CNN's Chris Cuomo and MSNBC's guests explain why Cohen's plea deal is terrible for Trump. Fox News? Meh.

Chris Cuomo, Frank Figliuzzi, and Tucker Carlson discuss Michael Cohen

(Image credit: Screenshots/YouTube/CNN, MSNBC, Fox News)

published 30 November 2018

Michael Cohen's plea agreement with Special Counsel Robert Mueller, his admission that he lied about ending negotiations for a Trump Tower Moscow in January 2016, and the revelation that he was negotiating directly with the Kremlin were all big topics on cable news Thursday night. And on CNN and MSNBC, at least, there was a consensus that this is a big deal.

At CNN, Chris Cuomo fact-checked Trump's response to Cohen's plea. Trump's admission he knew about the Moscow negotiations and was aggressively pursuing such deals because he didn't think he was going to win the election "is very important in understanding why they would have kept doing this deal at a time when it would really smell bad," Cuomo said.

On MSNBC, BuzzFeed reporter Anthony Cormier explained why Cohen's deep knowledge of Trump's business makes him "a very dangerous threat" to Trump, Cohen friend Donny Deutsch affirmed that Cohen has enthusiastically flipped on Trump, and former FBI counterintelligence chief Frank Figliuzzi — who argued earlier Thursday that "our president is essentially a mob boss" — explained how what Cohen's revealed is "the definition of the Russian word Kompromat."

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Trump handed Russia "a blackmailable set of facts" by lying about things the Russian government know are true, Figliuzzi said. "The question that's not answered in the information that's filed today by Mueller is what have the Russians done with that, what is the level of compromise, what is the level of coordination? ... Did Trump hand false answers to Mueller based on an understanding of what everyone he thought was saying? The Russians have all of this, the Russians have likely used it, and that's at the heart of what's being hidden by this president."

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Peter has worked as a news and culture writer and editor at The Week since the site's launch in 2008. He covers politics, world affairs, religion and cultural currents. His journalism career began as a copy editor at a financial newswire and has included editorial positions at The New York Times Magazine, Facts on File, and Oregon State University.