(CNN) – Before Donald Trump ever sought the Oval Office, he was preoccupied by its occupant President Barack Obama, publicly questioning his birthplace and privately describing him as “a Manchurian candidate” who obtained his Ivy League degrees only by way of affirmative action, according to a new book by Trump’s former attorney, Michael Cohen.
Trump’s disdain for Obama was so extreme that he took his fixation a step further, according to Cohen: Trump hired a “Faux-Bama” to participate in a video in which Trump “ritualistically belittled the first black president and then fired him.”
Cohen’s book, “Disloyal: A Memoir,” doesn’t name the man who was allegedly hired to play Obama or provide a specific date for the incident, but it does include a photograph of Trump sitting behind a desk, facing a Black man wearing a suit with an American flag pin affixed to the lapel. On Trump’s desk are two books, one displaying Obama’s name in large letters. CNN obtained a copy of Cohen’s book ahead of its Tuesday publication.
As an insider who spent years as Trump’s personal attorney and self-proclaimed “fixer,” Cohen says he is uniquely equipped to unleash on Trump, whom Cohen describes as “a cheat, a liar, a fraud, a bully, a racist, a predator, a con man” and a person interested in using the presidency exclusively for his personal financial benefit.
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Trump’s model of a man in power, according to Cohen, is Vladimir Putin, and Trump is described as enamored of Putin’s wealth and unilateral influence, and awestruck by what he sees as the Russian president’s ability to control everything from the country’s press to its financial institutions.
“Locking up your political enemies, criminalizing dissent, terrifying or bankrupting the free press through libel lawsuits — Trump’s all-encompassing vision wasn’t evident to me before he began to run for president,” Cohen writes. “I honestly believe the most extreme ideas about power and its uses only really took shape as he began to seriously contemplate the implications of taking power and how he could leverage it to the absolute maximum level possible.”
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If Putin is held in the highest regard in Trump’s mind, Cohen writes, Trump’s own voters rank among those in the lowest. Speaking to Cohen after Trump gathered religious leaders at Trump Tower in the lead up to the 2012 presidential race, an encounter during which they asked to “lay hands” on him, Trump asked Cohen, according to the book: “Can you believe that bullsh*t?…Can you believe people believe that bullsh*t?”
In the wake of Trump’s presidential kickoff announcement in 2015, in which he called Mexicans criminals and rapists, he dismissed concerns that he had alienated Latinos. “Plus, I will never get the Hispanic vote,” Trump allegedly told Cohen. “Like the blacks, they’re too stupid to vote for Trump. They’re not my people.” (Trump won 28% of the Latino vote in 2016.)
Trump’s contempt, in Cohen’s telling, extends broadly. Cohen characterizes Trump bluntly as racist, and says that while he never heard Trump use the “N-word,” Trump used other offensive language.
Ranting about Obama after he won office in 2008, Trump said, “Tell me one country run by a black person that isn’t a sh*thole…They are all complete f*cking toilets,” according to Cohen. After Nelson Mandela died, Trump allegedly said of South Africa that “Mandela f*cked the whole country up. Now it’s a sh*thole. F*ck Mandela. He was no leader.”
Cohen also divulges personal details about Trump, including his hair routine, described as a “three-step” combover designed to disguise “unsightly scars on his scalp from a failed hair-implant operation in the 1980s.”
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But in a way perhaps even Trump could appreciate, Cohen reserves some of his harshest judgment for the media, which he blames for falling for Trump’s attention-grabbing tactics and propelling him to office.
“Donald Trump’s presidency is a product of the free press,” he writes. “Not free as in freedom of expression, I mean free as unpaid for. Rallies broadcast live, tweets, press conferences, idiotic interviews, 24-7 wall-to-wall coverage, all without spending a penny. The free press gave America Trump.”
“Right, left, moderate, tabloid, broadsheet, television, radio, Internet, Facebook — that is who elected Trump and might well elect him again.”
- Discussion
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NEW: In upcoming book, Michael Cohen writes Donald Trump's disdain for Obama was so extreme he hired a "Faux-Bama" to participate in a video in which he "ritualistically belittled the first black president and then fired him." He includes this photo: https://t.co/LGrqsUUrY2 pic.twitter.com/otwYW8VSmQ
— Pervaiz Shallwani (@Pervaizistan) September 6, 2020
Totally normal and not a sign of a deeply disturbed human being. https://t.co/lwcNy9T5uX
— Tom Nichols (@RadioFreeTom) September 6, 2020
For all of my hammering on "Real America," there are times when I genuinely feel for people who were the marks in this scheme, no matter how foolish they were to fall for it. Yes, some of them are just racists and jerks, but many of them are not, and they got taken. https://t.co/dWoBiIf2tk
— Tom Nichols (@RadioFreeTom) September 6, 2020
“According to Cohen, Trump’s sycophantic praise of the Russian leader during the 2016 campaign began as a way to suck up and ensure access to the oligarch’s money after he lost the election.” https://t.co/WhVUejHXGs
— Josh Kraushaar (@HotlineJosh) September 6, 2020
So, let me get this right:
Trump hired an Obama impersonator so he could berate him and tell him "You're fired" because he's totally normal, stable person without a roaring void of malevolent narcissism where a human soul would normally be found, yes?
— Rick Wilson (@TheRickWilson) September 6, 2020
I’m loving all these revelations even if they may be false. I don’t know if I believe any or all of them or not. Ordinarily, I would want corroboration before I believe, but these days, I’m thinking like a lot of people — even if there is no proof, this sounds like something he would say or do. I’m sure these allegations are affecting those voters who are not members of his cult. They see these things and say, do I want another 4 years of this guy? Many put up with his shenanigans as long as the economy seemed good and times in general were fine. COVID has thoroughly wrecked Trump’s hero image for these voters and all these new allegations are just icing on the cake. These voters are not buying Trump and his horse manure anymore.
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