I see you at your liar’s pulpit, your face stoic, your voice so New York that you sound like you’re auditioning for Bugsy Malone. It’s time to set the record straight, isn’t it? Never mind that you were the one who bent it so far over it could suck itself off in the first place. Your liberty has now officially been pulled out from underneath you and now it’s time to go all Butch & Sundance on your way to prison.
What a spectacular piece of political theatre your testimony proved to be, a colourful and welcome distraction from another week of Theresa May treating Brexit like her own personal episode of Bernard’s Watch. While the opposing gears of our political machine seem to be jammed in perpetual gridlock, across the pond a newly invigorated Democratic party have finally lubed their elbows enough to start getting some jabs in. Trump’s rabid unravelling continues at a breakneck pace, the coals of his baby’s temper stoked by a humiliating failure to broker any kind of agreement with a tinpot dictator. The man who prides himself on his ability to make deals couldn’t convince Kim Jong Un to decommission a smoke alarm. It’s a good few years too late but he finally made it to Vietnam, where instead of his great victory he got his nose tweaked by a Dr Evil tribute act. Without the smokescreen of success to protect him Trump didn’t have much option but to react in his trademark fashion, lashing out with less dignity than a dreadlocked white guy windmilling in the pit at a Mastodon concert.
It says a lot about just how far America’s political discourse has sunk that Michael fucking Cohen can find himself elevated to any kind of position of virtue. Yet here we are, cautiously lauding the bravery of a scumbag backed into a corner, a man who conveniently remembers to tell the truth now he’s out of options. The committee hearing was a carnival of outrage, with Republicans like Meadows and Jordan desperate to attack and discredit rather than make any sincere attempt to ferret out anything resembling the truth. The GOP has circled the wagons and offered themselves body and soul, offering up black women as props and obfuscating at any possible opportunity.
There’s no escaping it, Michael Cohen – you’ve got less credibility than Jennifer Lopez’s acting showreel. You’re a convicted liar. Why, then, is there not one fucking person on the Republican side who refuses to capitulate, and instead raises the rather salient point that you lied at the behest of Trump?
At this point, the inner-indicted circle of the President are so unfathomably and self-evidently corrupt that they wouldn’t be convincing as baddies in a crap script. Roger Stone is a less believable villain than that bloke in Die Another Day who had enough plastic surgery to turn himself from a tiny Korean man into a six-foot ginger prefect. The entire shit-show has all the dignity of a troll farm meme, all critical thinking and common sense surrendered to an absolute farce of ‘deep state’ conspiracy theory and misdirection. When Mueller finally pulls his thumb out of his arse it better be with such a resounding pop that it shatters the fallacy entirely or we’re all fucked. Trump’s proven himself a weeble that will wobble but won’t fall down, so it’s either on the special counsel or the House to knock him over entirely. Lord knows the GOP won’t, having bound themselves to his fate so thoroughly that they’re playing guitar on the front of the truck he’s crashing through America.
As for you, Michael Cohen? You’re the rat you always were, a criminal rendered a hero by godawful comparison.
I see you scampering down the dark corridors of power, the rank walls dripping with oil and hamberder fat, the stench of rot and stale covfefe in the air. I see you scrambling for crumbs, your whiskers twitching, desperate to pick up any morsel to sustain you. I see you pause, your small black eyes frozen in the darkness, your spine rigid with fear.
Behind you in the gloom I hear the moan, a low, sickly trumpeting sound that echoes around you. I hear the snort and I feel the fetid air crash over you, the rotten breath of the great beast washing over your paralysed little body. I hear it start to stomp down the corridor, the floor shaking, lights swinging from their fixtures. I see the dust begin to billow at its head, its filthy tusks swinging back and forth, gouging chunks out of the brickwork.
I hear you squeak, Michael Cohen, and I see you attempt to spring to life. Too late, I see the trunk scoop you up, tossing you into the air. I see you disappear into that necrotic throat.
I see the elephant, its hide covered in pustules and blisters, the sweet stench of rot pouring off it in hot waves. I see its bleary eyes, their corners crusted with filth, unable to cry in horror at what it has become. I see it lurch forward blindly, a dying beast now choking on its final meal.
I see it shudder and collapse, retching as it dies. This is where we’ve come, Michael Cohen. To the point where a single rank little rat could be enough to kill the Republican beast, a leviathan that has long since surrendered to its own corruption.
I see you, Michael Cohen. I fucking see you.
