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Trump’s Lawyer Puts Daughter on Display

Michael Cohen tweeted a picture of his daughter in lingerie, then asked a Twitter user if she was ‘jealous’ of her looks

by
Rachel Shukert
May 15, 2017
Drew Angerer/Getty Images
Michael Cohen (R), executive vice president of the Trump Organization and special counsel to Donald Trump, arrives at Trump Tower in New York City, January 12, 2017.Drew Angerer/Getty Images
Drew Angerer/Getty Images
Michael Cohen (R), executive vice president of the Trump Organization and special counsel to Donald Trump, arrives at Trump Tower in New York City, January 12, 2017.Drew Angerer/Getty Images

Everybody knows that Jewish parents love to brag about their children. They readily share with the world everything from college acceptance letters and medical school graduation transcripts, to wedding announcements (to appropriate financially and socially secure partners), photographs of high-achieving grandchildren and now, apparently, their daughters’ sexy lingerie modeling shots. Wait, what?

That’s right. And the parent in question is President Donald Trump’s lawyer.

Over the weekend, the redoubtable Michael Cohen, famous for being Trump’s personal lawyer and for his repeated appearances in the infamous (and continually corroborated) Steele Dossier, posting to Twitter and Instagram a photo of his college-aged daughter Samantha in a sexy underwear shot with the caption: “So proud of my Ivy League daughter…brains and beauty, channeling her Edie Sedgwick.” Then he, well—just look:

So proud of my Ivy League daughter…brains and beauty channeling her Edie Sedgwick. On Instagram @samichka_ pic.twitter.com/mpQxhr3mh3



— Michael Cohen (@MichaelCohen212) May 15, 2017

@bonibrat Jealous?



— Michael Cohen (@MichaelCohen212) May 15, 2017

It’s hard enough for me to imagine my father describing me as “channeling” anything in the way this verb is typically used in the fashion world, let alone Warhol’s famously troubled muse, who died of a drug overdose at the age of 27. But an underwear shot? Because your dad can’t wait to show the world how hot you look when you’re almost naked, while still managing to brag about you being “Ivy League,” as though that somehow makes it OK? Please.

The Trump gang has gone beyond the gentile squickiness of the daddy-daughter “purity dances” of the Christianist Bush years, in which fathers solemnly promised to safeguard their daughters’ virginity as though it was a Bushmaster AR-15 they were locking up lovingly in their personal gun vault. Cohen is clearly doing his part to keep the Trump reputation alive, following the notorious example of his boss, who has a) proclaimed that if Ivanka weren’t his daughter, he’d perhaps be dating her; b) said the thing he had most in common with her in a 2013 was “sex” (and what, pray tell, does that possibly mean? That they both have it? That they talk about it? That he thinks about it, in congruence with his biological child, all the freaking time); c) told Howard Stern it was fine to refer to Ivanka, a mother of three and Wharton graduate, as a “piece of ass”; and, d) once, on television, mused on the future breast size of his then-infant daughter Tiffany (the forgotten one, who in some way appreciates that title/treatment).

Trump, and now Cohen, demonstrate a darker and more deeply disturbing trend: Thanks to the current occupant of the Oval Office, powerful men in the public eye feel perfectly comfortable sexualizing and objectifying the female children they are supposed to empower, protect, and make to feel like equal and valuable human beings with something to contribute to the world besides the size of their thigh gap and the ability to rock a nude pout and smoky eye, “channeling” or otherwise.

And who knows how far it will go? In the Trump era, should it be allowed to continue, will every man become the kind of creepy first cousin once removed at the bar mitzvah party who feels entitled to comment on your weight while looking you up and down, and about whom your mother murmurs to you at the taco station: “Tell me if he gets too handsy…?” Or is this just a thing that pertains to the president’s (and God, do I still have a hard time typing that!) inner circle? I desperately hope the damage can be contained, but I will say this: If you don’t see a problem with sexually dislaying your own daughter, somehow I doubt a #womenwhowork hashtag—or an Ivy League degree—is the kind of thing that’s going to convince the world how deeply you respect women. But two can play at this game, and if anyone’s got an underpants shot of any of the tubby grotesqueries currently crowing the men’s room at the White House, send ‘em my way. I’ve got an Instagram feed, too.

Rachel Shukert is the author of the memoirs Have You No Shame? and Everything Is Going To Be Great,and the novel Starstruck. She is the creator of the Netflix show The Baby-Sitters Club, and a writer on such series as GLOW and Supergirl. Her Twitter feed is @rachelshukert.