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Donald Trump’s attorney Michael Cohen has a reputation for being a dogged defender of his boss, refusing even to acknowledge that Trump’s support among African-Americans was weak. Indeed, according to Slate he got too rabid for Fox News, which had to ask him to tone down his attacks on anchor Megyn Kelly, who faced death threats and harassment after she got into a high profile spat with the Republican leader.

“Michael Cohen, who is Trump’s top lawyer and executive vice president with the Trump Organization had retweeted ‘let’s gut her,’ about me,” Kelly told CNN’s Anderson Cooper in a recent interview. “At a time when the threat level was very high, which he knew. And Bill Shine, an executive vice president of Fox, called him up to say, ‘You got to stop this. We understand you are angry but she’s got three kids and is walking around New York.’” She added, “And what Bill Shine said to Michael Cohen was, ‘Let me put it to you in terms you can understand: If Megyn Kelly gets killed it is not going to help your candidate.”

Kelly’s flap with Trump was perhaps the most high-profile of his clashes with the media. He lashed out at the Fox News anchor in August 2015 after she asked him a tough question about his treatment of women at a Republican primary debate. Much of their dispute was in public view, as he made crude insinuations about her menstrual cycle and the cable network responded with a snarky dismissal of his comments.

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After Kelly’s remarks to Cooper, he took to Twitter to voice his disagreement, retweeting those who referred to her as a “snake” and a “psycho.” “[I never said] that I didn’t care about her fears and that her children were in danger,” he wrote. As part of the tweet storm, he invoked his definition of ‘gut’ to say that he wasn’t threatening her physical safety: “Definition of Gut: to make (something) no longer effective,” he repeatedly tweeted.”

Contact Daniel J. Solomon at [email protected] or on Twitter @DanielJSolomon(www.twitter.com/DanielJSolomon)

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