“President Donald Trump simply doesn’t have the “inner strength” to accept his loss and attend the inauguration of President-elect Joe Biden, according to his former fixer and personal attorney Michael Cohen. In an interview with Ari Melber on MSNBC, Cohen discussed potential scenarios for the coming months, as his former boss continues to adamantly deny the results of the presidential election, refuses to concede and baselessly attacks the legitimacy of the voting processes that led to his loss. Cohen said people needn’t be too concerned, because his former boss “talks a lot of nonsense.” “It’s all a lie, 99.9% of everything that comes out of his mouth is a lie. He’s not going to stay in the White House past Jan. 20. They will remove him. He knows that,” Cohen said. He again predicted that Trump might not return to the White House after he visits his Florida Mar-A-Lago resort for his Christmas break, and will stay there beyond Biden’s inauguration at noon on Jan. 20. “I suspect he doesn’t even come back to Washington,” Cohen said. “I don’t believe he’s going to go to the inauguration because he himself fundamentally cannot sit in a chair knowing that the cameras are on him and that the world is looking at him as a loser. He cannot do that.” “He does not have enough inner strength in him to be gracious,” he added. Cohen also speculated on how Trump’s post-presidency life might look, and guessed that he may start his own media company, which he will use to attack Biden. “He’s going to say for the next 30 years that they stole the election from me. ‘I’m the rightful president.’ He’s going to keep his MAGA army active and engaged and constantly blow this dog whistle and be a menace.” Cohen was asked about Trump’s new leadership political action committee, “Save America,” formed in the wake of major news outlets calling Biden as the winner of the election. The Trump campaign has been asking supporters for donations to fight the results of the election, but The New York Times reported that the fine print reveals that 60% of that fundraising is now being directed to the new PAC, which will help him to fund his post-presidency activities. “The reason he’s doing it is because he has no income,” Cohen said. “And you would see that if he would turn over his tax returns.” “He doesn’t have ‘The Apprentice’ making $65 million a year,” he continued. “Most of his assets are underperforming. … the few that he has doesn’t cover the big cost. So he’s going to use this like the Trump Foundation, as a slush fund.” The foundation Cohen referred to was set up ostensibly for charitable purposes by Trump in 1988, but various law enforcement investigations found it shrouded in ethical and legal violations. Probes by New York officials led to the foundation being shut down last year and Trump paying more than $2 million in court-ordered damages to eight different charities for illegally misusing its funds for political purposes: Cohen pleaded guilty in 2018 to criminal charges that included lying to Congress and violating campaign finance law when he engineered hush money payments during the 2016 presidential campaign to silence two women who alleged extramarital affairs with Trump, Stormy Daniels and Karen McDougal. He cooperated with investigators and implicated the president in those crimes. He is serving the remainder of a three-year prison sentence in home confinement due to concerns about the ease with which COVID-19 can spread among an inmate population.
