CNN commentators lament that Michael Cohen was a flop for Trump resistance

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Those looking to Michael Cohen for a “gotcha” moment for the Trump administration were disappointed Wednesday.

That was the consensus on a CNN panel, where commentators agreed that the disgraced former attorney for President Trump failed to deliver a definitive takedown.

“There were a lot of Democrats today with bags of popcorn expecting to see the crumbling of the Trump presidency,” said host Anderson Cooper, who led the eight-pundit panel discussion.

“That didn’t happen,” said Jeffrey Toobin, a commentator for the cable network.

The group dissected the day’s testimony by Trump’s former longtime fixer in front of the House Oversight Committee, where Cohen faced grilling from Democrats and Republicans about his relationship with the president and his actions, including lying to Congress in previous testimony.

“I don’t think that there was any knockout blow today, which is what the anti-Trump forces hoped. In regard to Russia, in fact, you know, it was a disappointment to the anti-Trump forces, because what Cohen said, everybody thought, well, maybe Cohen can implicate him and make him tie him to this,” said panelist David Gergen, a former presidential adviser who served four administrations. “And Cohen says, ‘I have no direct knowledge. I have suspicions.’ Well, that doesn’t really add up to much.”

Cohen had opened his testimony with prepared remarks that took aim at the president, calling him a conman and cheat.

“The beginning of it left me a little cold, because I felt like he just had to get his digs in there. And I think for the general audience, it may have been, ‘Oh, he’s just part of the resistance.’ And that shouldn’t be the case,” said Gloria Borger, CNN political analyst.

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