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The president is firing back at that audio recording of a conversation that he had before the election with his personal attorney, michael cohen. with me now to discuss all of this, our editor at large chris cilliza, senior contributor alex diega and reporter for the new york times. chris cilliza, this is not just about a solacious affair back in 2006, this is about a campaign for the president of the united states and the suggestion that a payoff was made before the election, and three days before the election, the president s spokeswoman hope hicks said of this agreement with karen mcdougal, quote, we have no knowledge of any of this. she went on to say that the alleged affair was totally untrue. big picture, why should the american people care so much about this this morning? so big picture point number ....
That certainly seems to be the case with the audio tape and what lanny davis, cohen s lawyer, said last night to chris cuomo. we don t know if there is any legal implication, really, here yet. just in terms of embarrassment and being sort of publicly shamed in what he knows, i think that would make anyone nervous if you had a relationship like donald trump had with michael cohen. let s listen to what lanny davis said to chris last night. what do they fear, chris? why am i representing him? they fear that he has the truth about donald trump. he will someday speak the truth about donald trump. the truth is that when donald trump said cash which rudy giuliani knows that only drug dealers and mobsters talk about cash, you heard michael cohen, you heard michael cohen say what? no, no, no, no. i mean, it is a he said-he said now, cash, check or whatever. that s sort of not the big picture issue here. ....
exclamation point. he is referring, of course, to cnn s exclusive where there was a secret audio recording between michael cohen, donald trump s long-time attorney, and donald trump. they were basically talking about quashing the story of this playboy model who had an alleged affair with donald trump. so we have the president s attention. he has been tweeting about this. it s on his mind. let s bring in cnn s chris cilliza joining us now. let s die gram thagram this twe. he said he was presumably saying something positive. about what? about whom? about paying her off for the karen mcdougal story? as we know, the trump tweets ....
Kind of people that surrounded then-candidate for president, and it tells you if that is exactly the loyalty attached to these relationships. and the president ultimately did not want to bring michael cohen with him to washington, d.c. he thought maybe he had been too in the know with the dirty laundry and that reportedly really hurt michael cohen s feelings. it does give you a sense of what type of relationship they had when a conversation like this would be recorded. chris cilliza, one of the key reasons why people can hear this tape this morning, not only did chris get it live on his show last night, but the trump legal team waived the right to keep it private, waived attorney-client privilege, and i am still scratching my head about why here. do you think we have any more answers to that really this morning? well, no, not based on the audio. it is somewhat inconclusive because, you know, the transcript the white house put out in response to the tape seems to me to be sort of ....
When credibility comes to the fore here as it is now, who has more credibility in this, michael cohen or donald trump? well, to me that reminds me of those sort of logic problems about two people, one of whom always lies, the other one always tells the truth, but in this case you re not dealing with either of them being a person who really tells the truth, right? so this is a situation where i think it s unbelievably difficult to parse out whose account to take seriously. one does hope that we get to see a more in-depth, intensive analysis of what was actually said on that audiotape. i do want to piggyback on something chris said and maybe go further. the underlying story here is not just about michael cohen turning on donald trump in a moment of legal duress. he made this tape when he was ostensibly a guy who would take a bullet for donald trump. that s a great point. and it tells us the culture of this organization and the ....