Disloyal: The True Story of the Former Personal Attorney to President Donald J. Trump

by Michael Cohen

For all the ridiculousness of the situation, I knew Trump was pissed and that I had to come up with a plan for my sake, and for David’s sake, a fact that we both understood intuitively. Going to Trump and telling him that he’d ordered the worst-quality Benjamin Moore paint available would only result in our instant dismissal or a screaming fit with blame hurled in all directions, except himself, with the net result that we would be back where we started: with a delusional proposition that had to be supported as fact, despite the blatantly obvious truth that it was a lie. Ring a bell?

To Trump, his voters are his audience, his chumps, his patsies, his base. Guns, criminalizing abortion—Trump took up those conservative positions not because he believed in them but because they were his path to power. That was what I meant when I told Congress that Trump is a con man.