We Be Friends” and ended with the line “Reunited and it feels so good” from the 1978 Peaches & Herb song.
In a long post on his online newsletter on Thursday, Cohen said that although his relationship with Trump had become “political blood sport”, there had also been 15 years of close friendship. “The good times don’t cease to have existed because the bad times came afterward,” he wrote, adding simply: “We forgave.” Trump had not made warm public remarks about Cohen before Thursday, but he had shared social media posts this year linking to comments by his former lawyer saying he felt pressured by prosecutors to testify against him in the criminal hush-money case and in a civil fraud case.
In 2024, Cohen was the central witness in Trump’s criminal hush-money trial, which ended in a 34-count felony conviction, though Trump faced no punishment. Under questioning by prosecutors and during cross-examination, Cohen placed Trump at the centre of efforts during the 2016 presidential election to suppress accounts from an adult film actor and a former Playboy model who said they had sexual encounters with Trump. Cohen testified that Trump had promised to reimburse him for money he had paid and that he had been kept informed about efforts to bury stories seen as potentially damaging to the campaign. “What I was doing, I was doing at the direction of and benefit of Mr. Trump,” Cohen told the court.
That testimony appeared to mark the final collapse of a once-close relationship that had already been shaken in 2018, when FBI agents searched Cohen’s office, home and hotel room. He later pleaded guilty to lying to Congress about a Trump Tower project in Russia and to campaign finance violations in which he implicated Trump over payments to Stormy Daniels and Playboy Playmate Karen MacDougal. He was sentenced to three years in prison. Since then, however, Cohen has altered his position as he moved closer again to Trump, writing in January, “I felt pressured and coerced to only provide information and testimony that would satisfy the government’s desire to build the cases against and secure a judgment and convictions against President Trump.” Cohen had also testified before Congress in 2019 that Trump had a history of misstating asset values to obtain favourable loan terms and tax benefits, and gave similar evidence in a 2023 civil fraud trial in New York. A New York appeals court later threw out a USD 550 million judgment against Trump in that case, and Trump has asked a court to overturn the remaining parts of it. In his 2020 memoir, Cohen called Trump an “organised crime don” and a “master manipulator”, but also wrote: “I had and still have a lot of affection for him.” The interview on Thursday brought that complicated relationship back into public view, with both men presenting a truce after years of conflict.
With PTI Inputs
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SOURCE :- TIMES OF INDIA
