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’They Weaponized You Like Nobody’s Ever Been Weaponized’: Trump and Michael Cohen Make Peace

Michael Cohen, the former personal attorney to President Donald Trump, departs his Manhattan apartment for prison on May 6, 2019. —Spencer Platt—Getty Images

President Donald Trump on Thursday buried the hatchet with his former attorney Michael Cohen, appearing on Cohen’s radio show in what was the first public exchange between the two men in eight years.

Trump and Cohen have a tumultuous history. Cohen worked as Trump’s personal lawyer dating back to the mid-2000s. But he severed ties with Trump around 2018, when he pleaded guilty to federal crimes, including campaign finance violations, and said he had made payments to two women at Trump’s direction in an effort to keep them from speaking publicly about alleged affairs with the then-presidential candidate. He went on to serve a three-year sentence following his guilty plea. Cohen later made a number of explosive claims about Trump in testimony in front of Congress, and served as a key witness in the criminal hush money trial that resulted in Trump’s conviction on 34 felony counts. 

Read More: Trump and Hush-Money Trial’s Central Witness Share a Tortured History

“You and I have obviously traveled a pretty rocky road together,” Cohen said to Trump on his radio show 77 WABC-AM in New York on Thursday. The program will air in its entirety on Sunday. 

Trump did not dwell too much on the past during the portion of the show that aired on Thursday, but voiced sympathy and appreciation for Cohen.

"They weaponized you like nobody's ever been weaponized, like few have been," Trump told his former lawyer. “They weaponized a lot of people, and I respect the fact that you recanted everything you said. And that’s a big — that’s a big thing that you did. That’s a very big thing.”

The men’s conversation also criss-crossed through a range of other topics related to Iran, the economy, and Democrats. 

Cohen appeared on CNN ahead of the airing of the program and commented on his relationship, and conversation, with Trump. 

“How is it possible after all of what took place? All of the name calling, the years of the public war, the verbal missiles that we threw at one another. How is it possible that the two of us can ever sit down again?” Cohen told CNN anchor Jake Tapper. “The answer is that we forgave.”

When asked to define the current state of his relationship with the President, Cohen remarked, “it’s being resuscitated.” 

Cohen was also pressed on whether he has asked Trump for a pardon. 

“I have not,” Cohen first responded. But he went on to clarify that he did submit a pardon application to President Joe Biden, which he later altered after Trump took back office. 

“What I did is I took that same application with the same documentation, and I just rewrote the cover letter, removing the name of President Joe Biden and inserting the name President Donald Trump,” Cohen said. 

Cohen also took to his Substack on Thursday to speak about making amends with Trump, which he said made people “furious.” Referencing the Bible, Cohen asserted that Colossians 3:13—a passage that reads, ”Forgive as the Lord forgave you”—was the “foundation” of what transpired between him and Trump.

“We forgave,” Cohen wrote. “Forgiveness doesn’t require amnesia. It requires the courage to stop allowing yesterday to dictate tomorrow.”

Cohen’s remarks ring in stark contrast to previous words he has offered about the President.

In 2019, after pleading guilty, Cohen was called by the House Oversight and Reform Committee to further detail his role as Trump’s attorney and said Trump “is a racist. He is a conman. He is a cheat.” When asked how many times Trump had asked him to threaten an individual or entity on his behalf, Cohen responded that Trump had done so on over 500 occasions throughout their professional relationship. 

The following year, Cohen published Disloyal: A Memoir: The True Story of the Former Personal Attorney to President Donald J. Trump, a 432-page tell-all about the years he spent as Trump’s lawyer and fixer. 

“I knew Trump better than anyone else did,” Cohen wrote at one point in the book. “I knew him better than even his family did, because I bore witness to the real man, in strip clubs, shady business meetings, and in the unguarded moments when he revealed who he really was: A cheat, a liar, a fraud, a bully, a racist, a predator, a con man.”

And in 2024, Cohen was the prosecution’s main witness in Trump’s criminal trial over charges of falsifying business records related to hush money payments made to Daniels when Trump was running for President for the first time in 2016. 

“What I was doing, I was doing at the direction of and benefit of Mr. Trump,” Cohen said on the stand in 2024.

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State Farm Is Sending $5 Billion in Dividend Payments to Customers. Here’s How to Know If You’re Eligible

A State Farm logo is seen in front of a State Farm insurance office in San Rafael, California, on February 3, 2025. —Justin Sullivan—Getty Images

Tens of millions of State Farm customers are eligible to receive payments as part of a $5 billion dividend from the company’s Mutual Automobile Insurance, which State Farm has already begun doling out.

The dividend, first announced in February, is the largest in the company’s history. 

“This dividend is possible due to State Farm Mutual’s financial strength and a stronger than expected underwriting performance, which has been reported industry wide,” the company wrote at the time of the initial announcement. 

Here’s what to know about the dividend payments, and how to see if you’re eligible to receive one.

Who’s eligible?

More than 49 million vehicle owners across State Farm’s network are set to get dividend payments this summer, the company said. 

Customers who had a State Farm personal auto insurance policy active at any time in 2025. You do not need to be currently insured by State Farm to receive a payment. To receive a payment, customers' share of the dividend based on their premium payments and state must be $10 or more.

Qualifying customers who have an email address registered with the company will receive an email with further instructions on how to sign into a payment portal for the dividend and select the manner in which they’d prefer to be paid, the company said.

Those who are eligible but do not have a registered email with the company will automatically get a check in the mail. 

Customers can access information about their dividend payment at sfdividend.com

When will customers get their dividend payments?

The payments began going out on July 31. State Farm has not indicated when they will stop. 

“Millions of customers have already received their individual dividend payments, with more on the way,” State Farm announced when the payments began. 

Customers will be notified by State Farm regarding their pending payments “beginning late summer of 2026,” the company’s website states, adding that dividend payments are being sent out “in waves by state where the policy is assigned.”

Over 7.2 million checks have been mailed since payments began, with another 3.8 million set to go out this week, a State Farm spokesperson told CBS News in an email.

How much could eligible customers get paid?

The dividend payments average $100 per vehicle, according to State Farm. 

The amount an eligible customer receives will vary based on a couple of factors, however. The payment a customer gets will be based on a percentage of the premiums they paid, and that percentage ranges from 4% to 10% depending on the customer’s state.

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