Michael Cohen on Trump’s Love for Putin: He Worships the Ruling Class and ‘Couldn’t Care Less’ About Anything Else

A new portion of Michael Cohen’s autobiography breaks down President Donald Trump’s admiration for Vladimir Putin and his alleged disinterest in anything that doesn’t personally benefit himself.

In Disloyal: A Memoir, Trump’s former personal lawyer goes into great detail on his ex-boss’ racism, his self-centeredness, and his disdain for other people. In a portion of the book flagged by NBC News, Cohen admits he doesn’t know if Russia has financial leverage on Trump, but he does say that Trump praised Putin during the 2016 election because he expected to lose and wanted to still be able to borrow money from Russian sources for his business empire.

“The whole idea of patriotism and treason became irrelevant in his mind,” Cohen writes. “Trump was using the campaign to make money for himself: of course he was.”

When Cohen was facing his legal troubles in 2018, he came under great scrutiny after admitting to lying about his role in efforts to get Trump Tower Moscow off the ground while his former boss was running for office. In his book, Cohen claims Trump was interested purely in the benefits his political campaign drew, that Trump was unbothered by Russia’s election interference and that Trump’s admiration for Putin stems from his love of wealth and power.

“What appeared to be collusion was really a confluence of shared interests in harming Hillary Clinton in any way possible, up to and including interfering in the American election — a subject that caused Trump precisely zero unease,” Cohen says. “Everyone other than the ruling class on earth was like an ant, to his way of thinking, their lives meaningless and always subject to the whims of the true rulers of the world…The cosmic joke was that Trump convinced a vast swath of working-class white folks in the Midwest that he cared about their well-being. The truth was that he couldn’t care less.”