Trump and Michael Cohen quietly begin an unlikely rapprochement

An unexpected text from a White House friend and insider helped reopen a line between Donald Trump and Michael Cohen last summer, setting off a quiet thaw between a president and the former fixer who once said he would “take a bullet” for him. The rapprochement is striking because Cohen helped turn Trump from political survivor into a convicted felon, yet Cohen has so far avoided the public retaliation Trump has directed at other critics.

A New York jury found Trump guilty on May 30, 2024, of 34 felony counts of falsifying business records tied to hush-money payments meant to conceal damaging information from voters during the 2016 campaign. The verdict made Trump the first former U.S. president convicted of felony crimes. Cohen’s own legal history runs through the same political and criminal terrain: in 2018 he pleaded guilty to campaign finance violations, tax evasion and lying to Congress, and in December 2018 he was sentenced to three years in prison.

Cohen described the new phase of the relationship on 77 WABC’s “Cats & Cosby” show with John Catsimatidis and Rita Cosby. He said the thaw began about six months before his July 2026 comments, after a text relayed Trump’s empathy for the “hell” Cohen was facing. Cohen said the exchange happened while he was sitting with his wife at a restaurant, and he later described the relationship as “cordial and growing.” He also said Trump had reached out first.

The shift underscores how closely self-preservation now tracks Trump’s power. Cohen was once one of Trump’s most visible defenders and later became one of his sharpest accusers, testifying against him and helping build the case that led to the 2024 Manhattan conviction. Trump has generally been aggressive toward critics who turned on him, but Cohen has not faced the same kind of legal retaliation or sustained public abuse. Their renewed contact, shaped by a shared sense of betrayal and the pressures of Trump’s return to the center of national politics, shows how quickly old enemies in his orbit can recalibrate when power changes hands.