President Trump phoned into his former attorney Michael Cohen's WABC radio show for a 40-minute prerecorded interview, their first public conversation in nearly a decade, in what both men describe as an act of mutual forgiveness.
Portions of the interview aired Thursday on 77 WABC-AM, with the full broadcast expected Sunday. Cohen opened the segment with the song "Why Can't We Be Friends" and closed it with "Reunited and it Feels So Good," AP News reported, a musical bookend that would have been unthinkable two years ago, when Cohen sat in a Manhattan courtroom as the prosecution's star witness against the man he once said he would "take a bullet" for.
The reunion caps one of the most dramatic reversals in modern political history. Cohen pleaded guilty in August 2018 to eight criminal counts in Manhattan federal court, implicating Trump in a campaign-finance scheme involving hush-money payments. He then became one of Trump's most vocal critics. Trump, in turn, repeatedly called Cohen a "rat" and a liar. Cohen went on to serve as the key prosecution witness in Trump's 2024 New York criminal trial, which ended in a conviction on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records.
But in January 2026, Cohen reversed course. He alleged that New York prosecutors had "pressured and coerced" him into providing testimony against Trump, a claim that effectively undercut the case he had helped build. Newsmax reported that Cohen described the shift as an about-face driven by conscience, not convenience.
During the interview, Trump framed Cohen's earlier cooperation with prosecutors as the product of government coercion rather than genuine wrongdoing on Cohen's part. He told Cohen directly:
"You were an advocate and then they weaponized you like nobody has ever been weaponized, like few have been."
Trump continued, praising Cohen for walking back his trial testimony:
"They weaponized you, they weaponized a lot of people. I respect the fact that you recanted. Everything you said. And that's a big thing that you did, a very big thing."
The president's language carried a clear implication: that the Manhattan prosecution was politically motivated, and that Cohen's recantation confirmed it. CNN legal analyst Elie Honig went further, stating that Cohen's retraction "demolishes the factual basis of the hush money prosecution and conviction of President Trump," the Washington Examiner reported.
Cohen, for his part, did not shy away from the emotional weight of the moment. He told CNN afterward:
"I truly believe that there is forgiveness between Donald Trump and myself, and that to me is what is important right now."
That kind of language, forgiveness, reconciliation, would have drawn open laughter from the political class as recently as 2024. Cohen had spent years building a second career as a professional Trump antagonist, appearing regularly on cable news to denounce the man he once served. MSNBC eventually dropped him as a guest after his January 2026 reversal, Fox News reported, a sign of just how completely Cohen had broken with the anti-Trump media ecosystem that had embraced him.
Cohen told CBS News that he was the one who reached out. "I reached out to the White House, reached out to the president, and he kindly agreed," he said, Breitbart reported. During the interview itself, Cohen referred to Trump as "boss", the same term of loyalty he used during their years working together.
Cohen described the relationship as "resuscitated" and cast the reunion in terms that went beyond political calculation. In a written statement, he said: "Donald Trump and I spent roughly fifteen years in the trenches together. We built relationships, shared victories, endured setbacks and pursued a path that ultimately reached the highest office on Earth. Then everything exploded."
He added: "Forgiveness does not mean amnesia. It does not mean that the past did not happen. It is about having the courage to decide that yesterday will no longer dictate tomorrow."
That framing, forgiveness without amnesia, is doing real work. Cohen is not pretending the falling-out never happened. He is asking the public to accept that a man who testified under oath against a sitting president, then recanted that testimony, can credibly claim he was coerced all along. Whether the public buys that depends largely on whether they already believed the Manhattan prosecution was legitimate. For those who viewed the 34-count conviction as a political exercise from the start, Cohen's reversal is vindication. For those who took his trial testimony at face value, it is something closer to betrayal.
Trump's willingness to extend olive branches to former adversaries is not new, but the Cohen case stands apart in degree. Few figures in Trump's orbit fell as far or hit as hard on the way down.
Cohen has submitted a pardon application during Trump's second term, after the Biden administration declined to grant him clemency. He told reporters he has not asked Trump directly about the request and has not received confirmation that the latest application was received. He said he intended to follow up Friday.
A White House official confirmed the interview was scheduled, Just The News reported, suggesting the administration sanctioned the appearance. That detail matters. A president does not phone into the radio show of a convicted felon seeking a pardon without some awareness of the optics, and some willingness to accept them.
The pardon question is the obvious unfinished business. Cohen pleaded guilty to eight counts, including tax evasion and campaign-finance violations. If he receives a pardon, it will be one of the most politically charged clemency decisions of Trump's presidency, a president pardoning the man whose testimony helped convict him, after that man recanted the testimony and called it coerced.
The shifting alliances around this White House have produced no shortage of surprises, but a Trump-Cohen reconciliation ranks among the most improbable.
The conversation was not all nostalgia. Trump used the platform to push back on unfavorable polling and to defend his administration's record. He told Cohen: "I think that we're doing really well in the polls, the real polls." He added: "The economy has never been stronger, we're doing numbers that nobody has ever seen before."
Trump also addressed military operations involving Iran, though he did not describe them in detail. He claimed Iran's inflation had reached 300 percent and that its currency was "virtually valueless." He said Iran's military was not being paid.
On the rationale for military action, Trump was direct:
"They're in bad shape. But the reason I did it, and we had no choice, I would have done it 100 times. They cannot have a nuclear weapon, and they won't be having a nuclear weapon."
Those comments place the interview in a broader political context. Trump is not simply reconciling with a former fixer, he is using the platform to project strength and control at a moment when his administration faces questions on multiple fronts. The internal dynamics of the White House continue to shift, and Trump's willingness to appear on Cohen's show suggests a president confident enough in his position to absorb whatever criticism the reunion generates.
Cohen's recantation strikes at the foundation of the most high-profile criminal case ever brought against a sitting or former president. He was the prosecution's central witness, the man who connected the hush-money payments to Trump's direct knowledge and intent. Without Cohen's testimony, the case against Trump rested on documents and inferences that prosecutors argued spoke for themselves but that defense attorneys called insufficient.
Cohen now says he was pressured into that testimony. If true, it raises serious questions about the conduct of New York prosecutors, questions that go beyond Trump's individual case and into the integrity of the office that brought it. If false, Cohen has committed a different kind of offense: publicly undermining a conviction to curry favor with the man who can pardon him.
Either way, the situation exposes a system that allowed a witness to deliver sworn testimony, help secure a conviction, and then walk it back without any apparent legal consequence. That is not a system that inspires public confidence. Voters who watched the Manhattan trial unfold on cable news are left to wonder which version of Michael Cohen was telling the truth, the one who testified under oath, or the one who now calls that testimony coerced.
The broader political landscape is shifting fast enough that yesterday's certainties rarely survive contact with tomorrow's headlines. Cohen's journey from loyal fixer to hostile witness to repentant ally is a case study in that volatility.
Cohen closed his written statement with a challenge to his critics: "You don't have to like Donald Trump. You don't even have to believe that forgiveness is possible. But listen before you judge."
Whether this reunion is genuine contrition or a calculated play for a pardon, one thing is clear: the man the prosecution built its case around just called the president "boss" again, and the prosecution has nowhere left to go.