⛪️ Trump's reaction to evangelical leaders putting their hands on him: "Can you believe that bullsh*t? Can you believe people believe that bullsh*t?"
📘 Excerpt from Michael Cohen’s book “Disloyal, a memoir”:
📸Photo: Joyce Boghosian
📘 Cohen book (cont'd):
>50 religious leaders came to Trump Tower before the election
As an organizer, I went to watch the proceedings, and what I saw was amazing, to put it mildly. Sitting around the long conference room table, the group started to discuss...
📘 Cohen book (cont'd):
...Trump's three marriages, his views on abortion, homosexuality, family values, America's role in the world, and God's place in the Boss's heart. As a little kid, Trump's family had attended Marble Collegiate Church in Manhattan, where he listened...
📘 Cohen book (cont'd):
...to the sermons of Norman Vincent Peale. The Protestant preacher was the author of "The Power of Positive Thinking" and an early radio and television star, sermonizing about the materialistic advantages of American conservative religion, making him...
📘 Cohen book (cont'd):
...a hero to the folks meeting with Trump as a pioneer in blending or conflating wealth & Jesus in a way that somehow found the Son of God was all about the bling.
Trump milked the Norman Peale connection like a dairy farmer at dawn, not letting one...
📘 Cohen book (cont'd)
...drop spill.
[skipping ahead]
As the evangelicals inhaled Trump's Norman Peale horse shi*t, they solemnly asked to approach him to "lay hands" on him. I watched with bated breath. Trump was a massive germaphobe, as I've noted, so the idea of dozens...
📘 Cohen book (cont'd):
...of sets of hands touching his clothing and skin would appall, him, I knew. But even this didn't faze the Boss: he closed his eyes, faking piety, and gave the appearance of feeling God's presence as the assembled group called for guidance in...
📘 Cohen book (cont'd):
...determining the fate and fortune of Donald Trump, America, and the message of Jesus Christ.
If you knew Trump, as I did, the vulgarian salivating over beauty contestants or mocking Roger Stone's propensity for desiring the male sexual organ in his...
📘 Cohen book (cont'd)
...mouth, as he would say less politely, you would have a hard time keeping a straight face at the sight of him affecting the serious & pious mien of a man of faith. I know I could hardly believe the performance, or the fact that these folks were buying it.
📘 Cohen book (cont'd):
Watching Trump, I could see that he knew exactly how to appeal to the evangelicals' desires and vanities—who they wanted him to be, not who he really was. Everything he was telling them about himself was absolutely untrue.
📘 Cohen book (cont'd):
He was pro-abortion; he told me that Planned Parenthood was the way poor people paid for contraception. He didn't care about religion. Homosexuals, divorce, the break-up of the nuclear family—he'd say whatever they wanted to hear, and they'd hear...
📘 Cohen book (cont'd):
...what they wanted to hear. This was the moment, for me: the split second when I knew Trump would be president one day. It was an intuition, but it was also based on the intangibles.
📘 Cohen book (cont'd):
Trump's answers to their questions were compassionate, thoughtful, Godly, in a way that I knew in no way reflected his beliefs or way of seeing life.
📘 Cohen book (cont'd):
He could lie directly to the faces of some of the most powerful religious leaders in the country and they believed him—or decided to believe him, a distinction with a real difference.
📘 Cohen book (cont'd):
Trump was imperfect, they knew, with his multiple marriages and carefully cultivated reputation as a womanizer. But he knew what they really cared about—the core, core, core beliefs.
📘 Cohen book (cont'd):
Anti-abortion laws, Supreme Court justices, opposition to gay marriage & civil rights, & the cultural war-like rhetoric aimed at godless liberals. That was Trump's rat-like cunning, & it was a talent I knew then that he would ride all the way to the WH.
📘 Cohen book (cont'd):
[skipping]
Not that Trump deserved the admiration and support of the devout folks he'd just met. Trump's true feelings about the encounter with the evangelicals, and the laying on of hands, a supposedly sincere and pious summoning of the will of God,...
📘 Cohen book (cont'd):
...were revealed as I entered Trump's office at the end of the day to have a final recap of his thoughts on the laying on of hands ceremony.
📘 Cohen book (cont'd):
"Can you believe that bullsh*t?" Trump said, with incredulity, referring to the ritual and the evangelicals. "Can you believe people believe that bullsh*t?"
smile.amazon.com/Disloyal-Memoi…
*This was before the 2012 election. Trump didn't run in 2012.
Not that this was the reason, but evangelical pastor Paula White said at the meeting described above: "I don't think the time is right."
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