Elijah Cummings Dad-Splained Michael Cohen And Made Him (And America!) Cry

It might make you cry too, unless you are dead inside like we are.

You might have heard that Donald Trump's former thug fixer (disbarred) lawyer Michael Cohen testified for Congress on Wednesday. It made a few headlines. (Here, have a 7,000 word liveblog! ) Cohen made lots of news, and accused Donald Trump of committing LOTS of literal actual crimes, both during his presidential campaign and afterward, from the comfort of the Oval Office he does not deserve. And we will do some analyzin' of that news over the course of the day, but first House Oversight Chairman/ Overall Badass Elijah Cummings has some WORDS to say, for Michael Cohen, and for AMERICA, DAMMIT.

Cummings's closing statement was only a surprise if you haven't been following him for eons, and maybe because of the subject matter of yesterday's hearing. Perhaps part of why it was so striking was in the grace Cummings showed Cohen, and yes we mean that in the Christian sense of the word. While Republicans screamed at Cohen all day and called him a liar -- you know, because last time he came to Congress he lied and said Donald Trump wasn't a criminal and THAT MAKES REPUBLICANS MAD, just kidding, they're mad he stopped lying -- Cummings brought a note of humanity and impassioned patriotism to the end of the proceedings. Also he made Michael Cohen cry, and he may have made us cry a little bit, but don't worry, not too much, because there is too much darkness in Wonkette's heart for prolonged displays of sentimentality.

Elijah Cummings' stunning closing remarks at Cohen hearing    www.youtube.com 

Cummings addressed redemption, saying that if we "did not give people an opportunity after they're made mistakes to change their lives, a whole lot of people would not do very well." And he made clear to Cohen, who listened intently, that Cohen had to do the work to truly redeem himself .

Mr. Cohen, I tell my children, I say 'When bad things happen to you, do not ask the question "Why did it happen to me?" Ask the question, "Why did it happen for me?" I don't know why this is happening for you. But it's my hope that a small part of it is for our country to be better. If I hear you correctly, it sounds like you're crying out for a new normal — for us getting back to normal. It sounds to me like you want to make sure that our democracy stays intact.

And Cohen responded, "I'm warning you, tread very fucking lightly, because what I'm going to do to you is going to be fucking disgusting. You understand me?" LOL, WE ARE SAYING A TEASE, that is the old Michael Cohen, not the new and puppydog-faced Michael Cohen who's very sorry for what he's done and is about to be the only person (so far) to go to prison for a significant amount of time for participating in Individual-1's crimes.

There was a preacher aspect to Cummings's words, but there was also a dad aspect. "HE IS DAD-DING MICHAEL COHEN RIGHT NOW," we either said in our live coverage or to the other Wonkettes in the secret chatcave, we can't recall. And he was DAD-DING AMERICA TOO.

The one meeting I had with President Trump, I said to him 'the greatest gift that you and I, Mr. President, can give to our children, is making sure we give them a democracy that is intact. A … democracy better than the one we came upon. And I'm hoping that the things you said today will help us again to get back there.

You know, I mean come on now. I mean, when you got, according to The Washington Post , our president has made at least 8,718 … false or misleading statements. That's stunning. That's not what we teach our children. I don't teach mine that. And, for whatever reason, it sounds like you got caught up in it. You got caught up in it. You got caught up in it.

He did. He did the crimes and he said the lies. Some of them he did because he was an idiot who thought he could get away with doing all the crimes, and some of them he did in concert with and at the direction of Individual-1, according to his own testimony and according to the Southern District of New York.

Cummings made very clear what Donald Trump and Rudy Giuliani have been doing, tampering with and threatening the witness, and with Republicans hounding the witness in order to prove that he's untrustworthy, fundamentally ignoring the GOP elephant in the room, which is that the president of the United States has specifically called Cohen a rat , an implicit admission that Cohen is now telling the truth about him. What does it mean to call somebody a rat , Chairman Cummings?

I know that it's painful going to prison. I know it's got to be painful being called a rat. And let me explain, a lot of people don't know the significance of that, but I live in the inner city of Baltimore, all right? And when you call somebody a rat, that's one of the worst things you can call them because when they go to prison, that means a snitch. I'm just saying. And so, the president called you a rat. We're better than that! We really are. And I'm hoping that all of us can get back to this democracy that we want, and that we should be passing on our children so they can do better than what we did.

And then he made Michael Cohen cry:

So you wonder whether people believe you — I don't know. I don't know whether they believe you. But the fact is, that you've come, you have your head down, and this has got to be one of the hardest things that you could do.

Let me tell you the picture that really, really pained me. You were leaving the prison, you were leaving the courthouse, and, I guess it's your daughter, had braces or something on. Man that thing, man that thing hurt me. As a father of two daughters, it hurt me. And I can imagine how it must feel for you. But I'm just saying to you — I want to first of all thank you. I know that this has been hard. I know that you've faced a lot. I know that you are worried about your family. But this is a part of your destiny. And hopefully this portion of your destiny will lead to a better, a better, a better Michael Cohen, a better Donald Trump, a better United States of America, and a better world. And I mean that from the depths of my heart.

When we're dancing with the angels, the question we'll be asked: In 2019, what did we do to make sure we kept our democracy intact? Did we stand on the sidelines and say nothing?

Cummings concluded by yelling directly at his Republican counterparts for being a buncha fuckin' liars when they constantly claimed yesterday was the committee's FIRST hearing -- as if they haven't been doing hard and necessary work ever since the moment they were seated -- and then adjourned the hearing. It was a very good talk he had just had with Michael Cohen, and with America.

We don't know if Cohen has come clean about everything yet. We actually suspect he hasn't, and that more will come out as time goes on. But he's the first one out of Trump World who really truly seems to want to turn his ship around, and hopefully he won't be the last. What we are saying is that we guess we have to at least allow some of these fuckers a path to redemption and back into polite society, at some point, if they are willing to do that work.

We guess . (Not Devin Nunes, he is unforgivable.)

Mostly we are just scared Elijah Cummings will yell at us if we're assholes, and we don't like getting yelled at by Elijah Cummings.

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