The president finally decided to sit down with his favorite propaganda network to discuss his former lawyer Michael Cohen’s stunning guilty plea admission that Trump himself ordered him to make the hush money payments to former Trump mistresses Stephanie “Stormy Daniels” Clifford and Karen McDougal — and succeeded in digging himself an even deeper hole.
In the short clip teased this morning by his favorite TV show, FOX and Friends, the President is asked if he knew about the payments — and he openly admitted that he knew about them “later on.”
EXCLUSIVE: President @realDonaldTrump on if he knew about the Cohen payments. See more from his interview with @ainsleyearhardt tomorrow 6-9amET. pic.twitter.com/HPJPslOG6X
— FOX & friends (@foxandfriends) August 22, 2018
On top of that, he admitted that the payments came from him, and not from the campaign, which somehow was supposed to excuse him and Cohen of any wrongdoing.
It does not, as legal analysts on social media were all too quick to point out:
lol how is this supposed to be exculpatory https://t.co/M4RlrLzmdS
— Charles, Star of MicDicta (@Ugarles) August 22, 2018
The fact that payments to @StormyDaniels "didn't come out of the campaign, they came from me" is basically the reason the Justice Department concluded that they were felonies.
— Brad Heath (@bradheath) August 22, 2018
While it’s possible that they might argue that they had no idea they were breaking the law, Heath went on to point out that the lengths that they have gone to conceal the payments indicate that they were very aware of their guilt and the illegality of what they were doing when they interfered in a close election race by squashing two potential bombshell stories.
If you were prosecuting the case, you'd certainly argue that the lengths Cohen and others went to to conceal the payments demonstrated consciousness of guilt.
— Brad Heath (@bradheath) August 22, 2018
The president obviously did not consider the fact that there are audio tapes of him discussing the payments to McDougal before they were made, which means that he is obviously lying.
Last night, Cohen’s lawyer put forth the proposition that if Cohen was guilty for making the payments, then Trump is guilty for ordering them — something we’d all like to see discussed in a court of law.