Michael Cohen’s attorney Lanny Davis appeared on Thursday’s edition of ABC’s The View where he fielded questions about his time as Harvey Weinstein’s legal counsel and his false claims to CNN. In the midst of being peppered with questions about what his client actually knew about Trump’s understanding of the Trump Tower meeting, co-host Joy Behar demanded to know what was being done to “fix” the media’s credibility after what he did.
“I hate to pile on this, really, but I feel like, you know. You made a mistake,” she began before ripping into Cohen’s lack of credibility given his work for Trump.
“We do know that Cohen already lacked credibility all over the place. (…) And now we're questioning your credibility, too,” Behar huffed. “I mean, this is terrible because it's bad enough Trump is always, you know, the false media, the lies, the fake news. This is a reckless thing that happened. How we going to fix it?”
Davis immediately deflected the question by opining about how people needed to understand “the difference between a mistake and a lie” and how President Trump was much worse than he was.
“I hope everyone watching knows that there's a possibility of making an honest mistake and intentionally misrepresenting the truth. Which we're at over 3,000 cording to The Washington Post fact checker when it comes to this president of the United States,” he declared. Davis asserted that what he did with CNN was “unintentional.” Yet despite telling The View cast he knew CNN got what he said wrong, he had confirmed it for other news outlets.
Davis then proceeded the laud Cohen for allegedly having a “transformative moment” where he truly understood how terrible Trump was, and wanted to protect the country like the anonymous New York Times op-ed writer:
Now, Michael Cohen came to me and asked me to represent him. Not because he was the same Michael Cohen who had defended the indefensible in representing Donald Trump for years. He had reached a transformative moment were he wanted to tell the truth about Mr. Trump the same way the anonymous writer in The New York Times yesterday came to a decision to write the truth about this reckless, dangerous man in the White House.
While Behar was putting the brunt of her scorn for CNN’s dubious reporting on her guest, there was no mention of how CNN reporters Carl Bernstein, Marshall Cohen, and Jim Sciutto lied in their original report by claiming Davis had declined to comment.
The transcript below, click "expand" to read:
ABC's The View
September 6, 2018
11:40 a.m. Eastern(...)
JOY BEHAR: I hate to pile on this, really, but I feel like, you know. You made a mistake. We do know that Cohen already lacked credibility all over the place. We have tape of him acting like a thug. He was Trump's long-time fixer. He threatened reporters. He's an admitted felon. And now we're questioning your credibility, too. I mean, this is terrible because it's bad enough Trump is always, you know, the false media, the lies, the fake news. This is a reckless thing that happened. How we going to fix it?
LANNY DAVIS: Well, first let's talk about the difference between a mistake and a lie. I hope everyone watching knows that there's a possibility of making an honest mistake and intentionally misrepresenting the truth. Which we're at over 3,000 cording to The Washington Post fact checker when it comes to this president of the United States.
There is a difference. In my case, it was unintentional. Now, Michael Cohen came to me and asked me to represent him. Not because he was the same Michael Cohen who had defended the indefensible in representing Donald Trump for years. He had reached a transformative moment were he wanted to tell the truth about Mr. Trump the same way the anonymous writer in The New York Times yesterday came to a decision to write the truth about this reckless, dangerous man in the White House. And that's what I'm doing for – [Cut off by crosstalk]
(...)
