Donald Trump‘s disdain for former President Barack Obama is widely known, and Michael Cohen, Trump’s former fixer, says there’s more to it than just a professional grudge. Cohen, appearing on the September 14 episode of The View, stated that he believes Trump’s problem with Obama is “purely racial.” Likening him to Archie Bunker, the racist character from the 1970s sitcom All in the Family, Cohen told the co-hosts that Trump also had a problem with Obama being “brighter” than him.
Trump “was never really able to fully grasp how the country ended up voting for the first Black president,” Cohen told co-host Sunny Hostin. “And he had a lot of personal hangups of his own. I don’t believe he liked Obama because Obama is brighter than he is. Obama was a Harvard Law graduate, and we all know what Trump tasked me to prevent his grades from being released. Why he despised him to the extent that he does, I believe is purely racial. I call him an ‘Archie Bunker racist’ in my book, Disloyal… I believe it’s solely predicated on the fact that Barack Obama is Black.”
Trump’s obsession with Obama was bizarre, Cohen wrote in his memoir, Disloyal. He revealed that Trump even hired a “Faux-Bama” to “ritualistically belittle” and pretend to fire on camera. Cohen wrote that Trump became enraged while watching Obama’s 2008 inauguration. “He was literally losing his mind watching a handsome and self-evidently brilliant young Black man take over.” When Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize the following year, Trump “went ballistic.”
Cohen stated that while he never heard Trump use the n-word during his 12 years as his personal lawyer, he witnessed him make a number of racist comments. Trump once stated that countries run by Black leaders were “sh**holes. They are all complete f**king toilets.” He also allegedly said that apartheid-era South Africa was “a beautiful country” that Nelson Mandela “f**ked up.”