Trump Day 14: Desperately Smearing Stormy
'Orange turd? I absolutely meant Mister Trump.'
Disclaimer: If you don’t want to get pissed off reading about defense lawyers being as shitty and sex-shame-y to Stormy Daniels as legally allowable, you might want to skip this one. Also, quotes are compiled from multiple sources, apologies in advance for any inaccuracies.
With his right-wing base working overtime trying to ban birth control and porn, their Lord Emperor Donald Trump spent Wednesday at Mar-a-Lago doing the handjob dance for the suckers who bought his NFTs. Then he jetted back to New York, spent the night at his uptown Trump Tripled Triplex Russian Adoption Agency and Hair Weave Emporium, and probably slept pretty well, what with his three other cases effectively tabled until after the election. And if his rape case or the other 17 women who’ve accused him of grossitudes didn’t affect his popularity, why should this?
Tuesday we heard all about Trump’s coercive scheme to get laid, wherein he lured a reluctant Stormy Daniels to his room under the false pretense of having dinner, dangled a role on his gameshow, gave her a jumpscare by lounging on the bed, then told her she’d never get “out of the trailer park” unless she submitted to his brief, condomless peening. You can read the recap here.
Worth mentioning, Trump could have avoided all of these skeevy details coming out in court by acknowledging he slept with Stormy. And, it doesn’t even really even matter if he actually slept with her or not, the crime was the payments and falsified records to influence the election, not the extramarital peen itself.
But, because his defense is something like, it never happened, it was a criminal conspiracy invented out of thin air to GET TRUMP, and if it did happen it was EXTORTION by nuts and sluts who HATE him, NO SMOCKING GUN!! And those payments were for “legal services” by Michael Cohen for something beyond his salaried job as in-house counsel, just don’t ask us for what, therefore the sex got in the door.
Tuesday, Trump lawyer Todd Blanche got all hot and MISTRIAL MISTRIAL because Judge Juan Merchan let in TMI, like the no-condom thing, and Stormy pointing out the power dynamic between a billionaire sexagenarian grandpa and a 27-year-old woman cornered in his penthouse (a detail which Team Trump did not object to at the time). Merchan agreed then to consider a “limiting instruction” on dirty deets this morning, but guess what? Trump lawyer Susan Necheles decided she actually didn’t care so much any more.
COURT: Where do you stand on a limiting instruction?
NECHELES: Can we wait to the end of testimony?
Yet she didn’t bring it up then, either. Some People Are Even Saying that the Trump defense hopes Stormy will accuse him of even worse behavior, like rape, so when they appeal they can be all JUDGE’S FAULT, THAT WAS SO PREJUDICIAL! If so, weird position to be in, hoping to hear worse about your client. Also, more details is fodder for more “gotcha.” Or, maybe they are just not great at lawyering.
Also bad for Team Trump, on Tuesday the Defendant sat muttering and cussing with steam coming out of his ears like a withered Yosemite Sam at points in Stormy’s testimony. He did NOT like the spanky part, or the part where he told Stormy that he and new bride Melania didn’t share a bed. Judge Merchan informed lawyer Todd Blanche that his client’s one-man dramatic performance was contempt, actually, and BTW doesn’t make the defendant look too good to the jury either, so tell the client to STFU and take it as another warning. (And he did succeed at keeping a sock in it for the rest of her testimony.)
Is it also contempt if Trump doesn’t smear the witnesses directly, but has his employee Alina Habba go on TV to do it? Is it contempt if he re-Truths Andrew Giuliani’s ham head blarbling lies on Steve Bannon’s show about Merchan’s daughter? These things have happened, but the prosecution is letting it all slide for now, so as not to disrupt these sacred proceedings.
Here Are Today’s Sacred Proceedings!
Susie Nickels started out wanting to bring in Stormy’s bullshit arrest (“No conviction? Denied.”), and something about her ex-husband (denied), and then out came the jury, who hopefully got Silkwood-level hot showers after Tuesday’s skin-crawling details.
