WASHINGTON—President Donald Trump appeared Thursday on Michael Cohen's radio show.
The interview, part of which aired on Cohen's 77 WABC radio program Thursday evening, will air in full on Sunday.
“They weaponized you like nobody's ever been weaponized, like few have been,” Trump told Cohen.
“I respect the fact that you recanted everything you said,” he went on. “That’s a big thing that you did."
In an interview with CNN shortly before the radio interview aired, Cohen said he had resubmitted a pardon application to the White House that had been denied by the previous administration, but had yet to receive any response and planned to follow up on Friday.
Cohen once boasted that he would “take a bullet” for the president and was by Trump’s side during his political rise. After their public breakup, Cohen’s testimony in Trump’s 2024 New York City criminal trial helped secure Trump’s conviction just as he was trying to make his political comeback.
Trump, who was convicted in a jury trial on 34 counts of falsifying business records, denied the charges against him and pleaded not guilty. He has long said that the Manhattan district attorney’s case and cases that were brought against him in Georgia, Washington, and Florida were a “political witch hunt.”
The judge who oversaw the case, Juan Merchan, sentenced Trump to an unconditional discharge in January 2025, about two months after Trump won reelection.
In his first term, Trump often criticized Cohen in response to claims his former lawyer made about him, writing on X in 2018, “If anyone is looking for a good lawyer, I would strongly suggest that you don’t retain the services of Michael Cohen!” Cohen would often appear on then-MSNBC and CNN to criticize the first Trump term.
Cohen has since criticized prosecutors in the case—an admission that paved the way for their reconciliation.
Cohen has said he and the president have had multiple conversations over the past year and introduced the interview by explaining his decision to move on.
“Forgiveness does not mean amnesia. It does not mean that the past did not happen. It does not mean the scars vanish, that the pain was fake or that I have forgotten a single second of what transpired, I have not. Forgiveness isn’t about erasing history," he said. “It is about having the courage to decide that yesterday will no longer dictate tomorrow.”
He sounded nostalgic about a time when he was one of Trump's most trusted aides.
“Boss, remember when I was by your side,” he said at one point.
The clip was introduced with the 1975 War song, “Why Can’t We Be Friends,” and closed with the lyrics, “Reunited and it feels so good,” from the 1978 Peaches & Herb song.
In a long post on his online newsletter Thursday promoting the interview, Cohen said that although his relationship with Trump became “political blood sport,” there were 15 years of close friendship between them.
“The good times don’t cease to have existed because the bad times came afterward,” Cohen wrote.
Simply, he said: “We forgave.”
Trump had made no warm public statements about Cohen before Thursday, but in a series of social media posts this year, he linked to some of his former lawyer’s comments saying he felt pressured by prosecutors to testify against Trump in the New York criminal case and a civil fraud case.