Reviews for Disloyal

by Michael Cohen

Kirkus
Copyright © Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Consider everything bad you’ve heard about Donald Trump. Quadruple it, and you have a sense of where this winding book begins. Not since John Dean’s Blind Ambition have we seen a political mea culpa as thoroughgoing as this one. Like a Mafia chief, Cohen asserts, Trump “wouldn’t mind if I were dead,” and plenty of Trump cultists would be glad to do the hit—or, in the case of Matt Gaetz, he alleges, at least commit blackmail. Cohen’s transgression? To cooperate with the Mueller investigation, which “was not a witch-hunt,” since Trump gladly courted “Russian connivance” in the 2016 election. Cohen enabled this and many other crimes and misdemeanors. At their very first encounter, he recalls, Trump lied to him “directly, demonstrably and without doubt.” He swallowed it because he wanted a taste of the “intoxicating cocktail of power, strength, celebrity, and a complete disregard for the rules and realities that govern our lives.” By Cohen’s account, it was his idea that Trump run for president in both 2012 and 2016, though Trump shied from the former race because he feared Barack Obama, whom he hated with a passion. Trump’s “unhinged Archie Bunker racism” defines him, writes Cohen, as does his contempt for everyone who is not within his inner circle. Even they aren’t safe: “The kid has the worst fucking judgment of anyone I have ever met,” Trump said of Don Jr. He scorns his fundamentalist supporters (“Can you believe people believe that bullshit?”), bilks friends, reneges on promises and debts, and cheats in every possible way. Though some people seem not to mind being ill-used, it’s telling, notes Cohen, that Trump has not a single friend. One thing is sure: If Trump is guilty of even a portion of the charges leveled here, then he has no business being president—though, Cohen warns, Trump will not leave office willingly if he loses in 2020, having found the perfect con game. A furious, rueful confession of crimes committed by and on behalf of the sitting president. Copyright © Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

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