There are considerable legal repercussions for the POTUS if it can be established that the payment was made out of campaign funds.
It was a dark and stormy night. And Stephanie Clifford owned 60 minutes of it. The pornographic film star, who goes by the name of Stormy Daniels, was interviewed by CBS’s Anderson Cooper for a much-anticipated episode of 60 Minutes. One look at Clifford’s Twitter timeline shows she is the pious Republican voter’s worst nightmare. She has a comeback for every sanctimonious prude who calls her a whore or accuses her of doing anything for money (“A lie! I’d never do dishes and toilets”). In the last days of Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign, Clifford had signed a shush deal worth $130,000 to not talk about her alleged affair with Trump. That story, much more than allegations of sexual abuse or the gathering storm of anti-gun protestors, has threatened to unravel the Trump presidency. There are considerable legal repercussions for the POTUS if it can be established that the payment was made out of campaign funds.
The interview, which Trump’s lawyers tried hard to stop, moves the story along swiftly. Clifford, calm and self-assured, details not just how she spanked Trump with a magazine, and how he likens her to his daughter during sex. She also talks about how she was threatened by a man in a parking lot in 2011 in the presence of her daughter: Drop the Trump story and stay unharmed. When Trump’s lawyer approached her in 2016, she said, she was afraid enough to sign the non-disclosure agreement.
Since February, however, she has taken the ball and run with it. She has lawyered up, spoken about the affair, and also gone on a Make America Horny Again tour, just in case someone missed the connection. As American politics struggles to come to terms with the fire, fury and tweetstorms of a tabloid presidency, is Stormy Daniels the hero it was looking for? Here is a woman living the American dream, a shrewd businessman who rules a difficult and exploitative industry, and who might be the only challenger who rattles Donald Trump. He has never tweeted about her.