📘 Excerpt from Michael Cohen’s book “Disloyal, a memoir”:

Watching Obama's Inauguration in 2008 with Trump, with the massive, adoring, joyful crowd on the Mall, incensed the Boss in a way I'd never seen him before—he was literally losing his mind watching a handsome...
📘 Cohen book (cont'd)

...and self-evidently brilliant young black man take over, not only as Commander in Chief, but also as a moral world leader & guiding light. It was just too much for Trump. I thought I'd seen the worst of Trump then, but when Obama won the Nobel Prize,...
📘 Cohen book (cont'd)

Trump went ballistic, as if the universe were playing some kind of trick on him to drive him out of his mind. It was almost like he was hearing voices, the way he ranted and raved about the idiotic Obama and how he was beloved by so many Americans.
📘 Cohen book (cont'd)

Trump mocked the way Obama talked, walked, even appeared, as if acting presidential was just that: an act. The shtick you see him pull at his rallies, when he mocks the idea of being "presidential" & says how easy it is to pretend to be a serious leader...
📘 Cohen book (cont'd)

...walking like a robot and marching around like a fool and a phony, was first performed for yours truly in Trump's office while I sat quietly listening to him go on and on and on about Obama and caricature his mannerisms.
📘 Cohen book (cont'd)

We even hired a Faux-Bama, or fake Obama, to record a video where Trump ritualistically belittled the first black president and then fired him, a kind of fantasy fulfillment that it was hard to imagine any adult would spend serious money living out—
📘 Cohen book (cont'd)

...until he did the functional equivalent in the real world.

Trump didn't despise Obama. It was much, much stronger than that. I figured that Obama was the only person on the planet whom Trump actually envied—truly, madly, deeply.
📘 Cohen book (cont'd)

Air Force One, walking the carpet to deliver the State of the Union, the way Angela Merkel and other world leaders obviously admired and listened to Obama—it drove Trump out of his mind.
📘 Cohen book (cont'd)

Then came The Speech: Obama was invited to address the German nation in front of the Brandenburg Gate, in the same place as John F. Kennedy in the early '60s, one of the indelible images of American history in the twentieth century.
📘 Cohen book (cont'd)

Trump went from incandescent to sputtering, spittle-flecked fury as he watched Obama talk about freedom and ridding the world of nuclear weapons and turning back the rising seas by fighting global warming.
📘 Cohen book (cont'd)

"You've got to admit he's a great orator," I said.
"F*ck him," Trump yelled at me, Obama on the screen before him calmly addressing untold millions of Germans thrilled to have a world leader ushering in the prospect of a twenty-first century...
📘 Cohen book (cont'd)

...where diversity and tolerance and peace and responsibility would become global aspirations, and maybe even realities.
"He's obviously very smart," I said, knowing I was egging Trump on, but also honestly impressed by Obama's speech and demeanor.
📘 Cohen book (cont'd)

"Obama is a f*cking phony," Trump screamed. "He's a Manchurian candidate. He's not even f*cking American. The only reason he got into f*cking Harvard Law School and Columbia University was f*cking affirmative action.
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