Our willingness to forgive Donald Trump’s former allies is excruciating – and a sign of things to come

Sean Spicer and Michael Cohen have been quick to distance themselves from Trump’s toxic legacy. If he is defeated next week, the PR machines of those who served him will go into overdrive

Mr. Nice Guy? Former White House press secretary Sean Spicer

Sean Spicer, all 5’6” of him, is perched on a beige sofa, his hands nestled in his lap, his feet barely touching the floor. He looks quite jolly in a tartan blazer and smiles as he recalls the moment in 2017 when, as White House Press Secretary, he received an early morning call from Donald Trump. The recently elected president was “furious”, Spicer tells us, about media reports suggesting that the National Mall was only half full ahead of the inauguration. Spicer, interviewed for BBC documentary The Trump Show, jokes that he was watching "Barney or Sesame Street” with his children at the time.

We then cut to footage of Spicer addressing the press, following that call in 2017. “Some members of the media were engaged in deliberately false reporting,” he barks from behind his podium. “This was the largest audience to ever witness an inauguration. Period.”

Trump’s team had been casual with facts throughout the campaign but this was the moment when any fidelity to the truth was abandoned. The BBC’s north America editor Jon Sopel turned to a colleague, who said it reminded him of “being back in Zimbabwe”. This was a declaration of war on the press; an immensely damaging day for democracy and one from which the country has never quite recovered. Yet here is Spicer, giggling away to camera, as if recalling a prank gone wrong.  

The hasty rehabilitation of those who worked for Trump has been excruciating to watch. It is not just Spicer, though his sparkly appearance on Dancing with the Stars last year felt particularly distasteful. Omarosa Manigault Newman, former White House aide, and Anthony Scaramucci, former White House communications director, have also been outspoken in their criticism of Trump since leaving office but both were fairly small fry and might legitimately claim to have been swept along by events beyond their control.

The same cannot be said for John Bolton or Michael Cohen, however. The ultra-hawkish Bolton, Trump’s longest-serving national security advisor, announced after he resigned – or was he fired? – that the president was “foolish” and “not fit for office”. Cohen, who spent 12 years as Trump’s attorney and is currently under house arrest after pleading guilty to tax evasion and campaign finance violations, has also been on the attack, branding Trump a “racist” and a “cheat” and urging people to vote for Joe Biden.

The reasons for this are so obvious they barely warrant interrogation. Anyone associated with Trump is going to want to distance themselves from his toxic legacy. It is a desperate reach for credibility – and the book sales are no doubt welcome, too. That much I can understand. What I don’t understand is our willingness to facilitate this process. Why are we so happy to entertain or forgive these people – to usher them back into the fold – on the basis of a couple of interviews, anti-Trump tweets or, in Cohen’s case, a podcast called “Mea Culpa”? They played us then and they are playing us now. It stinks.  

It is worth running through Cohen’s rap sheet. Aside from the tax evasion and campaign finance violations, he has also been convicted of lying to Congress and paying “hush money” to two women who claim to have had affairs with Trump. He is a criminal – the ankle tag gives it away – and should be treated as one. But earlier this month, in an extraordinary Newsnight interview (to promote his book), Cohen bleated, “for the most part, the American people have kindness [...] and many people do forgive me”. For once, he was telling the truth. Many people do forgive or at least tolerate him, their hatred of Trump so strong they are willing to support whoever it is that attacks him – even if that man, quite literally, defended his worst behaviour. To use a language Cohen might understand, pleading guilty does not make you innocent. 

The case against Bolton is a little more slippery. But we can glean from his book, The Room Where It Happened, that he believed he could impress an aggressive interventionist world view on a disorientated president. Bolton, a staunch supporter of the Iraq War, fell out with Trump after opposing his plans to ease sanctions on Iran. A 2019 headline in The Atlantic summed up his position: “Bolton Keeps Trying to Goad Iran Into War”. He was also desperate to get America out of the Paris Climate Agreement and determined to enforce regime change in Venezuela. The list goes on.

This is not, then, a figure who should be given a free pass to pick over the pieces of an administration in which he played a central role. No-one really seems to care, though. In The Trump Show, Bolton is allowed to put forward his view – that he was the voice of reason amid the chaos – entirely unchallenged.  

This sorry situation, in which those who abetted Trump’s worst instincts are wheeled out, either as experts (Bolton) or clowns (Spicer; Scaramucci), could be about to get a whole lot worse. If Trump is defeated next week, the PR machines of those who served him will go into overdrive. It won’t be long before we see Marco Rubio or Lindsey Graham shaking their heads and laughing at the memories of it all. Crazy time, eh? Certainly – but also one which has had real-world effects on millions of people that are harder to laugh off. Two hundred and thirty thousand coronavirus deaths and counting. Speak up. But no-one does. Those responsible may never be held accountable but we could at least have the decency to ostracise them.  

No-one understands PR better than Trump himself, of course. If he is voted out of the White House by the American people on Tuesday, the resurrection will begin immediately. And no doubt we’ll participate and quite enjoy it, too. He’s a hell of a performer, after all. How short our collective memory and how quick we are to betray it.