By Kevin Liptak, CNN
(CNN) — First, Michael Cohen was Donald Trump’s personal lawyer and self-described “pit bull.”
Then he became a bitter foe, exposing what he called “dirty deeds” and earning him the level “rat” by a president scorned.
Now, after burying the hatchet, Cohen is set to become something else: a radio interviewer seeking public détente.
Trump’s taped phone interview for Cohen’s WABC program — which Cohen told CNN lasted 40 minutes — will be their first open conversation since the collapse of their professional and personal relationship more than eight years ago when it airs Thursday evening.
It was on August 21, 2018, that Cohen pleaded guilty in Manhattan federal court to eight criminal counts — and implicated Trump — in a payment scheme designed to silence women who claimed affairs with the then-candidate in the 2016 election.
Thus began the two men’s downfall. Cohen, after serving time in prison, would go on to act as the star witness in Trump’s criminal trial in New York. In 2024, Trump was convicted on 34 counts of falsifying business records related to hush money payments to Stormy Daniels, an adult film performer, to keep her quiet about an alleged past tryst with Trump. (Trump, who has denied the affair, was sentenced to no jail time and has appealed the conviction.)
Trump was wounded by the betrayal and for years called Cohen — who once claimed he would take a bullet for Trump — a rat and a liar.
Cohen, meanwhile, made little secret he felt Trump and his associates had left him out to dry. He was the only person to serve prison time for the hush money scheme. He wrote two books in the years after his release: “Disloyal” and “Revenge.”
Once Trump returned to office, however, things began to shift. Cohen claimed New York prosecutors, including New York Attorney General Letitia James and Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, had pressured and coerced him into testifying against Trump.
And a quiet reconciliation with Trump got underway.
It started with an unexpected text from someone Cohen has described as a “White House friend and an insider,” who relayed a message from the president, Cohen said on a radio show this year.
Cohen declined to name the insider, but said the person “expressed to me the president’s genuine empathy for the hell that I was being dragged through, yet again, and I deeply appreciated that text.”
“I thanked him, expressed my sincere hope that this long, exhausting feud between the two of us could finally end, and what was, I found, even more interesting is that he replied almost immediately, agreeing that it was actually time for us to meet,” Cohen said, adding he was “very surprised” by the text.
The two men have met in private over the past year at Trump’s golf course in Bedminster, New Jersey, according to a person familiar with the matter.
Their conversation Thursday will cap the remarkable rapprochement.
“After years of betrayal, heartbreak, fury, and silence, two men who once stood together against the world face the impossible question: Can forgiveness resurrect what hatred destroyed?” Cohen wrote on social media, previewing his interview.
The-CNN-Wire™ & © 2026 Cable News Network, Inc., a Warner Bros. Discovery Company. All rights reserved.
CNN’s Kara Scannell contributed to this report.
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