Michael Cohen and Rosie O’Donnell: A Love Story

The textual content got here by on Michael D. Cohen’s iPhone on Monday morning, shortly earlier than he took the stand in a Manhattan courtroom because the star witness within the felony case in opposition to his former boss, Donald J. Trump: “breathe – chill out – inform the reality – u received this – i really like u.”

An hour later, one other textual content got here in from the identical particular person: “Ur doing nice.”

“Thanks and actually love you,” Mr. Cohen wrote again to the sender, who was not his spouse, both of his kids or one other member of the family, however the comic and actress Rosie O’Donnell.

Politics, the cliché goes, makes unusual bedfellows. However few relationships appear as unlikely as the extraordinary bond that has developed between Mr. Cohen and Ms. O’Donnell, two Lengthy Island natives of the identical era who had been pulled into Mr. Trump’s power subject in vastly alternative ways years in the past, and who related as they surveyed the harm afterward.

It isn’t misplaced on Ms. O’Donnell, 62, that Mr. Cohen, 57, as soon as helped perform Mr. Trump’s marketing campaign of insults in opposition to her, tormenting her for her appears to be like and her weight and calling her “wacko.”

The story of their friendship is considered one of New York celeb and Lengthy Island aspirations, blustery personalities and oversize egos. It entails a jail go to, Barbara Walters, Twitter insults, forgiveness and a type of shared world-weariness.

“We discuss and talk regularly,” Ms. O’Donnell stated in a protracted telephone dialog on Monday. “I do know this has been a tumultuous time, so I verify in. It’s a giant factor to be able to have the ability to change the entire nation indirectly.”

An Unlikely Pairing

To know this story, you will need to first perceive Ms. O’Donnell’s distaste for Mr. Trump, which stretches again three many years. In 1991, she received her massive break in “A League of Their Personal,” the movie a couple of feminine baseball staff throughout World Struggle II.

One in every of her co-stars was Madonna, whom she learn throughout filming had been on a date with Mr. Trump. When Ms. O’Donnell made a joke about it to Madonna, the singer responded that nothing of the kind had taken place, that Mr. Trump had merely made up the story for publicity.

In 1993, Ms. O’Donnell was forged in a Broadway revival of “Grease.” When a member of the forged was invited to Mr. Trump’s marriage ceremony to Marla Maples on the Plaza Lodge, Ms. O’Donnell attended as a plus one. She was not impressed with the groom.

“He walked down the aisle and shook the celebrities’ fingers,” Ms. O’Donnell stated on Monday.

Issues escalated in 2006, when Ms. O’Donnell joined ABC’s “The View,” the chat fest co-created by the anchorwoman Barbara Walters.

Shortly earlier than Christmas that 12 months, information broke that the just lately topped Miss USA, Tara Conner, was caught doing cocaine in a New York nightclub.

Mr. Trump, who owned the Miss USA pageant, introduced that Ms. Conner could be forgiven if she went to rehab. The media protection he acquired for this was largely optimistic.

On “The View,” Ms. O’Donnell, who felt Mr. Trump was capitalizing on a younger lady’s drug drawback, veered from standard knowledge. She flipped her hair over her face and did a withering impersonation of Mr. Trump, and she or he questioned his function as ethical arbiter and profitable businessman.

“He inherited some huge cash and he’s been bankrupt so many instances,’’ she exclaimed, including that “the individuals beneath him, who he owed cash to, received shorted out of the cash.” (Mr. Trump had by no means personally declared chapter, although his companies had.)

Mr. Trump threatened to sue “The View” and Ms. Walters personally. Ms. Walters received on the telephone with him to easy issues over. Quickly sufficient, Mr. Trump was showing throughout cable information calling Ms. O’Donnell “wacko” and “fats,” and he stated Ms. Walters personally advised him that she regretted hiring Ms. O’Donnell.

The 12 months after, regardless of hovering rankings, Ms. O’Donnell left the present. However her feud with Mr. Trump by no means ended. She turned a fixture and a punchline within the grocery store tabloids, which she at all times suspected, with out with the ability to show, was the work of Mr. Trump and of the person who was at all times at his facet, Mr. Cohen.

The Letter to an Inmate

Ms. O’Donnell has lengthy had what her associates typically name a rescuer complicated. On her personal discuss present, she sometimes employed essentially the most down-and-out stand-ups to work within the writers’ room. And regardless of what Ms. Walters reportedly stated about her, Ms. O’Donnell accompanied her to the theater when, towards the tip of her life, she was in failing well being.

As a comic book, Ms. O’Donnell is bighearted and pugnacious, with a need each to elevate individuals and to land a blow. So she was nicely suited, in a means, to develop into associates with a person who went from being the devoted foot servant of her tormentor to his most harmful defector.

On Dec. 18, 2019, she watched the Home impeach Mr. Trump for the primary time. She discovered herself considering of his loyal fixer, Mr. Cohen, who had been despatched upstate to jail that month, after pleading responsible to tax evasion and marketing campaign finance violations. (The marketing campaign finance expenses are on the coronary heart of the felony case now being tried in opposition to Mr. Trump, who prosecutors say used Mr. Cohen to assist cowl up a narrative about his involvement with Stormy Daniels, a pornographic movie actress. Mr. Trump has pleaded not responsible and denounced Mr. Cohen as a “rat” and a liar.)

