No Quid Pro Quo, But Did Michael Cohen Ask Jerry Falwell To Do Trump A Favor, Though?

We are just asking!

Books! Books! Everywhere, it is books! A luxurious pile of books for us to pretend we are going to read but then never get around to!

Let's talk about Michael Cohen's book. The White House certainly is. 

"Michael Cohen is a disgraced felon and disbarred lawyer, who lied to Congress. He has lost all credibility, and it's unsurprising to see his latest attempt to profit off of lies," press secretary Kayleigh McEnany told Reuters.

Oh, fiddlebonkers, Kayleigh McEnany musta gotten hit by a bus before she finished the second half of that statement, about how Cohen is a disgraced felon and disbarred lawyer who ended up that way because he pleaded guilty to committing crimes for "Individual 1," AKA her boss. Oh well, hope she recovers from getting attacked by that bus!

So a fun new revelation from Cohen's book is that, as we all assumed, Jerry Falwell Jr.'s mysterious and sudden endorsement of Donald Trump is indeed connected to that time in 2015 when Cohen went to help old Jerry with some "racy photos" that were apparently VERY NAUGHTY, what somehow involved his wife. Did Cohen make that little problem go away, we guess, while holding the pics as kompromat , and then BING BONG! Falwell endorsed Trump?

Unclear!

According to Reuters, Cohen wasn't that specific in the book:

In "Disloyal: The Memoir," Cohen describes thinking that his involvement in the Falwell photo matter would be a "catch and kill" — the practice of American tabloids to obtain and then suppress unfavorable stories about celebrities — "but in this case it was just going to be kill."

He later writes: "In good time, I would call in this favor, not for me, but for the Boss, at a crucial moment on his journey to the presidency."

As Reuters notes, Cohen doesn't specifically say the "favor" was the endorsement, so for the purposes of fairness, Wonkette supposes the "favor" could have been even grosser than that. Reuters also notes that Cohen said "earlier this year" that the nakeypants Falwell pics weren't related to the endorsement. OH WHO KNOWS/GIVES A FUCK.

To thicken the plot, which sounds yucky right now and we don't know why, Cohen surprised us all by appearing on Rachel Maddow for the whole hour last night, and she asked him specifically about this. (More on the Maddow appearance later!) In Cohen's telling to Maddow, it wasn't exactly a quid pro quo, just because he and the Falwells have always been so close, and he wouldn't have had to use that "chit" to get Falwell's endorsement. Jerry just would have done what he asked anyway.

Also Cohen still talks to Jerry and Becki Falwell all the time and they like dropped him off at prison or something, we don't fucking know.

So what is the truth? We said we don't fucking know, ask Michael Cohen, see if it's more clear next time he answers.

Falwell says LIES! and we all know how trustworthy he is.

He said that "someone stole some pictures I took of my wife in the back yard. Topless. Big deal. OK?" But he said his endorsement of Trump had nothing to do with Cohen's role in suppressing the racy photographs.

"It was no quid pro quo," Falwell said. "There was no me supporting Trump because of whatever Michael was doing."

NO QUID PRO QUO! said Jerry Falwell, who we are guessing learned that phrase last fall or so. 

We should note that Cohen described one of the Falwell photos to Tom Arnold as "terrible," and we don't think Cohen is such a prude as to use that word for the stray booby pic what got "stolen" from Jerry Falwell. Cohen did, after all, spend all those years cleaning up shit for one of the most disgusting humans on the planet, Donald J. Trump. So let's just assume Jerry has something to hide.

We will also assume that based on Becki Falwell's reaction when Jerry Falwell was talking to Reuters:

Toward the end of the call, Becki Falwell, who has not commented on the Cohen book or the photographs, could be heard urging her husband to cut short the conversation with Reuters. "Hang up the goddamn phone," she told her husband. "Hang up the phone, Jerry!"

Hahahahahahahahahaha we hate these people so much and enjoy watching them struggle.

Hey, what did "Individual 1" know about all this? Did he ask Michael Cohen to ask Jerry Falwell Jr. to do him a favor though, like he did with the president of Ukraine? We are just asking!

There is lots of stuff on the internet right now about Michael Cohen's book, if you're interested. Like Trump's racism, just in general:

According to Cohen, Trump told his former lawyer that Black and Latino voters were "too stupid" to vote for him, and said that any country run by Black leaders was a "sh**hole." On another occasion, after the death of South African President Nelson Mandela, Cohen says that Trump told him that apartheid-era South Africa had been "beautiful" and that Mandela had "f***** the whole country up."

Yeah. Know who doesn't like Nelson Mandela? KKK-grade psychopaths.

More Trump racism, this time for Hispanic people:

"I will never get the Hispanic vote. Like the blacks, they're too stupid to vote for Trump. They're not my people."

Yes, that is a thing Cohen says Trump said, about Hispanic people.

Cohen's opinions on why Trump loves Vladimir Putin so very much:

"An entire society and civilization bent to the will of a single man was how Trump viewed the ideal historical form of government," Cohen writes. "With him as the man in charge, of course."

We love the story about how Donald Trump actually went off on Dumbfuck Junior for all his trophy-hunting sadistic garbage, which a was a bad influence on young Eric Trump:

"'What the fuck is wrong with you?' Trump screamed at his namesake. 'You think you're a big man sitting on the rocks and then boom! You kill some fucking animal? Then you drag your brother into this bullshit? Why the fuck would you post photos like that? Get the fuck out of my office.'"

Now you might think this means Trump loves animals he's never met more than he loves his son, which would be remarkable, since we don't think he actually gives a fuck about animals.

(Oh yeah, also if you think Cohen might have gotten that part wrong, the Guardian says that is also in Stephanie Winston Wolkoff's new book about Melania. So there.)

Other claims from the book include that Trump thinks evangelical Christians are pretty dumb too, and that he thought when the Stormy Daniels story came out that his supporters might think it was just pretty darn cool that he made sex with a porn star.

The White House can call Cohen a liar all they want, and he certainly has been known to lie. But just like with the story from The Atlantic about Trump hating the troops, it's useful to ask: Does this sound like Trump?

It sure enough does.

[ Reuters / NPR / Guardian / BBC ]

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