Michael Cohen responds to Tom Arnold’s revelations
On Thursday night, a firestorm of speculation and curiosity erupted across social media when Tom Arnold posted a selfie of him and Donald Trump’s longtime fixer Michael Cohen. Why was Cohen, who is widely reported to be in the midst of cutting a plea deal against Trump, suddenly posting for a photo op with a notorious Trump detractor like Arnold? Yesterday, Tom Arnold spent the day talking with the media about the matter. Then Cohen issued a statement of his own.
Tom Arnold quipped to NBC News that he and Michael Cohen were plotting to take Donald Trump down. Arnold then explained that he was making the remark in jest, and that he and Cohen don’t have anything specific going on together. Still, as Palmer Report explained last night, something was clearly up, if perhaps merely in terms of Cohen’s mindset. Cohen knew precisely what the result would be if he posed for a selfie with Arnold.
Arnold did several television interviews yesterday, but he tried to avoid giving any specifics with regard to Michael Cohen’s plans. At one point, when CNN asked him if Cohen was planning to cut a plea deal, he gave a lengthy pause before saying that he didn’t want to answer the question. After Arnold spent the day trying not to speak for Cohen, we got this tweet from Cohen: “Appreciate Tom Arnold kind words about me as a great father, husband and friend. This was a chance, public encounter in the hotel lobby where he asked for a selfie. Not spending the weekend together, did not discuss being on his show nor did we discuss POTUS.”
Tom Arnold then responded to Michael Cohen by making light of the mixed reaction to his CNN interview, tweeting “So you didn’t like me on CNN either? That makes it unanimous.” So what, if anything, does this tell us? If Cohen is in the process of negotiating a plea deal, he really can’t talk about it. But from our point of view, it all comes down to this: Cohen knew what he was doing when he decided to pose for a selfie with his friend Arnold, which he knew would immediately be posted online, and would set off a firestorm. Cohen wanted this reaction, even though he’s now downplaying it. The question is why.