It was time for Necheles to trip over her own tits to try to convince the jury that Daniels is a crazy, lying, money-hungry, angry slutty slut slut from sluttown. Original!
“Weren’t you LYING when you said ‘Rumors that I had received hush money from Donald Trump are completely false’?!”
"Correct, because it wasn’t a rumor, it was the truth.”
Trump leaned back with his eyes closed, again.
“Didn’t you want to announce you had sex with Donald Trump?!”
“No. Nobody would ever want to publicly say that.” LOL. “I wanted to publicly defend myself.”
“Didn’t you want to make more money?”
“No, I did interviews for free,” said Daniels.
Didn’t you appear on a reality show? (Because they’re only not vulgar if Trump is on.) Didn’t you write a book, for money? Didn’t you have a strip tour called “Make America Horny Again?!”
“I did not name that tour, and I fought it tooth and nail,” said Daniels.
Aren’t you a HERO to TRUMP HATERS?
“I don’t know.”
“Didn't you say the white men were gone, and now your fan base is gay couples and the Resistance?”
RELATABLE.
“It did change, but I was not selling myself.”
Didn’t Trump still deny it in 2018 when he was not running for office, boom gotcha? Didn’t you have sex with a cameraman while you were married to your husband?
“No, we were separated.”
“You said you'll be instrumental in putting President Trump in jail?” asked Necheles.
DANIELS: Show me where I said instrumental.
Necheles showed her a tweet where someone called her a “human toilet.” “Here's your tweet: ‘Making me the best person to flush the orange turd down.’”
DANIELS: It doesn't say Trump, just ‘orange turd.’ If you want to interpret it that way …
NECHELES: What did you mean by ‘orange turd’?
DANIELS: Oh, I absolutely meant Mr. Trump.
NECHELES: On Twitter you celebrated and tried to sell merchandise in your online store, right? You have a store?
DANIELS: Sure.
NECHELES: You wrote, “Don't want to spill my champagne, merch orders pouring in,” right?
DANIELS: Yes
NECHELES: This was you shilling your merch, right?
DANIELS: I am doing my job. Not unlike Mr. Trump.
Fucking right! When Trump makes money telling Jeff McConney to avoid paying invoices, peddle-shilling NFTs, vodka, steak, shoes, books, board games, steaks … why, that’s just the Art of Being Rich! But HOW DARE SHE MAKE MONEY from SEEEXXXX instead of a respectable profession, like Sunday School teacher, double-bookkeeper, or lawyer for a mobster nicknamed “Benny Eggs”?
NECHELES: Your merchandise is you bragging getting President Trump indicted, right?
DANIELS: I got President Trump indicted?
Heh.
NECHELES: You're making $40 for every "Stormy Saint of Indictments" candle?
DANIELS: I only make about $7 per.
NECHELES: Here's the Stormy Daniels Political Power comic?
DANIELS: I didn't write it
NECHELES: But you're selling it?
DANIELS: Yes
“And now you're writing a story about sex with Trump!”
"And if that story was untrue, I would have written it to be a lot better."
Excellent point.
Susie Nickles then went into at least an hour’s worth of picayune try-and-gotchas to suggest Daniels is a LIAR and CRAZY. You believe in the occult, don’t you? You told InTouch Magazine that Trump asked for your number, and now you say it was Keith Schiller! You told them you had dinner, and now you say you didn’t eat! In your book you say he was in pajamas on the bed, and now you say shorts!
Literally.
How many women out there are rethinking speaking out about a sex pest right now, hearing this stupid, hateful grilling? Maybe even some on this very jury! The only way this could be uglier is if it was squat Todd Blanche or the other one standing up there screeching the old nuts-n-sluts routine. At one point Necheles got so aggressive that Merchan told her to slow down, because she and Stormy were talking over each other.
NECHELES: In your book you wrote that you had made him your bitch, right? Because you are powerful.
DANIELS: I used to think so. […]
NECHELES: You know there is no way to check on the details of what you said happened.
