Stormy Daniels took the stand in a New York court on Tuesday, Day 13 of the criminal trial against Donald Trump. Stormy Daniels is the linchpin of the whole case, even though she’s already told her story many times, to many people, over the course of many years. Therein lies the problem, at least for the Trump team. Stormy always had a big mouth, and she told her “did I ever tell you about the time I slept with Donald Trump” story for years before Trump started running for president. Suddenly, the story about Trump boffing an adult film star wasn’t some ribald gossip about The Apprentice host – it was a political liability for a man courting the Evangelical right-wing. Thus, Trump’s goons paid hush money to Stormy (and threatened her) and Trump worked with David Pecker at the National Enquirer to kill stories about Trump, Stormy and anyone else Trump slept with. So, yesterday was Stormy’s big day in court.
After meeting the future president of the United States at a golf tournament in 2006, adult film star Stormy Daniels testified Tuesday that Donald Trump’s personal bodyguard asked if she would like to have dinner with the once-and-future Republican nominee.
“No, with an expletive in front,” Daniels said she told the aide in response, per NBC News. But she reconsidered after meeting with her publicist, she said, recalling their words: “If nothing else, you’ll get a great story” and “what’s the worst that could happen?”
But, according to Daniels, dinner never happened. When she got to Trump’s hotel room, she found him in pajamas — he later changed — and eager to discuss her work in the adult film industry, where she had risen from performer to director, and whether she had ever contracted and STD (“I’ve never tested positive for anything,” Daniels said).
Hungry and annoyed by the questioning, Daniels said she told Trump she’d had “enough of his arrogance,” stating: “Someone should spank you with that,” referring to a magazine in Trump’s hand. “I took it from him and I said, ‘turn around,’ and I swatted him,” she testified. “And he was much more polite.”
Over the course of two hours, Daniels said she and Trump continued to discuss the world of pornography, including whether stars ever “hooked up” off camera. Trump during the exchange brought up Melania, whom he married a year earlier, and assured Daniels that they did not “even sleep in the same room,” according to The New York Times.
At one point, Daniels said Trump compared her to Ivanka. “You remind me of my daughter,” Trump said, according to Daniels, an apparent reference to them both being blonde, intelligent and underestimated.
After a trip to the bathroom, Daniels said she found Trump sitting in his underwear on the bed.
CNN reported that, as Daniels spoke, Trump was “looking straight ahead with a scowl on his face.” But he wasn’t the only one unhappy with all the details being aired in a Manhattan courtroom. Judge Juan Merchan looked “unusually angry,” The New York Times reported, and admonished prosecutors, saying “the degree of detail that we are going into here is just unnecessary.”
“The degree of detail that we are going into here is just unnecessary…” Excuse me? The level of detail here is exactly WHY Trump paid hush money to Stormy. This was the story she told at parties, this was the story she fought to tell in open court despite accepting the hush money. Besides, she’s given more obscene details about the ordeal in her book, where she literally described what his Nazi bajingo looks like (Toad from Mario Kart). As for the stuff about how he was trying to compliment Stormy by saying she reminds him of Ivanka… my god. It never fails to make my stomach turn. Creepy and unsettling.
Photos courtesy of Cover Images, Backgrid.