I’ve had dustups with friends, and sometimes we’ve moved past them. Other times, however, things get so serious that you can never really recover the relationship.
Donald Trump has a remarkable track record when it comes to mending destroyed friendships — his ugly feud with “Little Marco” Rubio during the 2016 GOP presidential primary came full circle when the president appointed him Secretary of State. The rhetoric between Trump and Florida Governor Ron DeSantis got equally heated during the 2024 presidential primaries, as then-candidate Trump took to calling him "Ron DeSanctimonious." Now, Trump says, “I like him a lot.”
Even he and the late Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), who unexpectedly succumbed to a heart issue Saturday night, clashed repeatedly in the past. Yet the president said on Sunday, “He's a tough one to lose. He's...he was great. He was unique in every way, actually.”
But former fixer Michael Cohen?! That one seemed impossible to save. After all, he testified against Trump in the business fraud case involving payments to porn person Stormy Daniels and helped ensure a conviction in Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s quixotic and legally novel attempt to bring down Trump. It was Cohen himself who actually went to prison for his role in the matter. Trump’s convictions, meanwhile, are still under appeal.
Cohen, who could easily be the security head for The Boss in any Hollywood mob movie, hasn’t gone away, and according to the New York Times, which occasionally gets things right, their animosity is fading:
Mr. Cohen and Mr. Trump had a brief yet significant conversation at the president’s private, members-only golf club in Bedminster, N.J., breaking a yearslong estrangement marked by legal disputes and public acrimony, according to people with knowledge of the encounter, who discussed the private session on the condition of anonymity.
Their conversation, which has not been previously reported, provided Mr. Cohen a toehold into Mr. Trump’s orbit and set in motion a broader effort to make peace with the president. His private outreach also included a second, longer meeting with Mr. Trump this year and calls to some of the president’s closest allies.
Cohen said Trump actually sympathized with him for the anti-Trump lawfare he went through:
NewsNation: Michael Cohen says he reconciled with Trump
— Politics & Poll Tracker 📡 (@PollTracker2024) July 7, 2026
Michael Cohen: “Out of nowhere, when I was sitting with my wife at a restaurant, my phone buzzed and it was a text from that friend who expressed to me the president’s genuine empathy for the hell that I was being dragged… pic.twitter.com/ycgooyyGWW
NewsNation: Michael Cohen says he reconciled with Trump
Michael Cohen: “Out of nowhere, when I was sitting with my wife at a restaurant, my phone buzzed and it was a text from that friend who expressed to me the president’s genuine empathy for the hell that I was being dragged through… I deeply appreciated that text. I actually texted the president. I thanked him. Expressed my sincere hope that this long, exhausting feud between the two of us could finally end.”
MORE: Priceless: Michael Cohen Begs for a Pardon From Biden on MSNBC
In addition to assailing prosecutors in the Stormy Daniels case, Cohen has also been defending Trump against the endless claims from the Left that the president and the late pedophile Jeffrey Epstein were in league with each other.
“I never once witnessed, I never heard of, I never saw, I never communicated, never saw in the office Jeffrey Epstein,” he said. “Never saw him speak to him … Those two things shattered [the left’s] narrative. The far left, they literally went on this absolute warpath against me.”
Cohen reminds me of Michael Avenatti, the onetime CNN hero and former lawyer for Stormy Daniels who now sits in federal custody for his convictions on extorting Nike, stealing nearly $300,000 from Daniels, defrauding multiple clients, and tax and wire fraud convictions. Somehow, media “expert” Brian Stelter, who pushed this degenerate as a serious candidate for president, still has a job.
Both Avenatti and Cohen were smart enough to earn law degrees, but not smart enough to stay out of prison, and they seemingly left their ethics at the door.
Some see Cohen as a victim who was crushed by the Left’s maniacal lawfare drive to “get Trump” by any means possible, and there may be plenty of truth to that. That being said, Trump would be smart to let him rant on his podcast, but he would also be wise to keep Cohen at a distance and not bring him any further into his orbit.
He’s done major about-faces before, and there’s no reason to think he wouldn’t do the same again.
