Michael Cohen said President Trump once told him, "black people are too stupid to vote for me."
Michael Cohen says President Trump once told him that "black people are too stupid to vote for me."
In a bombshell Vanity Fair interview, Trump's former long-time personal attorney claims the president has made a number of racist comments over the years.
The publication notes about one such instance: "Cohen recalled a discussion at Trump Tower, following the then-candidate's return from a campaign rally during the 2016 election cycle. Cohen had watched the rally on TV and noticed that the crowd was largely Caucasian. He offered this observation to his boss. 'I told Trump that the rally looked vanilla on television. Trump responded, 'That's because black people are too stupid to vote for me.''"
Earlier this month, Axios reported that Cohen changed his party registration from Republican to Democrat.
The outlet noted the change "fits a pattern of Cohen publicly breaking from the man for whom he once said he'd take 'a bullet.'" ABC News reported in August that Cohen entered a guilty plea on eight counts and told the court that he had violated campaign finance laws "in coordination and at the direction of a candidate for federal office." Cohen's lawyer Lanny Davis said that, prior to the guilty pleas, Cohen had undergone an "evolutionary" process regarding his relationship with Trump, according to Politico. Davis further noted that the Helsinki summit, during which Trump showed reluctance to confront Russian President Vladimir Putin about the 2016 election meddling, was a "significant turning point" for Cohen.