questioning today. still with us, rebecca o brien and kimberly atkins. late in the day their first hearing was about prescription drugs. their second hearing was about voting rights. so this was not the first sworn witness. kim, the gop notion of all offense today and no defense, meaning no vigorous defense of donald trump, what did you make of it? well, look, clearly the strategy by the republicans, as you said, was to attack cohen from the beginning. not based on what he said, really before he even testifies, or in lieu of asking him questions, just saying look, you are convicted of lying, you re a liar, you cannot be believed. and discredit him entirely. as opposed to asking him questions and maybe trying to pick holes in his story. i mean, some of it wasn t very firm. he based this connection between that trump tower meeting and
then you saw the president try and shift the onus toward michael cohen. but the president is named in a court filing as individual one having directed michael cohen to make this payment to stormy daniels in an attempt to influence at least the perception leading into the 2016 election. and michael cohen really did lay out in great detail how intimately involved the president was in overseeing every step of this payment from signing a check, also implicating donald trump jr. in signing one of the other checks to reimburse michael cohen. but even having knowledge of michael cohen having used a home equity line to make that payment. so, you know, i think there s obviously going to be an effort by the white house to attack cohen s credibility. yes, he has been convicted of lying to congress. but he s about to go to prison. he s testifying in a very different context today whereas the last time around he may have
the other thing goes to the trump tower meeting in 2016 where cohen says that don junior, the president s son and candidate s son, let him know that meeting was coming, which of course makes a liar of the president. but also, again, gets to the president knowing about what was really, to date, the biggest example of cooperation, right? you know, the trump team accepting a meeting from russia knowing they were getting these stolen e-mails. those are a big deal. yeah. of course, the president will, as he s done, attack cohen s credibility. it will attack cohen s credibility, but it raises the question, does robert mueller have evidence to further back those claims up. that is such a good point. let s talk about these two pieces that you brought up here this morning. let s talk about wikileaks and roger stone. this is what michael cohen is going to say today, in july 2016, days before the democratic convention, i was in mr. trump s
describing as a convicted felon is going into the oval office and the president is directing in his first year of office how he should get paid off? you couldn t dream these things up in a movie. what did you make of the approach we all saw by your republican colleagues? i don t think it s effective at the end. they were trying to attack cohen. they were saying cohen is a liar about coming to congress and talking about the moscow project. here s the fact. trump has said the exact same thing michael cohen had. if you re admitting cohen lied, you re saying that trump has lied to the american public. but the second thing is, look, cohen was human when he started talking about his children. he almost broke down in tears. when he talked about his parents, he grew very emotional. he came off as someone who had committed crimes or made mistakes but was there to redeem himself. and i don t think the republican attacks were effective in light of michael cohen s, motional testimony.
here s her statement. i would rather it be done that way to shore up the websiitness. he s going to have to do it differently because he doesn t have the documentation. matt gates walked from the room. some said yesterday he was threatening him. we know he is an ardent supporter of president trump. do we expect characters like this will do everything possible from blocking michael cohen from saying much of anything today? well, i think we can expect them to go on the offensive and try to attack cohen s credibility. i do think, though, though, it is it is in a trial, that is a dicey proposition, because if it backfires, if the questioner comes on too strong, and the witness appears to be sympathetic and credible, it really could backfire and bolster cohen s credibility to