A Closer Look at the Stormy Daniels Scandal
By Mary Lind
Lion’s Roar Staff
The year is 2006. Adult film actress/director/writer Stormy Daniels (legal name Stephanie Clifford) is having dinner with Donald Trump, discussing the possibility that she appear on The Celebrity Apprentice, the NBC show that he hosted at the time. She excuses herself to the bathroom (which was off of the bedroom that they are eating in) and when she comes out, he is “perched” on the bed. She thinks to herself that she knew “exactly what I’d gotten myself into,” and she proceeds to have (unprotected) sex with him. She leaves, and remains in contact with him for about a year, and is never told to keep quiet about the affair or anything of the sort.
That is, until 2011, when she gives a magazine interview about the affair for $15,000. The interview is never published, however, because Trump’s attorney, Michael Cohen, threatened to sue when asked for comment. She is never paid, and a few weeks later, while in a parking lot with her infant daughter on their way to a fitness class, a man approaches her. He tells her, to “leave Trump alone. Forget the story.” He then looks into the car seat, and tells her that she has a “beautiful little girl,” and that “it’d be a shame if something happened to her mother.” She never sees the man again, but the threat is clear.
A few years later, just days before the 2016 election in which Trump is the Republican nominee, amid many offers to sell and tell her story, she signs a nondisclosure agreement, or NDA, with Trump’s lawyer, making her promise to hand over all evidence of the affair and to never speak a word about it. In return, she is paid $130,000 from Cohen’s personal accounts, and that is the end of the story.
Until now. In January 2018, the story broke. And, basically, all hell broke loose. If she wasn’t an adult film actress and he wasn’t the President of the United States, it probably wouldn’t be as big of a deal as it has become, but here we are. At first, both Trump and Daniels vehemently denied the story, with Daniels even signing statements released publicly by Cohen, saying that she never took hush money for the affair, because it never happened. She signed this agreement, she told Anderson Cooper on 60 Minutes, because “they made it sound like I had no choice.” She has, obviously, since confirmed it. And she’s now being sued for $20 million, for breaches of the NDA–one that Daniels’ lawyer, Michael Avenatti, claims is invalid, because Trump never signed it. Only Cohen and Daniels did.
This whole situation is a gigantic mess, a scandal that can be likened to the Clinton/Lewinsky fiasco of the late 90s. This, however, is bigger than that. This is huge. The porn star who had an affair with the man who is now the president was threatened to keep quiet about it. She was paid, days before election day, a large sum of money by the candidate’s personal attorney out of his own pocket, in what former Federal Election Commission chairman Trevor Potter says could be considered an illegal campaign contribution. Potter described this as “a coordinated, illegal, in kind contribution by Cohen for the purpose of influencing the election, of benefiting the candidate by keeping this secret.” This contribution was $126,500 over the legal limit of what Cohen was allowed to contribute to the campaign. If Trump didn’t reimburse him, he’s screwed.
The details that Daniels gave in her 60 Minutes interview about the president are laughable, ridiculous, and completely unsurprising. He spent the first part of their first meeting (which was the only one where they had sex) talking about himself and showing her a magazine cover that he was on. She was “taken back,” and asked him if talking about himself in this kind of manner “usually worked.” He was shocked, as though nobody had ever spoken to him like that, “especially, you know, a young woman who looked like me.” He said that she reminded him of his daughter. “You’re smart and beautiful,” he said, “and a woman to be reckoned with, and I like you. I like you.” Of his wife, Melania, and their months-old son, Barron, he said “oh yeah, yeah, you know, don’t worry about that.”
In recent weeks Daniels, Trump, and their respective lawyers have been the focus of a ridiculous amount of media attention. Daniels didn’t want this story to get out at first because she didn’t want exactly what was happening now to happen to her and her family. She didn’t want it to affect her daughter and she knew that she would be “opening myself up for, you know, possible danger and definitely a whole lot of s***.” People are calling her terrible things and insulting her without realizing that she is suffering in this situation. She didn’t intend for any of this to happen. She didn’t even want to have sex with him in the first place. She’s made it very clear that it was consensual, but she felt zero attraction to him at all, and honestly did not want to do it. She’s being dragged on both sides of the aisle for this, in addition to being both physically, financially and legally threatened.
Women, especially, are coming after Daniels. That’s just ridiculous. This woman is putting everything at risk to tell her side of the story that she never wanted told. She’s already been threatened in multiple ways and in addition to that her character is being absolutely destroyed. She’s potentially “alienating half of my fanbase” and putting her career at risk. She’s dealing with the aftermath of an embarrassing one night stand in the public eye and is holding up really, really well. She’s got thick skin and she’s not backing down. I have a lot of respect for that, and for her as well. And as women, we should be standing by our sister as she’s going through this crazy difficult time, just like we should have stood by Monica Lewinsky, just like we would be standing up for our friend if they were in that situation. Similar to in the Clinton/Lewinsky situation, the woman is being branded as the bad guy. Lewinsky was a slut, Daniels is a whore. But both of them had consensual sex with married men, something that normal people do a lot, too. The only difference here is that these men wound up being the leaders of the free world.
I wish I could say that I’m surprised. But after a year of resignations, firings, criminal investigations, golfing, and tweeting, the revelation that the president may or may not have slept with adult film actress Stormy Daniels and then tried to cover it up with hush money and threats just seem like another day in the Trump Administration. I mean, Trump isn’t exactly the first image that comes to mind when you think of a faithful husband, and he’s certainly proven himself to be a liar and someone who thinks he can buy his way out of any situation. The threats, however, are a new low, even for him. Even if they’re not true, they’re certainly believable. And that’s terrifying.