Trump Goes on WABC With Michael Cohen. No Iran Exit. No Trade Regrets. A Political Rapprochement.

Trump appeared on WABC Radio — the New York station he owns — for a live interview with Michael Cohen, his former personal attorney. The conversation was the first public interaction between the two men in approximately eight years.

Cohen was Trump's personal fixer for 15 years. He was convicted in 2018 on charges including hush money payments to Stormy Daniels, became a government cooperating witness, and testified against Trump in the New York criminal case. He publicly turned on Trump, writing a book titled Disloyal, and became one of Trump's most vocal critics. He called in to the WABC show — an interview he reportedly initiated — and the conversation ran as a live broadcast.

On the Economy: "Renaissance"

Trump described the current US economy as "an economic renaissance — one that has never been seen before."

His narrative on tariffs: foreign companies are flooding into the United States to invest and build factories, auto manufacturing is returning, and the US is collecting "billions and billions" from tariffs that were previously not captured. He framed the revenue as found money — money that, in his telling, the US had been leaving on the table for decades under free trade agreements.

The economic framing is politically important regardless of whether it tracks the data. Trump is constructing a tariff-equals-renaissance narrative heading into midterms. This is the core identity argument: that the economic disruption was a price paid for reindustrialization, and that the dividends are now visible. For markets, the narrative matters independently of its factual accuracy — it signals that Trump has no intention of reversing tariff policy. The tariff architecture is now embedded in his political identity as a success story, not an experiment.

The manufacturing claims are partially verifiable. US auto sector investment announcements have increased since the tariff regime began, as companies sought to localize production ahead of import costs. Factory construction spending data has trended upward. Critics note that factory announcements are not equivalent to operational factories, that many relocations take years, and that consumer price data shows inflation from tariff pass-through. Trump's interview presented the investment announcements as the result without the caveats.

On Iran: "100 Times Over"

Trump was unambiguous on the Iran war: "I would do it 100 times over."

He described the war as inevitable — that Iran was on the verge of nuclear capability, and that allowing that outcome would have been the greater risk. He offered no timeline for a resolution, no framework for negotiation, and no signal that the current economic pressure campaign (launched two days earlier as "Economic D-Day") is a precursor to talks.

The sequence matters. Trump said on August 19 that there are no ongoing or planned talks with Iran. He followed on August 20 with the "Economic D-Day" declaration. He now says he would run the same play again. The three-day arc gives a consistent read: Trump is committed to the Iran conflict posture indefinitely, sees no off-ramp publicly, and is framing the campaign as a success rather than a problem requiring resolution.

On Cohen: "Brilliant" and "Treated Very Badly"

The political subtext of the interview is the rapprochement itself. Trump called Cohen "brilliant" and said he was "treated very badly" by prosecutors who pressured him to testify. Cohen, for his part, accepted the characterization without contradiction — a significant departure from his public posture since 2018.

The significance is less about affection than about political utility. Cohen knows details of Trump's business operations, legal exposure, and personal conduct that no other person holds. A Cohen who is reconciling with Trump is a Cohen less likely to cooperate with future investigations, legal proceedings, or congressional inquiries. The public interview serves as a visible beginning of that realignment.

Trump's political risk profile is affected by whether key former associates remain adversarial. Cohen's reversal — from cooperating witness to WABC guest praising Trump on Trump's own radio station — is a meaningful reduction in the pool of credible first-person witnesses available to investigators or future prosecutions. Whether motivated by genuine reconciliation, political calculation, or media opportunity, the effect is the same: one major Trump critic is now publicly aligned.

The "25 Points" Claim

Trump also said that if an election were held today, he would win by 25 percentage points. No specific poll was cited. His approval ratings in most public surveys are in the mid-to-high forties — elevated from the Iran war but not reflective of a 25-point margin.

The claim is less a statistical assertion than a posture: Trump positioning himself as politically unassailable heading into midterms, framing Republican candidates as riding his wave rather than surviving his drag. The figure also functions as deterrence — signaling to primary challengers and wavering Republican legislators that the political cost of opposition is high.