While the political world gawked at Michael Cohen’s on-air reunion with Donald Trump, Jim Acosta zeroed in on a moment he said slipped under the radar — and it hinged on something the president said that wasn’t true.
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On his show Friday, Acosta flagged an exchange from Cohen’s Thursday radio interview in which Trump praised his former fixer for supposedly taking everything back.
“They weaponized you. They weaponized a lot of people, and I respect the fact that you recanted everything you said,” Trump told Cohen. “That’s a big thing that you did.”
The problem, Acosta noted while reading from a New York Times account: Cohen hasn’t recanted everything. He has voiced misgivings about his testimony and accused prosecutors of asking leading questions, but he never took it all back. Pressed by CNN on whether he was retracting anything, Cohen said, “What was said is said, and that’s where I stand with it.”
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The wrinkle matters because Trump is appealing his 2024 conviction on 34 felony counts, built partly on Cohen’s turn as the star witness — testimony that followed years of Cohen branding Trump a “con man” and a fraud. Cohen, meanwhile, confirmed he has resubmitted a pardon application, rewriting the cover letter to swap Joe Biden’s name for Trump’s.
Acosta’s guest, former Republican strategist Steve Schmidt, offered another read of the détente that Trump “doesn’t hold grudges” because he is “utterly transactional.”
Even so, Cohen’s about-face earned him mockery from critics.
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Plus Jim thanks Rosie O’Donnell for giving us all a good laugh this week.
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