After years of legal battles, courtroom testimony and personal attacks, Michael Cohen sat down with President Donald Trump on Thursday and revisited his days as a fierce defender of Trump during the 2016 presidential campaign.

The phone interview, which was previewed Thursday but will air in full Sunday, marks a striking reunion between Trump and his former personal attorney and fixer turned prominent adversary.

Speaking on his 77 WABC show, “When You Know, You Know,” Cohen opened the discussion by recalling his now-famous “Says who?” response when confronted on CNN with polling showing Trump trailing in 2016.

Trump responded by saying both men had since been targets of political “weaponization.”

“They weaponized you. They weaponized a lot of people, and I respect the fact that you recanted everything you said,” Trump said. “That’s a big thing that you did.”

The interview brought together two men whose relationship went from a close and loyal friendship to a bitter feud intertwined with Trump’s legal troubles. They used the conversation, their first in more than eight years, to revisit their dramatic falling-out while touching on some of the biggest issues defining Trump’s presidency, including his sagging poll numbers, the economy, Iran and immigration.

“I think that we’re doing really well in the polls, the real polls,” Trump said.

Despite the president’s assessment, the latest polling shows Trump’s approval rating at a low point. A Reuters/Ipsos poll released Monday found 33% of Americans approved of Trump’s performance, the lowest of his presidency, while 64% disapproved. 

The conversation quickly moved to Trump’s record in office as he touted tariffs and new manufacturing investment while describing the U.S. economy as undergoing a “renaissance.” Trump also defended his administration’s immigration crackdown and claimed his handling of the southern border had been largely forgotten because “a victory has a two-week life.”

Cohen aired roughly 15 minutes of the interview on Thursday, and noted to his audience that the full interview will be released over the weekend.

Cohen worked for Trump for more than a decade, once famously saying he would “take a bullet” for his longtime boss. Their relationship unraveled amid investigations stemming from a $130,000 hush money payment Cohen made to adult film actor Stormy Daniels shortly before the 2016 presidential election.

Cohen pleaded guilty in 2018 to several federal crimes, including campaign finance violations and lying to Congress, and later served time in prison. He subsequently broke with Trump, wrote books attacking him and became a key witness against the president.

Cohen told CNN on Thursday that he previously sought a pardon from then-President Joe Biden but was denied as Biden left office. Cohen said he has since resubmitted essentially the same application to Trump, changing the cover letter, though he has not received confirmation from the White House that it was received.

In 2023, Cohen testified in Trump’s New York civil fraud case and later emerged as the prosecution’s star witness in the president’s 2024 criminal hush money trial. Trump was convicted on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records, though his lawyers repeatedly attacked Cohen’s credibility and portrayed him as a disgruntled former employee with a history of lying.

Ahead of Thursday’s interview, Cohen addressed criticism of his decision to sit down with the president, saying the two had chosen to move beyond their yearslong feud.

“The answer is actually much simpler than people want it to be,” Cohen wrote in a lengthy Substack post Thursday. “We forgave.”

Cohen said forgiveness did not mean erasing their tumultuous history, noting that the two shared roughly 15 years of friendship before their relationship devolved into what he described as “political blood sport.”

“The good times don’t cease to have existed because the bad times came afterward,” Cohen wrote.

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