Trump hush money trial: Michael Cohen testifies

Michael Cohen testified Monday he feared there would be a “catastrophic” effect on the 2016 presidential campaign of Donald Trump if porn star Stormy Daniels went public with her claim of having sex with the billionaire real estate mogul a decade earlier.

Cohen said Trump was very angry to learn that Daniels was again shopping around her account, five years after his then-personal lawyer and fixer Cohen first notified Trump about the potential story becoming public.

” ‘I thought you took care of this,’ ” Trump said, Cohen testified Monday in Manhattan Supreme Court at Trump’s criminal hush money trial. ″ ‘I thought this was under control.’ “

Trump then said, ″ ‘This is a disaster, a total disaster. Women will hate me,’ ” the 57-year-old Cohen testified.

” ‘Guys will think it’s cool, but this is going to be a disaster for the campaign!’ ” Trump fumed, according to Cohen.

Cohen noted that at the time that he learned Daniels might sell her story of a one-night stand with Trump, the then-Republican nominee Trump “was polling very poorly with women.”

“And this, coupled with the previous Access Hollywood tape” made Trump upset, Cohen testified, referring to the infamous recording that captured Trump boasting of kissing women and grabbing their genitals without prior consent.

Earlier Monday, Cohen testified that Trump had warned him that “just be prepared, there’s going to be a lot of women coming forward,” once he announced that he was running for president in 2015.

Cohen also testified about secretly recording Trump during a meeting about reimbursing the publisher of The National Enquirer for making a $150,000 hush money payment to a Playboy model to buy her silence about an alleged affair with Trump.

Pay with cash,” Trump says on that recording. The publisher ended up not being reimbursed.

Cohen’s revelations came on his first day of testimony at Trump’s New York criminal hush money trial, where he detailed efforts to protect Trump’s presidential campaign in 2016 from being harmed by salacious disclosures.

Once slavishly devoted to Trump, Cohen is now his avowed enemy and could be the key witness against him in the case.

Cohen paid Daniels $130,000 shortly before the 2016 presidential election, in exchange for her silence about Trump.

When a prosecutor asked him if he would have paid Daniels without getting a “sign-off” from Trump, Cohen said no.

“Because everything required Mr. Trump’s sign-off,” said Cohen, who also said, “I wanted my money back.”

Trump said,…