WASHINGTON: US President Donald \u200cTrump had a warm public reunion on Thursday with Michael Cohen, his former fixer turned foe whose court testimony contributed to Trump\u2019s 2024 conviction in \u200bthe Stormy Daniels hush-money trial.<\/p>\n
Cohen, who is seeking a pardon, interviewed Trump on his New York radio program. He called Trump \u201cboss\u201d and gave a six-minute monologue on friendship and forgiveness.<\/p>\n
In 2018, Cohen was sentenced to three years in prison \u2014 and served more than a year \u2014 for a $130,000 hush payment to adult film actress Stormy Daniels before the 2016 election \u2014 as well as for \u200cother crimes, including \u200ccheating on his personal taxes and lying \u200bunder \u200coath \u2060to \u200bCongress.<\/p>\n
Trump was \u2060convicted in 2024 on 34 counts of falsification of business records to conceal the Daniels payment, in part due to Cohen\u2019s testimony. He has denied the encounter with Daniels, whose given name is Stephanie Clifford, and is appealing the ruling.<\/p>\n
Trump was represented in the hush-money trial by Todd Blanche, now the US attorney general. In \u2060court, Blanche called Cohen the \u201cGLOAT,\u201d meaning the \u201cgreatest liar of \u200call time.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cHow do two men \u200cwho spent years in an all-out \u200bpublic war hurling verbal and legal \u200cmissiles across a massive canyon ever come back to the same \u200croom?\u201d Cohen said. \u201cWe forgave.\u201d<\/p>\n
Trump, who is seeking political allies ahead of the November midterm elections, then greeted his former fixer of 15 years with a convivial: \u201cHello Michael. How are you, Michael?\u201c<\/p>\n
\u201cI respect the fact that \u200cyou recanted everything you said,\u201d said Trump, who spoke to Cohen from the White House.<\/p>\n
Cohen aired \u2060excerpts from \u2060a pre-recorded interview that focused on Trump\u2019s favorite themes, including his campaign against immigrants and his disdain for unfavorable polls.<\/p>\n
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment about the interview, more of which is to be aired on Sunday.<\/p>\n
After Trump won re-election later in 2024, a federal appeals court ordered the Manhattan judge in the hush-money trial to review more closely how the Supreme Court\u2019s landmark decision in July 2024 giving Trump broad immunity from prosecution affected the New York case.<\/p>\n
Cohen \u200bended the interview segment in \u200bsong, crooning a lyric from the 1978 R&B song by Peaches & Herb: \u201cReunited, and it feels so good…\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
WASHINGTON: US President Donald \u200cTrump had a warm public reunion on Thursday with Michael Cohen, his former fixer turned foe whose court testimony contributed to Trump\u2019s 2024 conviction in \u200bthe Stormy Daniels hush-money trial. Cohen, who is seeking a pardon, interviewed Trump on his New York radio program. He called Trump \u201cboss\u201d and gave a …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":101971,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-101958","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101958","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=101958"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101958\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":101973,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101958\/revisions\/101973"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/101971"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=101958"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=101958"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=101958"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}