‘Comcast’s Secret Weapon’ Opened the Penn Biden Center

When Biden announced that he was running for the White House, he topped it off with a fundraiser hosted by Comcast Executive Vice President David L. Cohen. Cohen, the ‘shadow lobbyist’ for the parent company of MSNBC, was a longtime power player in both the corporate world and among Philly Democrats, and he had a special connection with Biden.

The political boss turned wealthy executive was the chair of Penn’s Board of Trustees.

In 2018, Biden and Cohen, wielding giant scissors, clumsily cut through a banner inaugurating the Penn Biden Center. “All of us at Penn are immensely proud and privileged to have Vice President Biden leading the work of the Center and to have his name associated with Penn’s name,” Cohen claimed.

After classified documents were illegally found to have been stored at the building near the Capitol, the University of Pennsylvania may be less thrilled by the association. But Cohen had already left to become Biden’s ambassador to Canada while the university’s president, Amy Gutmann, resigned to become Biden’s ambassador to Germany.

Biden was paid $911,643 for 9 campus appearances, but he also got some office space and roles for key insiders like future Secretary of State Blinken and lobbyist/adviser Steve Ricchetti.

At the intersection of the classified documents scandal is one company: Comcast.

Previously, we exposed Comcast CEO Brian L. Roberts as the King of Hate Media, but Comcast’s tentacles go even deeper than the lies and hate spewed on NBC and MSNBC.

Along with Cohen, also hosting Biden was Comcast’s VP of Community Investment Charisse Lillie. Biden’s opening act fundraiser at Cohen’s home raised over $700,000. Both six figure sums were part of a river of cash that flowed between Comcast, Biden and UPenn.

Cohen had started out as a chief of staff to Philly Mayor Ed Rendell. A year after leaving office, Rendell became a political analyst for NBC and MSNBC. And, with the Comcast takeover of NBC underway, his former chief of staff became the executive vice president of Comcast.

When he stepped down, Cohen was the third largest individual Comcast shareholder behind Roberts and the boss of NBC Universal. And those shares were worth a lot more than they used to. Comcast shares rose from $15.9 before the merger to $26 after the merger. Today they’re at around $40. But the key to pulling all that off was a green light from the Obama administration.

Comcast launched an unprecedented campaign to secure the administration’s approval for its NBCUniversal merger, recruiting black leaders, including Sharpton, who scored his own MSNBC show despite his manifest unfitness for the job, to the University of Pennsylvania.

Comcast, under CEO Brian L. Roberts, had spread a lot of money around, including at UPenn, but it was Cohen, the political insider who made it all come together.

The Washington Post described Cohen as “Comcast’s secret weapon”. The New York Times called him, “Comcast’s Real Repairman” for having “led the effort to win support at the Federal Communications Commission for another huge merger.”

Comcast’s secret weapon had his own “secret weapon” inside the Obama administration.




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