No choice but to move forward with immense force

Michael Cohen explains how Trump is petrified of losing, and why he'll do anything to stay in office.

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In the same week in which we witnessed a powerful glimpse of vibrant, smart, real leadership in the emergence of the Joe Biden-Kamala Harris presidential ticket — with more joy expressed throughout the land than perhaps any time since the 2016 election — we also caught a glimpse of something else: Former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen’s new book.

Cohen’s book, which I focused on a little bit earlier in the week (in discussing the antics of Jerry Falwell Jr.), will be released on September 8th, he announced yesterday, having also signed with a publisher. He published the foreword to book on a website, however. And it is chilling.

Cohen may be a despicable human being who’s done terrible things, even if he’s seeking redemption. But whatever you think of him, he makes the case that only one of the bad guys can explain the bad guys — just as in the case of mobsters. And he intends to be that guy.

He explains how he knew Donald Trump more intimately than almost anyone and was trusted by Trump like no other person:

For more than a decade, I was Trump’s first call every morning and his last call every night. I was in and out of Trump’s office on the 26th floor of the Trump Tower as many as fifty times a day, tending to his every demand. Our cell phones had the same address books, our contacts so entwined, overlapping and intimate that part of my job was to deal with the endless queries and requests, however large or small, from Trump’s countless rich and famous acquaintances. I called any and all of the people he spoke to, most often on his behalf as his attorney and emissary, and everyone knew that when I spoke to them, it was as good as if they were talking directly to Trump.

With that knowledge, he’ll explain in the book how he witnessed and participated as an “active participant” in Trump’s actions — from how Trump “colluded with the Russians” to “golden showers in a sex club in Vegas, to tax fraud, to deals with corrupt officials from the former Soviet Union, to catch and kill conspiracies to silence Trump’s clandestine lovers…”

But perhaps the scariest part of the foreword is where Cohen discusses how Trump will do anything to stay in power and surely do anything to cover up his crimes even if he is pushed from office:

As the months passed by and I thought about the man I knew so well, I became even more convinced that Trump will never leave office peacefully….

…I’m certain that Trump knows he will face prison time if he leaves office, the inevitable cold Karma to the notorious chants of “Lock Her Up!” But that is the Trump I know in a nutshell. He projects his own sins and crimes onto others, partly to distract and confuse but mostly because he thinks everyone is as corrupt and shameless and ruthless as he is; a poisonous mindset I know all too well. Whoever follows Trump into the White House, if the President doesn’t manage to make himself the leader for life, as he has started to joke about—and Trump never actually jokes— will discover a tangle of frauds and scams and lawlessness…

…Trump and his minions will do anything to cover up that reality, and I mean anything.

I have thought that much of the media in recent weeks has sensationalized the election fiasco that could come to pass — and more so, have been normalizing the possibility. And I still think they are, blowing up worst-case scenarios while burying the fact of how unlikely these scenarios may be, even as they could happen. But I also believe Cohen when he says Trump will do anything.

Everything we’ve seen in recent days, from attacks on mail-in ballots and threats of debilitating the postal service, to now going full racist birther on Kamala Harris, suggesting she wasn’t born in this country when was born in Oakland, California, are just the beginning.

We’ve seen what Trump might do with federal forces, having tear-gassed protesters and having sent forces into cities to attack peaceful protesters. We have to take seriously all the possibilities. And yet, Cohen also suggests that Trump may not be as efficient at all this as he once was because he doesn’t have his fixer — Cohen — and there is no one who can replace him whom Trump can really trust:

I almost feel sorry for him. I know him so well and I know his facial tics and tells; I see the cornered look in his eyes as he flails and rants and raves, searching for a protector and advocate, someone willing to fight dirty and destroy his enemies. I see the men who have replaced me and continue to forfeit their reputations by doing the President’s bidding, no matter how dishonest or sleazy or unlawful. Rudy Guiliani, William Barr, Jared Kushner and Mike Pompeo are Trump’s new wannabe fixers, sycophants willing to distort the truth and break the law…

…All this will be to no avail. Trump doesn’t want to hear this, and he will certainly deny it, but he’s lost without his original bulldog lawyer Roy Cohn, or his other former pitbull and personal attorney, Michael Cohen. 

That should give us some hope. What also should give us hope, as Rachel Maddow noted on her show last night, is that smarter, more ruthless authoritarian governments have been taken down peacefully by the people. That’s been true time again, from East Germany’s GDR to the Philippines’ Marcos regime.

And the major thing we have going for us that most of those other places didn’t is the strength of our democracy over more than two couple centuries, withstanding jolts, and the power of protest movements that have changed events in this country.

The key is massive mobilization. That includes not just protest but voting in numbers that make it extremely difficult for all of Trump’s tricks to work. Trump is handing us the blueprint right now — we should take it and use it. For example, make sure people get their ballots early, and mail them in early. More importantly, make sure you just go and vote in-person if you can.

Joe Biden and Kamala Harris showed us this week what leadership is and how things can be — and what we can do 80 days from now. That was true not only in their first event this week, announcing the ticket, but the following day when they spoke with health care officials and medical experts, called for a national mask mandate and talked about what needs to be done to battle coronavirus — and the horrendous ways Trump has handled the pandemic.

It's more important than ever that we now move forward as an angry but focused force of mass resistance to Trump — organizing, educating and energizing people, and get out and vote.