It was not just the inherent drama of the occasion that made Michael Cohen’s testimony to the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform on Wednesday so extraordinary. It was that everyone knew what kind of drama it was.
We had all seen the movie before. And it is a gangster movie. It is the scene near the end where we see the once trusted consigliere in court giving evidence against the mafia boss he had loved and served.
On December 16th last, after Cohen had made a plea deal with prosecutors, his former employer Donald Trump openly accused him on Twitter of being “a Rat”. He did not seem to consider what, in that case, Trump himself must be.
Trump was stripped naked, revealed in all his bare-cheeked greed, mendacity, fraudulence and criminality
On Wednesday, even he cannot have avoided the truth that if Cohen is a rat, he himself is the mafia boss who gets ratted on in the end. This was the day the man once known as the Donald became forever the Don.
It is true that there was a surreal split-screen quality to the day. On one side of the screen, Trump was in Vietnam meeting the North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un, an event that in his own mind is a prelude to his triumphant receipt of the Nobel Peace Prize later this year and his recognition, as he told his compatriots in the State of the Union address in January, as the great man who saved Korea from an apocalyptic war.
On the other side of the screen, the same man was metaphorically experiencing Bob Dylan’s old line: “Even the president of the United States sometimes must have to stand naked.”
Trump was stripped naked, revealed in all his bare-cheeked greed, mendacity, fraudulence and criminality.
Cohen forced Americans to confront the extraordinary fact that this moral wretch really is their president
These two worlds even collided at one point in Cohen’s opening statement when he recalled how one of his jobs during Trump’s campaign was to take the flak after his boss sneered at John McCain for being captured and tortured during the Vietnam war.
Trump, of course, claimed that he himself had been excused service in Vietnam because of heel spurs. But Cohen told the House committee that Trump had privately commented to him: “You think I’m stupid, I wasn’t going to Vietnam.”
And then Cohen added: “I find it ironic, President Trump, that you are in Vietnam right now.”
Compared to the larger matters about which Cohen gave evidence – from Trump’s lies about his financial dealings in Moscow to his advance knowledge of Julian Assange’s release of Democratic Party emails stolen by the Russians to his illegal payoff to Stormy Daniels – this is a minor detail.
But in contrasting the real Trump to the figure now strutting on the world stage, Cohen did something very dangerous. He de-normalised Trump. He forced Americans to confront afresh the extraordinary fact that this moral wretch who nodded at Russian interference in a US presidential election, who saw that election as a “marketing opportunity”, who “revelled” in stiffing small businesses owners, who paid off casual sexual partners, who siphoned money from a charity, who played games with his taxes, really is their president.
Never mind the Mexican wall, the wall that matters most is the one that runs along the border between Trump the man and Trump the presiden
The most striking thing about the Trump presidency now is that people have become used to it. Things that were outrageous, even unimaginable, just two years ago are now in shrug-of-the-shoulders territory: there he goes again. It is increasingly difficult to break through the deadening effects of familiarity.
But Cohen broke through, partly because of the intimate detail of what he had to say but partly as a matter of form. No matter how inured you think you are, the spectacle of the informer ratting on the Don who also happens to be president of the United States is startling. We’ve seen and heard a lot before – but not this.
And while Cohen was breaking through Trump’s protective force field of familiarity, he also subverted another of the president’s most powerful defences. It would be hard to overstate the importance, in Trumpworld, of the separation between the personal and the political.
Never mind the Mexican wall, the wall that matters most is the one that runs along the border between Trump the man and Trump the president. Most of Trump’s base is evangelical. Its members do not like Trump’s adultery, vulgarity and financial dishonesty. They would be appalled if anyone suggested him as a role model for their children.
Trump's lust, Trump's greed, Trump's intimate lies cannot be separated from his office. There is no wall
But they have made a deal with their own consciences: revulsion at Trump’s personal history must not leak into any negative thoughts about his political standing as their champion.
The thing that mafias and authoritarian-minded politicians have in common is that everything is personal. All power radiates outwards from the person of the boss. And what is so subversive about Cohen’s testimony is that he brought this truth so vividly to life.
His sworn witness and his documentary evidence show that Trump the man, the Trump Organisation, the Trump family and the Trump administration are utterly inextricable. Trump's lust, Trump's greed, Trump's intimate lies cannot be separated from his office. There is no wall.
It is clear from Cohen's evidence that there is much more legal trouble ahead for Trump, including potential crimes that Cohen could not talk about
Thus, Cohen gave us Trump the candidate still up to his neck in business dealings in Russia. He gave us the astounding moment in February 2017 in the Oval Office of the White House, the very epicentre of American state, where Trump tells Cohen: "Don't worry Michael, your January and February reimbursement checks are coming. They were Fed-Exed from New York and it takes a while for that to get through the White House system."
Reimbursement for what? For Cohen’s criminal $130,000 hush-money payments to the porn performer Stormy Daniels. They are literally caught up in the “White House system”.
And then we have Cohen lying on his boss’s behalf about all of this to Trump’s wife Melania. There is no line between Trump’s intimate sleaziness towards his wife, his criminal breach of campaign finance law and his presidency. It is all just Trump, and Cohen’s role as consigliere, which involved him seamlessly in the full spectrum of the Don’s misdeeds, embodies this complete fusion of the personal and the political.
It is clear from Cohen’s evidence that there is much more legal trouble ahead for Trump, including potential crimes that Cohen could not talk about.
For much of his base, none of it will matter. But for many of those around Trump, the sight and sound of Cohen publicly ratting on the Don, will be triggering the alarms.
Those who were, as Cohen said of himself “so mesmerised by Donald Trump”, surely know that this movie always ends the same way. The guy who rats first gets a shortish spell behind bars. Then it gets ever worse for all the rest of the family, up to and including the Don.