Ms. O’Donnell felt Mr. Cohen was paying the worth for Mr. Trump’s sins. And Mr. Cohen, together with his heavy Nassau County accent, reminded her of the boys she knew rising up in Commack, on Lengthy Island. “He was each man I went to highschool with,” she stated. (Mr. Cohen grew up in Lawrence, about half-hour from Commack.)

Mr. Cohen was despatched to Otisville, 86 miles north of New York Metropolis, as a part of a three-year sentence. Ms. O’Donnell discovered him. “I received his inmate quantity and I despatched him a letter,” she stated. It was six pages lengthy.

Within the letter, Ms. O’Donnell stated she believed that Mr. Cohen had helped Mr. Trump wage his marketing campaign to discredit her. Nonetheless, she stated, she was grateful to him, and seen his choice to activate his boss as an act of heroism. She believed in redemption and needed Mr. Cohen to know that she forgave him for all the pieces that had transpired between her and Mr. Trump.

“When somebody is in a relationship that unhealthy and breaks free, it’s a really lonely time,” she stated on Monday, including that she didn’t essentially anticipate to listen to again from Mr. Cohen. She additionally realized he won’t be searching for her forgiveness.

However Inmate No. 86067-054 quickly wrote again.

“He requested me to come back go to him,” Ms. O’Donnell stated. The final particular person she visited in jail, in 2004, was her good friend Martha Stewart, who was serving 5 months in a federal penitentiary on expenses associated to insider buying and selling.

To go to Ms. Stewart, Ms. O’Donnell needed to fly to Alderson, W. Va. To see Mr. Cohen, Ms. O’Donnell merely received in a automotive and had her driver take her to Otisville.

She thought she could be with Mr. Cohen for an hour. As a substitute, they spent greater than six hours speaking. He apologized to her for the function he performed in Mr. Trump’s assaults, Ms. O’Donnell stated.

They mentioned the state of the republic, they mentioned Mr. Trump, and so they mentioned being dad and mom and rising up on Lengthy Island. At one level, they held fingers, she stated. Over the course of the afternoon, Mr. Cohen confirmed a few of his previous traits — a grandiosity and a lift in his vanity from being near celeb.

“Michael was kind of proudly introducing me to individuals, the buddies he had met there,” Ms. O’Donnell stated. But he additionally displayed indicators of being “quiet,” inquisitive and self-reflective, she stated.

Mr. Cohen’s character is a spotlight of Mr. Trump’s trial. Whilst prosecutors current Mr. Cohen as the important thing witness in opposition to his former boss, they describe him as a liar and a jerk and counsel he may be trusted solely sparingly.

Ms. O’Donnell, nonetheless, believes Mr. Cohen has been attempting to type out how his want for consideration and the proximity of a star led him to get “caught within the swirl and undertow” of a poisonous relationship, as she put it within the interview on Monday.

Staying in Contact

After 13 months in Otisville, Mr. Cohen was launched in Could 2020 and permitted to serve the remainder of his sentence from his Park Avenue house.

That September, Simon & Schuster printed “Disloyal: A Memoir,” Mr. Cohen’s account of his life with Mr. Trump.

In it, Mr. Cohen described his personal involvement within the smearing of Ms. O’Donnell, and the way he had winced when Mr. Trump’s feedback about her got here up throughout a presidential debate moderated by Megyn Kelly in 2015. Ms. Kelly requested Mr. Trump about his verbal tirades in opposition to girls, whom he known as “fats pigs,” “canine,” “slobs” and “disgusting animals.”

“Solely Rosie O’Donnell,” Mr. Trump replied.

“The O’Donnell feud had certainly been one of many lowest of his many Twitter lows,” Mr. Cohen wrote within the memoir. “My data was firsthand, as a result of I had entry to Trump’s Twitter account and permission to publish on his behalf, considered one of solely two individuals with that privilege. I’d been a part of the mind belief developing with juvenile taunts to O’Donnell and so I used to be aware of the infantile impulse behind the insults.”

With the e-book’s rollout got here a podcast hosted by Mr. Cohen, “Mea Culpa,” whose first visitor was Ms. O’Donnell. “I can’t say sufficient about her as an individual, aside from that the girl is really a mensch,” he stated to introduce her.

Mr. Cohen stated the letter she despatched him about his work for Mr. Trump was a “kick to the intestine” that helped him notice “how a lot I had helped him to harm individuals, your self included.”

“Right here was a girl I helped assault and vilify on behalf of Donald J. Trump and she or he reached out to me out of kindness and empathy,” he added. “I noticed a greater means ahead.”

Since then, they’ve stayed in contact. In December, they’d dinner at a restaurant in New York, the identify of which eludes her.

“Some very fancy place on Park Avenue that’s well-liked with bankers,” she stated by telephone on Monday afternoon from her residence in Los Angeles, as she packed for a visit to New York, the place she can be filming scenes on “And Simply Like That,” the “Intercourse and the Metropolis” revival.

“We had a steak,” she stated.

Ms. O’Donnell stated on Monday that it had not at all times been simple serving to Mr. Cohen navigate his public profile. “He has a tough time taking solutions.”

Final week, the decide overseeing the Trump trial made it clear to prosecutors that Mr. Cohen’s conduct, together with his TikTok appearances taunting and disparaging Mr. Trump, was inflicting issues.

However Ms. O’Donnell’s evaluation of what he did in court docket on Monday was unambiguous.

“A house run,” she texted him. “Day one accomplished and u killed it.”

His response? “I’m past drained.”