Donald Trump Was Confident He Could Replace Melania

Former President Donald Trump was confident that he could replace his wife Melania Trump if she were to leave him over claims of infidelity, his former fixer Michael Cohen testified.

Cohen was called to the stand in Trump’s criminal trial in Manhattan on Monday.

The 57-year-old is the star witness in the hush money case, which stems from the $130,000 payment he made to adult film star Stormy Daniels in the lead-up to the 2016 election. Trump has been charged with 34 counts of falsifying business records in connection to the payment. He has pleaded not guilty and denied Daniels’ allegations that the two had a sexual encounter.

During his testimony, Cohen was asked about how Trump reacted when he found out Daniels was shopping around her story about him less than a month before Election Day. Cohen recalled that when they were dealing with the possibility that Daniels could go public, he had asked his boss how things were going “upstairs” with his wife, to which Trump suggested he wouldn’t be single long after.

“How long do you think I’m going to be on the market for?” Trump allegedly told Cohen.

“He wasn’t thinking about Melania,” Cohen said from the stand Monday. “This was all about the campaign.”

Although Trump seemed unbothered by the fact that Daniel’s affair allegations could upend his marriage, Cohen remembered that the then-GOP nominee thought it was a “total disaster.” Cohen recalled that Trump had already been polling poorly with women voters at the time because of the Access Hollywood tape, and so the Daniels’ development would only compound Trump’s problem.

According to Cohen, Trump told him, “Women will hate me. Guys—they’ll think it’s cool but this is an immediate disaster for the campaign.”

It’s unclear whether Melania knew about the hush money payment, but Cohen said that after he left Trump a voicemail expressing concern that Daniels would sell her story to the Daily Mail, Melania had texted him, “Good morning Michael, can u pls call DT on his cell. Thanks.”

He said Trump had implored him to simply delay paying Daniels until after the 2016 election, saying that if he won, then he would already be president and if he lost, it wouldn’t matter. Cohen testified that he had no intention to meet the funding deadline for the agreement with Daniels.

However, given the “urgency that was happening,” Cohen ultimately decided to pay the $130,000 with the understanding Trump would reimburse him at a later date.

During his testimony, Cohen also revealed that it was Melania who came up with the idea to spin the Access Hollywood tape into “locker room talk.” The infamous hot-mic moment captured Trump telling radio host Billy Bush that as a celebrity, he could “grab” women by their genitalia.

“The spin that he wanted to put on it was that this is locker room talk, something that Melania had recommended, or at least he told me that’s what Melania had thought, and use that in order to take control over the story to minimize its impact over him and his campaign,” Cohen said.