Trump idolizes Putin as he runs Russia like his personal company and is 'richest man in the world by a multiple'
President Donald Trump admires Russian President Vladimir Putin as a leader because he runs the country like his own company and has enormous riches, a new memoir by the Republican's personal lawyer states. Michael Cohen, known as the Trump fixer, is set to release his book titled 'Disloyal: A Memoir: The True Story of the Former Personal Attorney to President Donald J. Trump' on Tuesday, September 8.
Cohen, in the memoir, has described himself as Trump's "designated thug," and explained what according to him is the reason for Trump's admiration of the Russian leader. The attorney states that the first reason is Putin's wealth. Although Putin's exact wealth has never been verified, Trump regardless has pinned the Russian leader as "the richest man in the world by a multiple," according to the Washington Post. Another reason the president idolizes Putin is because of his ability "to take over an entire nation and run it like it was his personal company — like the Trump Organization, in fact."
Cohen, in his damning memoir, describes Trump as "a cheat, a liar, a fraud, a bully, a racist, a predator, a con man," and a president with an interest in profiting from his office, according to excerpts of the book seen by CNN. Cohen is currently serving out a three-year federal prison sentence for tax evasion, lying to Congress, and campaign finance violations while he worked for Trump. The attorney even acknowledges it in his book.
The former Trump attorney, in his book, also characterized the president as being mesmerized by Putin's power and his control over Russia. "Locking up your political enemies, criminalizing dissent, terrifying or bankrupting the free press through libel lawsuits — Trump's all-encompassing vision wasn't evident to me before he began to run for president," Cohen writes in his memoir. "I honestly believe the most extreme ideas about power and its uses only really took shape as he began to seriously contemplate the implications of taking power and how he could leverage it to the absolute maximum level possible," he adds.
Cohen added that he initially saw Trump attempting to get close to Putin in an effort to ensure access to Russian marks after his expected loss in the 2016 presidential elections. However, the Republican soon realized that Putin's dislike of his 2016 political rival, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, could prove to be to his advantage during the elections. The former attorney, in his book, however, has insisted that there was no outright attempt of collusion made between the Trump campaign and Putin to influence the 2016 elections. It was "really a confluence of shared interests in harming Hillary Clinton in any way possible, up to and including interfering in the American election," The Post quoted Cohen as saying in his book. This subject "caused Trump precisely zero unease," Cohen added.
The Trump fixer also said Trump sold a Palm Beach mansion to a Russian oligarch because of his admiration of Putin as he believed that the "real" buyer was the Russian leader himself.
Trump's former press secretary Sarah Sanders' memoir is also set to release on Tuesday. Sanders' memoir titled 'Speaking for Myself: Faith, Freedom, and the Fight of Our Lives Inside the Trump White House', however, is an aberration from the previous memoirs by former Trump White House staffers. Instead of talking about the controversies surrounding the president, Sanders' memoir consists of positive insights about the president. Many observers have assumed that the memoir is Sanders' attempt to pave way for her father's former position as Arkansas governor.