MSNBC's Donny Deutsch helped his pal Michael Cohen promote a self-serving narrative for his decision to turn on President Donald Trump -- but his fellow "Morning Joe" panelists called him out.
Cohen and his lawyer have insisted the longtime Trump Organization attorney decided to implicate the president in a campaign finance law violation for moral and patriotic reasons, and Deutsch carried those claims onto Thursday morning's broadcast.
"It's been reported that Michael, after the Putin press conference in Helsinki put him over the edge," Deutsch said. "Now, he was moving in that direction. I remember speaking to him right afterwards -- this is genuine."
"Obviously, he'll do things to protect himself -- but he's pissed," he added.
Deutsch said Cohen had much evidence to offer prosecutors, which the attorney hoped could be offered in exchange for a lighter sentence, but he said his friend felt a sense of duty to help investigate Trump's wrongdoing.
"You spend your life working for somebody, defending somebody, and that very person you worked for not only has turned on you but you've really seen light," Deutsch said. "This is the guy I was working for? Is this guy I was putting my entire life and entire trust behind? So he's not only doing things now to protect himself -- I'm telling you there's a sense of right and wrong, and sometimes you got to hit your nose against the wall. But that is what's going on there."
Deutsch also claimed that Cohen was persuaded to turn on Trump this summer, a year after the president morally equivocated neo-Nazis who rallied in Charlottesville, out of respect for his own father, a Holocaust survivor -- but MSNBC contributor Noah Rothman called foul.
"I have a lot of problems with someone wrapping themselves in the Holocaust to justify their own behaviors," Rothman said. "This guy has spent quite a bit of time lobbying the president in the press to pay his legal bills, threatening to talk to Mueller ... His moral righteousness, I have questions about."
Deutsch protested throughout Rothman's argument, and he defended his friend.
"He's not wrapping himself in the Holocaust," Deutsch said. "As a Jew and as a man, when Charlottesville happen and basically people were attacking Michael, and just, wait a second, how can you stand by and let this -- he was deeply, deeply moved and offended, as anybody would be."
Co-host Mika Brzezinski wasn't persuaded, either.
"The problem is that what has been revealed in the past few days, to Michael himself saying, pleading guilty to breaking the law repeatedly, to breaking the law for the president, so for him to, you know, all of a sudden see the light, it just is a little farfetched," she said.
"He knew all along that the president was crooked because he broke the law for him," Brzezinski added. "Why does he need to watch Helsinki happen? You can just look at the financial transactions for porn stars."
