On Wednesday, President Trump’s former lawyer and fixer Michael Cohen testified before the House Oversight and Reform Committee. During his testimony, Cohen claimed, among other things, that the president once used charitable funds to buy a portrait of himself, directed him to threaten schools and the College Board to ensure that his SAT results never got out, and said his son, Donald Trump Jr., had “the worst judgment of anyone in the world.” But perhaps the most unexpected and chilling aspect of Cohen’s testimony is how horny some people seem to be for him.
I’m not talking about @WomenForCohen, the Twitter account Cohen himself paid an IT firm to run and post content like this:
No. I’m talking about real, flesh-and-blood people titillated by Cohen’s soft spine, melting face, and wet eyes that always seem to say, Please, papa, don’t be mad. A friend of mine once remarked that she felt perversely drawn to what she saw as Cohen’s meek personality and his willingness to let himself be debased. Another said simply that she’d “do it.”
“Okay, look: I’ve been with the same person for ten years,” one woman told me, on the condition of anonymity. “Ten years is a lot of time; knowing you’d never act on anything gives you a lot of freedom with your taste. I like villains and freaks and gross people, people who disgust me. I see those photos of Michael Cohen — his enormous face, mouth the size of a horseshoe, flickery eyes, a smirk on the edge of it all …. and I am sorry, but I am horny.”
Another woman told me that although she is not personally attracted to Cohen, she understands the appeal: “I do think he looks like someone who would appear on exactly one episode of Sex and the City.”
And they are far from alone. Back in July, journalist and political activist Barbara Ehrenreich tweeted: “Strange to say, but as his lower lip sullenly protrudes and the bags under his eyes grow heavier, Michael Cohn [sic] is looking sexier every day.”
During Wednesday’s hearings, journalist Talia Lavin tweeted that Cohen has a “certain hangdog je ne sleaze quoi.”
And across the bowels of Twitter, other users also shared their attraction to the recently disbarred attorney.
I’m sorry.
