Donald Trump is the world’s biggest bully. He has fired everyone who walked into the White House and dared to challenge his supremacy – including some of the most accomplished people in America. But he can’t fire Stormy Daniels. He can’t bully her either. His lawyer has threatened her with financial ruin. Even her family’s safety has been threatened, she says. But the 39-year-old porn queen will not be silenced. Nobody can shut her up – not even the President of the United States. “He knows I’m telling the truth,” she says.
Stormy Daniels, star of the current striptease tour “Making America Horny Again,” is a heroine for our times. Her 60 Minutes interview on Sunday was a master stroke. It nicely trapped the President and his disagreeable lawyer, Michael Cohen, into a box of their own making. They are left in the impossible position of simultaneously denying there was an affair, while trying to explain why Mr. Cohen paid US$130,000 in hush money to Ms. Daniels a week and a half before Mr. Trump was elected president.
It’s clear that in Ms. Daniels, Mr. Trump finally met his match. He couldn’t impress or intimidate her. When he invited her to his room in 2006 and droned on at tedious length about a magazine cover with his face on it, she told him, “Someone should take that magazine and spank you with it.” And she did.
Ms. Daniels met Mr. Trump in the netherworld of celebrity golf tournaments, where the currency is either money, fame or sex. “Affair” is too grand a word for their relationship. He was infatuated with her sauciness. He told her he’d try to get her on a reality TV show. She was not the least attracted to him. As she put it in an earlier interview, “Would you be?”
Adult-film actress Stephanie Clifford, also known as Stormy Daniels, poses for pictures at the end of her striptease show in Gossip Gentleman club in Long Island on Feb. 23, 2018.Eduardo Munoz/REUTERS
Unlike many female victims of Mr. Trump’s sexual predations, Ms. Daniels harboured no illusions about what she might expect from the great man. She was not shocked when he made a pass at her in his hotel room. Mr. Trump’s wife, Melania, had just given birth to their son. ”At the time, I didn’t think that much about it,” she said in an earlier interview, in 2011. ““But now that I have a baby that’s the same age that his was at the time, I’m like, ’Wow, what a dick.’ ”
Does she feel he took advantage of her? Not at all. “This is not a ‘Me Too,’ ” she told 60 Minutes. “I was not a victim. I’ve never said I was a victim. I think trying to use me to – to further someone else’s agenda, does horrible damage to people who are true victims.”
By going on the offensive – Ms. Daniels is also suing to have the non-disclosure agreement declared invalid – Ms. Daniels has insulated herself against Mr. Trump. He can’t really sue her for violating a non-disclosure agreement about a sexual encounter that he claims never happened. Nor can his agents threaten her again – not when they know she’ll go to the media if they do. All he can do is tweet helplessly about “Fake News,” as he did on Monday morning. Later in the day, the White House issued the standard denial about the affair, and said the President does not believe Ms. Daniels’s claim that she was threatened.
So why should we care? Because, as her lawyer, Michael Avenatti, told 60 Minutes, “It is thuggish behaviour from people in power. And it has no place in American democracy.”
Ms. Daniels (whose real name is Stephanie Clifford) is not your usual feminist role model. Still, she deserves to be one. From an early age she was determined to make it in a man’s world – in this case, the world of “adult entertainment,” as it’s euphemistically known. She was among the best. She branched out into producing and directing. The business has endowed her with a thick skin, a robust sense of humour and a spectacular pair of fake breasts, for which she is unapologetic. “Of course, my tits are fake,” she said in a recent tweet. “I’ve never claimed otherwise.” Now she is unapologetically monetizing her celebrity, with one (possibly) last tour on the strip circuit. And who can begrudge her? When a New York Times reporter asked her what it’s like to be her these days, she answered, “Stressful. And amusing.”
No, Stormy Daniels will not bring down Donald Trump. But in a world where the bully in the White House too often gets his way, it’s inspiring to see him bested, for once – and by a woman, too.