The real man
An amusing bit in a Bloomberg piece by Timothy O’Brien:
Cohen, a lawyer, didn’t work for Trump because he was a deft attorney, a skillful accountant or a brilliant money manager. He worked for him because he knew just enough about the law, accounting and greed to help Trump engineer end runs and cover-ups. “I know where the skeletons are buried because I was the one who buried them,” Cohen wrote in Disloyal, a memoir of his Trump years. “I wasn’t just a witness to the President’s rise — I was an active and eager participant.”
“Apart from his wife and children, I knew Trump better than anyone else did,” Cohen wrote. “In some ways, I knew him better than even his family did, because I bore witness to the real man, in strip clubs, shady business meetings, and in the unguarded moments when he revealed who he really was: a cheat, a liar, a fraud, a bully, a racist, a predator, a con man.”
I don’t know. Trump’s universe is full of people — employees, acquaintances, hangers-on, family members and reporters, for example — who all claim to have the most intimate understanding of what makes him tick. Having said that, I have spent more than 30 years covering Trump and spending lots of time with him as a reporter and biographer. I would also describe him as a cheat, a liar, a fraud, a bully, a racist, a predator, and a con man.
What a coincidence.
Odd, isn’t it? I certainly don’t know Trump, never came close to meeting him, only have vague memories of him from the ’80s and ’90s, try my best to avoid watching or listening to him, and try not to read too much in depth about him. And I would describe him as a cheat, a liar, a fraud, a bully, a racist, a predator, and a con man.
And I’ve spent all my life about as far from the man as possible without actually leaving the planet and somehow I’ve come to know this as well. Odd isn’t it?