Melania Trump's "locker room talk" brainstorm

She may have won the '16 election for Trump, according to Michael Cohen's testimony. So much for the belief Melania wasn't involved in the campaign nor fully behind Trump's most grotesque impulses.

Donald Trump’s former fixer, Michael Cohen, took the stand for the first time yesterday in Trump’s criminal trial in New York. And while we knew much of what he said, since he’d previously testified before Congress and in Trump’s New York fraud case, there have been some new revelations.

Trump’s attorneys will of course call everything he says a lie, as he’s been convicted for lying—for Donald Trump, of course—but the prosecution has meticulously pre-corroborated much of his testimony with the witnesses who came before him, and that only buttressed anything else he might say under oath.

And what he said yesterday, among other things, was that it was Melania Trump’s idea to say that the infamous Access Hollywood tape was “locker room talk,” three words that would go down in presidential election history.

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Yes, here we were believing that, specifically when it came to extramarital affairs or sexual interactions with women, Melania was embarrassed or angry, hiding out somewhere.

But in fact, this woman, Trump’s own wife, was apparently deep in the mix, creating a term that would be used to try to soften the blow for a group Trump and his campaign advisers saw as an important demographic with whom the tape would hurt most: women.

And it turns out Melania’s scheme worked, at least with enough women in several battleground states to put Trump over the top.

You could argue that Melania won Donald Trump the 2016 election.

Granted, according to Cohen’s testimony, it was Trump who told him it was Melania’s idea, and Trump is a serial liar. But why would Trump lie about that? He revels in his own “genius” ideas, so if it was his idea, he’d say so—and surely not credit it to someone else.

The testimony came in the context of the potentially devastating effect the Stormy Daniels story would have—and why she needed to be paid off—following the already damaging Access Hollywood tape revelation, and how Trump was involved in the damage control:

Per ABC:

"He wanted me to reach out to all of my contacts in the media; we needed to put a spin on this. And the spin that he wanted to put on it was that this is locker room talk," Cohen testified.

Trump has denied all wrongdoing related to Daniels' hush payment.

Cohen said Trump told him the "locker room talk" defense was "something that Melania had recommended" they use "in order to get control over the story and minimize its impact on him and his campaign."

In the wake of the Access Hollywood tape surfacing, Trump learned that adult film star Stormy Daniels was shopping around the story of an alleged 2006 sexual encounter—something Trump has denied—and the situation, he said, would be a "disaster," Cohen testified.

"He said to me this is a disaster. A total disaster," Cohen said of Trump's response when he first informed him.

According to Cohen, Trump anticipated how the Stormy Daniels story would play differently with men and women.

"Women will hate me. Guys may think it’s cool, but this is going to be a disaster for the campaign," Cohen testified that Trump said.

This of course belies Trump’s defense that he was more worried about his wife finding out about the Daniels’ sexual encounter than about the campaign, something other witnesses have also backed up.

In fact, Cohen says that when he broached the issue of Melania, Trump not only said it wasn’t a problem but implied that even if she was bothered, it wouldn’t matter to him because he wouldn’t be “on the market” for long if she left him:

Cohen: I said to him, And how’s things going to go upstairs?

Susan Hoffinger, prosecution attorney: Were you concerned about that?

Cohen: I was.

Hoffinger: And what, if anything, did he say to you about that?

Cohen: “Don’t worry,” he says. He goes: “How long do you think I will be on the market for? Not long.”

Hoffinger: What did you understand that to mean?

Cohen: He wasn’t thinking about Melania. This was all about the campaign.

None of this comes as a shock to a lot of us, but the corporate media has always portrayed Melania as some kind of victim—the innocent spouse who, unwittingly, was drawn into all of this, would rather be doing something else, and keeps her distance.

But at least one Washington Post story recently—last November—by Ben Terris and Josh Dawsey, in which they had a lot of access at Mar-a-Lago, revealed Melania’s been completely behind Donald Trump, including heading into the 2024 election, even as she still poses as the mystery woman who wants to be left alone.

And now we know it was likely the same in 2016, as Melania was doing damage control during a critical time and may have actually saved Trump’s campaign.