WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump is expected to appear Thursday on the radio show of his former fixer-turned-foe Michael Cohen, making a public reunion with the man who once called him a “Cheeto-dusted cartoon villain” and testified against him both in court and before Congress.
Cohen, who served prison time for his role in what he said was covering up Trump’s “dirty deeds,” confirmed that the Republican president will appear in a taped interview airing on his 77 WABC program Thursday evening and Sunday.
The apparent truce with Cohen makes him the latest in a long line of Trump loyalists who have had public falling-outs with the president but found themselves back in his good graces. Other recent examples include Elon Musk and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis.
But the split from Cohen was perhaps the most personal. Cohen once boasted that he would “take a bullet” for Trump and was by Trump’s side during his political rise. After their public breakup, Cohen’s testimony in Trump’s 2024 criminal hush-money trial instead paved the way for Trump’s criminal conviction just as he was trying to make his political comeback.
Cohen has since criticized prosecutors in the case and has said he and Trump have started to reconcile.
The White House did not comment on Cohen’s statements or confirm the appearance, but Trump’s official schedule showed him taping a radio interview Thursday morning.
In a long post on his online newsletter Thursday promoting the interview, Cohen said that although his relationship with Trump became “political blood sport,” there were 15 years of close friendship between them.
“The good times don’t cease to have existed because the bad times came afterward,” Cohen wrote.
Simply, he said: “We forgave.”
Trump has made no warm public statements about Cohen but in a series of social media posts this year linked to some of his former lawyer’s comments saying he felt pressured by prosecutors to testify against Trump in the criminal hush money case and a civil fraud case.
Cohen was sentenced to three years in prison in 2018 after pleading guilty to campaign finance charges and lying to Congress, among other crimes.
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The campaign finance charges stemmed from his efforts to arrange payouts during the 2016 presidential race to keep the porn actor Stormy Daniels and model Karen McDougal from making public claims of extramarital affairs with Trump.
In 2024, Cohen testified in the criminal case against Trump about the payment to Daniels, which prosecutors said was an illegal effort to influence the 2016 presidential election. Trump was convicted of 34 felony counts of falsifying business records.
Cohen testified before Congress in 2019, alleging Trump had a history of misrepresenting the value of assets to gain favorable loan terms and tax benefits.
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He gave similar testimony in a 2023 civil fraud trial in New York that found Trump and his companies engaged in fraud by exaggerating his wealth for decades. A New York appeals court later threw out a $550 million judgment against Trump in that case. Trump has asked a court to overturn the remaining parts of the case.
In his tell-all memoir in 2020, “Disloyal: The True Story of the Former Personal Attorney to President Donald J. Trump,” Cohen was unsparing, calling Trump an “organized crime don” and “master manipulator.”
But, foreshadowing their later rapprochement, Cohen also wrote that he still cared for Trump, writing, “I had and still have a lot of affection for him.”
