I don't mind a parasite. I object to a cut-rate one.

—Rick Blaine

Every day, we get more evidence that, in 2016, the American presidency not only was sold to a pack of grifters, thieves, deadbeats, and bounders, but that it went for a price that was distressingly cheap. The Wall Street Journal had an amazing story Thursday morning about the way Michael Cohen helped sell the country on the previously preposterous notion of Donald J. Trump as its president*. From the WSJ (via USA Today):

John Gauger, the owner of Red Finch Solutions and chief information officer at Liberty University, said Cohen offered him $50,000 to manipulate two news sites' polls, the Journal reported Thursday, citing a government document and a person familiar with the matter. Gauger said Cohen handed him a Walmart bag loaded with about $12,000 in cash during a 2015 meeting at Cohen's Trump Organization office. Cohen also threw in a boxing glove he said was once worn by a Brazilian mixed-martial arts fighter.

But he never paid Gauger the remainder of the promised $50,000, the Journal said. Cohen did not deny the report in a tweet Thursday morning, saying, "What I did was at the direction of and for the sole benefit of" Trump. "I truly regret my blind loyalty to a man who doesn't deserve it," wrote the man who once said he would "take a bullet" for the president.

I was wondering when we were going to get to the inevitable cash-in-a-bag episode in this scandal. (Peace be to the spirit of Tony Ulasewicz.) But the real artistic filigree on this tale is that Cohen stiffed this sucker from Falwell U. anyway, and that the campaign felt it had to outsource the easy task of rigging online polls. (Note to America: Online polls suck gallons of pondwater. Pay them no mind in 2020.) I have no explanation for what the boxing glove was all about.

MANDEL NGAN Getty Images

And then there's...this.

Cohen also asked Gauger to create a Twitter account with the handle @WomenForCohen that would be run by a female friend of Gauger's to portray Cohen as a "sex symbol" and hype his statements in favor of Trump's presidential campaign, the Journal reported.

Benjy Sarlin of NBC News spent Thursday morning helpfully digging up the electric Twitter machine archives of Women For Cohen, and they are pretty much as embarrassing as you would expect them to be.

If I wanted someone to publicly compare me to Andy Garcia, it would cost a lot more than 12G's and a used boxing glove, I'll tell you that. Which brings us, inevitably, to Rudy Giuliani, who has been helping again.

The Journal reported that Trump's attorney Rudy Giuliani said if Cohen requested a $50,000 reimbursement but only paid Gauger $12,000 to $13,000, it shows Cohen is a "thief." "If one thing has been established, it’s that Michael Cohen is completely untrustworthy," Giuliani told the Journal. Since calling Cohen "an honest, honorable lawyer" in May 2018, Giuliani has sharply questioned Cohen's credibility, calling him "pathetic" and a "serial liar."

On Wednesday night, believing he had not yet done enough to assist his embattled president*, Rudy showed up on CNN with Chris Cuomo and helped some more. As Cuomo pressed him whether Paul Manafort's sharing polling data with the Volga Bagmen was collusion, Giuliani answered:

“Not with the President of the United States. Not with Donald Trump...I never said there was no collusion between the campaign or between people in the campaign ... I have not. I said the President of the United States.”

If I ever am charged with capital murder, please do not hire Rudy Giuliani as my lawyer.

And these guys ran a successful presidential campaign. They bought America for a boxing glove.

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Charles P. Pierce Charles P Pierce is the author of four books, most recently Idiot America, and has been a working journalist since 1976.

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