President Trump on Thursday said that cutting a deal with prosecutors to secure a shorter sentence — or no jail time at all — “almost ought to be illegal.”
Trump said on “Fox & Friends” that his former personal attorney, Michael Cohen, was able to cut just such a deal because he dropped Trump’s name.
“If somebody defrauded a bank and he’s gonna get 10 years in jail, or 20 years in jail, but you can say something bad about Donald Trump and you’ll go down to two years or three years, which is the deal he made, in all fairness to him most people are going to do that,” Trump said.
“It’s called flipping, and it almost ought to be illegal,” he said.
Trump reiterated a view he posted on Twitter on Wednesday, saying that people can get better deals if they “make up stories” or “just make up lies.”
“I’ve seen it many times,” Trump said. “They make up things and now they go from 10 years to they’re a national hero.”
Cohen on Tuesday pleaded guilty to eight felony charges. Two of the guilty pleas involved violating campaign finance law by paying two women who allege that they had affairs with Trump.
On “Fox & Friends,” Trump said he did not know about the payments until “later on,” but also said that even if he had, it would not violate campaign finance law.
Trump also said he doesn’t think he can be impeached because he’s doing a good job.
“You know, I guess it says something like high crimes and all — I don’t know how you can impeach somebody who has done a great job,” Trump said. “If I ever got impeached, I think the market would crash, I think everybody would be very poor. You would see numbers that you wouldn’t believe.”
“The only thing I’m doing badly is the press doesn’t cover me fairly,” Trump said. “I thought after I won — you know, they killed me during the campaign, just killed me — I said well one good thing about winning, I’ve showed them, so now I’m going to get fair press. Guess what, it got worse. It’s worse. I would honestly give myself an A+.”