Actually there is. Put your pussygrabbing rapist fraud client on the stand, to perjury-trap deny it ever happened. Go for it. That would be Team Trump’s worst nightmare, obviously, so Necheles hopes the jury is stupid and easily distracted with nonstop fast talking about Daniels, who could have said no but didn’t, therefore she made the entire thing up, and also Trump directed payments to Michael Cohen for … something very legal and very cool, probably!
NECHELES: You’ve acted and had sex in over 250 porn movies.
DANIELS: 150-ish, yeah.
NECHELES: And there are naked men and naked women having sex in those movies.
Lady, these are New Yorkers. They saw worse on the subway this morning.
NECHELES: And according to you seeing a man in a t-shirt and boxers was so offending that you got lightheaded and nearly fainted?
DANIELS: Yes, because it was Mr. Trump on the bed, an older man sitting there, I was not expecting him to be there. If I came out of the bathroom and it was not my husband, but Mr. Trump instead, I would probably have the same reaction.
NECHELES: Because he was supposedly in a t-shirt and boxer shorts, you were so upset that he wanted to have sex with you, that you couldn’t speak up? Not the first time in your life someone made a pass at you.
DANIELS: This was the first time that they had a bodyguard outside the door. And they were twice my age and bigger than me.
Necheles brayed on. You told Slate magazine you were not a victim! You said he didn’t force you! You didn’t mention the line about the trailer park! (Really, you want to remind the jury about that one?) Tuesday you said he stood over you!
DANIELS: In front of me. My own insecurities made me feel that I had to have sex with him. He did not hold me or threaten me physically or drug me. The worst thing he did was lie about “Apprentice.” He never had any intention. I blame myself for how I was feeling.
NECHELES: Your story has completely changed, hasn't it?
DANIELS: No. Not at all. you're trying to make me say that it's changed but it hasn't changed. Not at all.
Then it was morning break, and boy, did we need it. For anybody who’s had to deal with some gross, old creep and not been believed, or worried they wouldn’t be believed, it’s a tale as old as time, song as old as rhyme.
Did Susie Nickles realize on the break that she’d been on some toxic shit that’s probably turning the jury the hell off? Hell no. She went right back at it.
Is this a “Make America Horny Again” from your Instagram? Why did you tell Vogue you never felt in danger? Why didn’t you mention the bodyguard?
NECHELES: Mr. Cohen paid you, not Mr. Trump, right?
DANIELS: My lawyer Keith Davidson paid me.
NECHELES: But the money was from Mr. Cohen.
DANIELS: I understand that, but I have no proof.
NECHELES: You know this is a business records indictment?
Er, do YOU know it’s a business records indictment, Ms. Necheles?
DANIELS: There are a lot of indictments. I don’t really understand. ... I don’t know about his business records, why would I? I'm just here to answer the question asked to me.
Then it was time for the redirect, thank goodness.
Prosecutors asked Daniels what the case has cost her. She’s had to move, she owes thousands to Trump. Did she personally indict Trump, or have anything to do with him being charged? She did not.
Necheles got back up to accuse Daniels of posting mean things about Trump.
“I was defending myself," she said. “I never attack anybody first. Same with Mr. Trump. I didn’t say anything negative about him until he said it about me.”
That’s right. Trump approached her first. For the peen, for the hush, for the payoff. She didn’t drop a dime to the Wall Street Journal, she didn’t break the NDA first. So what kind of extortion is that?
Daniels reiterated that she has told the truth all along, then stepped down. Thank goodness. It was truly awful.
Next up this afternoon is junior bookkeeper and Allen Weisselberg’s assistant, Rebecca Manochio. Will Necheles hector her, too, about how horrible it is that she does her job in exchange for money that can purchase goods and services?
We will get back to it in another installment. Now a break. Time for our Silkwood shower.
Ms. Jones,
Writer to writer, if even a tenth of the whitebread political press was possessed of your grasp of moral outrage and the ability to articulate it, we’d all be a hell of a lot better off than we are now.
You’re a hell of a writer, and I hope you keep serving up white-hot analysis. No quarter.
Didn’t you want to announce you had sex with Donald Trump?!”
“No. Nobody would ever want to publicly say that.
OK, that made my day.