I feel like Cohen realized he probably had to flip on Trump to avoid going to prison for a very long time and there’s no half-flipping on Trump. If Cohen was going to turn on him he might as well burn the whole thing down. This is the downside of surrounding yourself with shady criminals. If their ass is on the line they are likely to do the same thing to you that they’ve been doing to others for you all those years.
I don’t really buy the epiphany thing either. Cohen had clearly been recording Trump and collecting evidence on all the shady shit Trump had him doing for quite some time. You aren’t secretly recording your employer unless you think you might have to use it against him someday.
I don't know, could be wrong, and maybe it was something simpler, like he was pissed off at Turmp over something relatively minor (we know he wasn't pleased with having to try to wrangle out getting reimbursed over the payoffs), but that ballooned into his office getting raided and then he saw quickly there was no turning back, so he just decided to grit his teeth and bare it, knowing that it would be worse the more he tried to weasel out of it. And they probably presented enough evidence showing they knew more than he thought was probably possible without them being there and knew he was fucked, so he might as well try to make the best of the situation. But stuff like refusing a pardon, I feel like that is somewhat symbolic, and is him trying to save face (possibly more for his family and kids and their kids than himself), where he started to recognize that this was a historic situation, and wanting to not be remembered for who knows how long (decades almost certainly) as fully onboard with the corruption (if not outright treason) of Turmp.
Honestly, I think him cataloging stuff was probably just how he had to operate with shitbags like Turmp, where if he didn't have hard evidence to shove in their face they'd try to weasel out and/or fuck people (like himself) over. Heck, wasn't the reason they got Cohen because he had to work to get Turmp to reimburse him for paying off the porn women? I have a hunch that was just standard procedure, and likely Cohen had to keep things just so he wouldn't get screwed over. Certainly there's the covering his own ass aspect, but I think that was likely inherent to dealing with scummy sleazeballs like Turmp, so its less that he was sure Turmp was headed there and more was just standard procedure. I just can't fathom that Cohen would've been certain that Turmp was going down but continue on with him, since his gathering would've started before the DNC hack and Russian connection to all that. I figure if Cohen was cognizant of Turmp going down that far back, he wouldn't have continued on, which made things worse for himself. So I'd guess it was about covering his ass, but less that he knew he'd be using it in such a manner and I think it was more simply so he could keep shit straight and make sure he didn't get left holding an empty bag of IOGoFuckYourselfs since he was quite aware Turmp like doing that.
All I can tell you guys is that the intelligence of con artists isn't measured in conventional terms. They are a breed apart, a different dimension of human consciousness. You can see thru the con, Trump's con, but a lot of people don't.
I can agree (it never ceases to amaze me how serial killers, cult leaders, and other people that are outright malicious, were able to continue to operate because of some weird ability to obstruct people's brains from properly using logic), but I think that's more a comment on society than it is actually supporting them as masterminds. Like I said, its that inherent psychotic aspect, that isn't actually all that rare. And I think modern society has, through a confluence of factors, made people particularly susceptible to manipulation because its ingrained so thoroughly (from food, to entertainment).
But even with regards to manipulators, I don't find Turmp very profound. Simply put, you take away the money and no one would have cared about him and he never would have been in the position. And he didn't earn the money himself (and frankly I'd even call his attempts at manipulating things for himself to actually have backfired since it regularly ended up with him having to declare bankruptcy, and it looks like it might be setting up major implications of people that had been able to do that type of thing but once they got in Turmp's collective black hole of corruption, found themselves facing scrutiny they couldn't handle). A lot of the rest was basically ingrained in the system or enabled by him paying people that knew the ins and outs of how to do that (so the stuff like the tax schemes). Most of what Turmp himself tried to do failed, and often pretty badly. The two exceptions were his reality show, where normally they have to coach people to act like Turmp (and people are watching it for the deliberately over the top bullshit aspect of it all), and then of course him speaking to a base that had subsisted on the same garbage political discourse that Turmp himself had, where he simply regurgitated most of it (with some of his unique stupidity thrown in) and then got them to cheer. It isn't that much different from the behavior you see from people over sports. And he still needs to be coached for what to actually say a ridiculous amount, and regularly fucks things up because he gets frustrated that people won't just accept his nonsense.
He's no Pied Piper, he basically just found crackheads that like the same form of crack he does and who have been jonesing for more crack because their normal dealers jacked up the prices on them after distributing it to them to get them hooked.
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