Tucker Carlson reacted to the Michael Cohen Congressional hearing in a monologue delivered on Wednesday's broadcast of his FOX News show. Carlson said Washington, D.C. never stops being shocked and offended by "bad man" Donald Trump.



"By the end, you started feeling kind of bad for Michael Cohen. He’s not a genius. Anyone who knows him will affirm that. He’s in his 50s now, and headed to prison. It’s a long way from where he expected to be," Carlson said.





TUCKER CARLSON, FOX NEWS: President Trump is about to leave for a face-to-face meeting with North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un. We’ll be covering the summit as it happens, in just, a minute. But first, the circus came to Capitol Hill today. The president’s former lawyer, Michael Cohen, testified before congress for most of the daylight hours. Every channel carried it. You probably caught snippets. Because you’ve got a real job and we’re paid to do it, we watched every moment of Cohen’s testimony. Much of the day was devoted to the question of Trump’s personal character. People in Washington never tire of being shocked by it. Being such incredibly good people, they can hardly believe what a bad person Donald Trump is. They sat open-mouthed today as Cohen described his former boss as a bit of a con man, who at times has overstated his personal wealth. In private, Trump apparently has said offensive things. At one point, Cohen claims, Trump used a straw buyer to bid up a portrait of himself at a charity auction. He wanted his picture to go for the highest price. Are you shocked yet? Can you believe it? Please. This is the exactly man we knew back in 2015. Millions of people voted for him anyway. His character wasn’t the point. The point of today’s hearings was Russian collusion and obstruction of justice, the topics that have derailed the American government for the past two years. On that subject, we did learn quite a bit. For example, a month ago, the cat blog Buzzfeed ran an article claiming that Trump had ordered Michael Cohen to lie to congress. The hysterics in congress and on cable news immediately went crazy. Impeachment! Indictment! Life in prison! But did that actually happen? Cohen himself conclusively answered the question today:







REP GREG STEUBE (R-FL): Mr Cohen you stood before multiple congressional committees and raised your right hand and swore to be honest, is that correct?



COHEN: It is correct



REP GREG STEUBE (R-FL): And you lied to those congressional committees, is that correct?



COHEN: Yes sir



REP GREG STEUBE (R-FL): You stated that Trump never directed you to lie to congress, is that correct?



COHEN: That’s correct



So it looks like Trump won’t be going to jail for suborning perjury after all. Darn. Foiled again. Look for a retraction in your latest edition of Buzzfeed. You’ll find it just below the “15 Cats that look like Ruth Bader Ginsburg” listicle. But what about Russian blackmail? You’ve been hearing about that for years. Trump, they’ve told you, has somehow been compromised by the Russians. That’s why he’s been spying for them. Putin has something horrible and incriminating on him. He must. A picture of the president in a Batman costume, maybe. Or a videotape with hookers doing something weird. Certainly Michael Cohen would know about that kind of thing. That’s his world. Luckily a sitting member of Congress asked Cohen about it directly today:



Jamie Raskin (D-MD): Are you aware of anything the president has done at home or abroad that may have subjected him to or may subject him to extortion or blackmail?”



Cohen: I am not, no



Raskin: Are you aware of any video tapes that may be the subject of extortion or blackmail?



Cohen: I’ve heard about these tapes for a long time. I’ve had many people contact me over the years. I have no reason to believe that that tape exists.



OK. So the pee tape’s not real, either. There goes the juiciest part of the Trump dossier, which you’ll remember was yet another highly-publicized Buzzfeed scoop. Could be time get to back to cat videos, fellas. But wait. What about the trip to Prague that Michael Cohen supposedly took, as part of his collusion with the dark forces of the Russian empire? That was in the dossier too. Buzzfeed told us about it. Surely Cohen would admit it now, since he’s heading to prison and has nothing more to lose. Cohen was asked about Prague today. Here’s what he said:



Rep. Ralph Norman (R-SC): Have you ever been to Prague?



Cohen: I’ve never been to Prague. I’ve never been to the Czech Republic.



Rep. Ralph Norman (R-SC): I yield the balance of my time



This is where it gets confusing. This is the point at which what they call “the narrative” starts to break down a little. If Michael Cohen never even went to Prague, as Buzzfeed and Adam Schiff and the entire primetime lineup on MSNBC claim he did, then how exactly did he collude with the Russians to steal the 2016 election from its rightful winner, Hillary Clinton? Good question. Debbie Wasserman-Schultz of Florida, as incisive an interviewer as the Democrats have, wondered that too. Here’s the exchange from today:



DEBBIE WASSERMAN SCHULTZ: Based on what you know, would Mr Trump or did he lie about colluding and coordinating with the Russians during the campaign?



COHEN: As I stated in my testimony, I wouldn’t use the word “colluding”. Was there something odd about the back and forth praise with president Putin? Yes. But I’m not sure I can answer that question in terms of collusion.



OK. So no collusion. No Russian blackmail. No obstruction of justice. None of things our entire ruling class has spent the last two years huffing and speculating about. Keep in mind, Michael Cohen is Trump’s personal lawyer of ten years. He now hates Trump and would like to destroy him. If Michael Cohen had the dime, he’d drop it. But he doesn’t. There’s nothing there. It was all a lie. Can we go home now? Nope. We’ve got two more days of this. Two more days of exchanges like this one, where members of Congress reveal that they’re not only dumber than you expected, but a lot creepier:



Rep. Jackie Speier: Is there a love child?



Cohen: There is not to the best of my knowledge



Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-IL): Do you have any knowledge of President Trump abusing any controlled substances?



Cohen: I’m not aware of that



Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-IL): Do you have any knowledge of President Trump arranging any health care procedures for any women not part of his family?



Cohen: I’m not aware of that



By the end, you started feeling kind of bad for Michael Cohen. He’s not a genius. Anyone who knows him will affirm that. He’s in his 50s now, and headed to prison. It’s a long way from where he expected to be. Cohen showed up in Washington two years ago, expecting to be the kind of guy who’d be welcome at any restaurant in town. Now he’s going to be eating sloppy joes off a metal tray with a thousand other creeps in identical polyester uniforms. Take the politics out of it. That’s a sad story. Michael Cohen is a broken and desperate man. Democrats cheered for his conviction on ludicrous campaign finance charges. Now they’re squeezing whatever use they can out of him as he shuffles off to his cell. What do the rest of us get out of this? We learned that Trump is vain and vulgar. OK. What do we do with that information? Is it supposed to make us support open borders? Or war in Syria? Or the Green New Deal? Will it make the drug epidemic go away or the suicide rate drop? Will it make housing affordable? What does it have to do with anything? Nothing. And that’s the point. The more time they waste yelping about Trump’s charity auction scam, the less time they have to explain why they’ve run the country into the ground, and gotten rich doing it. It’s a distraction. And we’re all falling for it.