President Trump once told Michael Cohen that “black people are too stupid to vote for me,” the commander-in-chief’s disgraced former lawyer said in an interview released Friday.
Cohen told Vanity Fair the comment came during a conversation he had with Trump following his return from a campaign rally during the 2016 election cycle.
Cohen noticed that the crowd was mostly Caucasian and told Trump of his observation.
“I told Trump that the rally looked vanilla on television,” Cohen said. “Trump responded, ‘That’s because black people are too stupid to vote for me.’”
And years earlier, after Nelson Mandela’s death, Trump made another troubling comment, according to Cohen.
“[Trump] said to me, ‘Name one country run by a black person that’s not a shithole,’ and then he added, ‘Name one city,’” Cohen said, similar to a statement the president made about African nations earlier this year.
In January, Trump pushed back against a suggestion that the US restore protections for immigrants from Haiti, El Salvador and African countries — and instead said America should be bringing in more people from countries like Norway.
“Why are we having all these people from shithole countries come here?” the commander-in-chief allegedly said during an immigration meeting with lawmakers.
And in the early 2000s, Cohen recalled traveling with the president in Chicago for a Trump International Hotel board meeting.
“We were going from the airport to the hotel, and we drove through what looked like a rougher neighborhood,” Cohen told the magazine. “Trump made a comment to me, saying that only the blacks could live like this.”
Cohen also recalled discussing previous winners of the first season of “The Apprentice” with Trump — which ended in a contest between Chicago entrepreneur Bill Rancic and Harvard MBA grad Kwame Jackson.
“Trump was explaining his back-and-forth about not picking Jackson,” Cohen recalled. “He said, ‘There’s no way I can let this black f-g win.’”
Cohen said he should have quit the Trump Organization after hearing the remarks, but held back.
“I should have been a bigger person, and I should have left,” he told the outlet, adding that he was in awe of the job and forgave Trump.
He had even defended Trump publicly against racism charges.
In an August 2017 tweet, he wrote, “As the son of a holocaust survivor, I have no tolerance for #racism. Just because I support @POTUS @realDonaldTrump doesn’t make me a racist.”
“I truly thought the office would change him,” he said, adding that it has not — and only made things worse.
The White House did not respond to multiple requests for comment from the magazine.
In August, Cohen pleaded guilty to charges including campaign finance fraud stemming from hush money payments to porn actress Stormy Daniels and ex-Playboy model Karen McDougal.
Both women claimed Trump had affairs with them, which he denies.
The other charges involve bank fraud and income tax evasion.
As part of his plea agreement, Cohen agreed not to challenge any sentence from 46 to 63 months.
Cohen’s plea follows months of scrutiny from federal investigations and a falling out with the president, whom he previously said he’d “take a bullet” for.
