Trump really thought he'd beaten Alvin Bragg — because he lives inside his own head: Michael Cohen

In the immediate days before he was indicted in New York for his $130,000 hush payment scheme to adult film star Stormy Daniels, former President Donald Trump really thought he had defeated Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, and his public offensives had gotten him off scot-free.

That's what Michael Cohen, the former Trump attorney who went to prison over his role in the scheme and later cooperated against his former boss, told MSNBC's Joy Reid on Friday.

"You know, what's interesting is ... Donald Trump's attorneys were blindsided by this announcement, to the point where Donald Trump was actually praising the grand jury and saying, look, I have new respect for this grand jury, they're not going to indict me at all," said Reid. "And obviously, the [D.A.]'s office was very stealthy about making sure they had no idea that it was coming, even though he previously predicted he was going to get indicted. Do you think he was genuinely shocked and really believed he had beaten it?"

"Yeah, because again, Donald lives in Donald's head," said Cohen. and the fact that you had people like [Trump attorney] Tacopina and people like [former Cohen adviser] Bob Costello and a whole slew of other pundits on this station, as well as other stations telling you, for example, Bob Costello went in to testify, all of a sudden, he's now impeached my credibility. Obviously, we know that's not true. In fact, nothing that he said clearly changed anybody's mind."

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"However, they have the same thing with Tacopina," Cohen continued. "He comes out there and says, well, after Donald of course puts it out there that he's going to get indicted last Tuesday, rakes in another $2.5 million in campaign donations, and then you have guys like Tacopina running around and saying, there's more than a 50/50 chance that Alvin Bragg is going to drop this case altogether that Michael Cohen's testimony has now been basically disparaged to the extent that there is no more case. And more than 50 percent likely that Alvin Bragg is going to drop the case."

"They do this because they think that by playing, you know, the media game, that they're appealing to a court of public opinion, that that has any bearing on a court of law," added Cohen. "And we all know that it doesn't."

Watch the segment below or at this link.

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