Stormy Daniels Deserves Your Respect
Enough with the cheap insults
Journalist Andrew Desiderio asked Sen. John Fetterman on Tuesday if he planned to speak up for President Joe Biden and his struggling campaign at a Senate lunch meeting. Fetterman’s response was his typical trolling, which seems more appropriate for the glory days of July 2020 when Biden was up nine points over Donald Trump and it looked as if democracy might yet prevail.
“I’m gonna suggest maybe we can encourage Joe Biden to bang a porn star or maybe he could become consumed with revenge and say crazy things and have a plan for 2025,” Fetterman said.
Trump is a rapist who repeatedly defamed his victim, and a jury convicted him less than two months ago for falsifying business records as part of a coverup to influence the 2016 presidential election. Yet, Fetterman leads with Trump’s consensual sex with “a porn star.” During that Ali vs. Larry Holmes fight posing as a presidential debate, Biden also jabbed Trump for “having sex with a porn star.” House Democrats have repeatedly dinged Trump over his relationship with a “porn star.” The porn star’s name is Stormy Daniels, and having sex with Trump was beneath her dignity not the rapist felon’s.
Stormy Daniels isn’t a cheap punchline, senator
Daniels was born Stephanie Gregory in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Her family didn’t have much money, and she said “there [were] days without electricity.” She was reportedly a serious, shy student in high school with aspirations of becoming a veterinarian (she loves horses) or a journalist, but lack of money often limits options. She started stripping at 17. Yes, she later starred in adult films. I’m sure Fetterman has at least some passing acquaintance with that product offering.
She met Trump at a celebrity golf tournament in 2006. He was 60 and she was 27. Trump had married Melania the previous year, and their son Barron was just a few months old when Trump told Daniels, “I want to come talk to you later.”
They’d agreed to meet for dinner, but when Daniels arrived at Trump’s hotel suite, he was waiting for her in pajama pants. She tried to put him off: “Oh, I just thought we would relax here.” Food was brought to the room, and Trump dangled the possibility of Daniels appearing on The Apprentice. After an awkward discussion about adult film royalty payments, Daniels excused herself and went to the bathroom. When she came out, Trump was waiting for her on the bed, now just wearing what she called his “tighty-whiteys.” She claims the thought that went through her head was “Ugh, here we go.”
“I wasn’t expecting someone to be there, especially minus a lot of clothing,” she said. “The next thing I know, I was on the bed.”
She testified at Trump’s New York trial that although she wasn’t physically or verbally threatened, she knew that Trump’s bodyguard was right outside. That didn’t make her body feel safer, though. She called out the power imbalance: Trump was “was bigger and blocking the way.” She’s since joked about the routine, bland sex she endured (without a condom), but that feels like gallows humor not enthusiastic consent. She revealed on the stand that while they had sex, she tried to think “of anything other than what was happening.”
“It was really hard to get my shoes because my hands were shaking so hard,” she said in court. “He said: ‘Oh, it was great. Let’s get together again, honey bunch … I just wanted to leave.”
When Trump’s critics reduce Daniels to an unnamed “porn star,” they suggest this was a straightforward transactional encounter with a sex worker. It’s wasn’t, and Daniels recalls thinking at the time, “Please don’t try to pay me.” There’s no shame in sex work, either, but Trump only paid Daniels for her silence, a decade later when he was running for president. Daniels’ personal recollection of that night should seem familiar to women who’ve found themselves in a similar situation. She didn’t tell many people about what happened in Trump’s hotel suite. “I was ashamed,” she said.
Trump cheated on his third wife who was at home with their newborn son, but instead Biden and Fetterman focus on Daniels’ profession, as if that’s where our moral outrage should rest.
Stormy Daniels put her life on the line for justice
In an article I wrote for Public Notice, I argued that the $130,000 Trump secretly paid Daniels in 2016 likely changed the course of history, ensuring his upset victory over Hillary Clinton. After the Access Hollywood tape, Trump’s campaign was on the ropes and the public discovering that he’d had an affair with an adult film actress “would have solidified Trump’s sleazeball image with the undecided voters he needed to swing his way.”
It’s an unfortunate reality that Daniels’ profession would’ve proven more politically damaging to Trump than the affair itself, but that doesn’t mean Democrats should continue to disparage Daniels, especially after she risked everything to help hold Trump accountable for at least one of his crimes.
Corrupt MAGA judges have helped Trump avoid trial in most of his federal cases. He’s only a convicted felon — for all the good it’s doing Democrats — because Daniels testified against him in open court and held her own under cross-examination. This took a tremendous amount of courage, as she put herself in the crosshairs of Trump’s perpetual vengeance machine. She’d endured a flood of vicious death threats prior to Trump’s indictment. “I was completely sure that I was going to die,” she said. She thought the justice system had “failed in every way” to protect her, but she still took the stand. As Daniels delivered her damning testimony, Trump didn’t bother concealing his rage. It was so bad that Judge Juan Merchan had to warn Trump’s lawyers.
“I understand that your client is upset at this point, but he is cursing audibly, and he is shaking his head visually and that’s contemptuous. It has the potential to intimidate the witness and the jury can see that,” Merchan said. “I am speaking to you here at the bench because I don’t want to embarrass him.”
Fetterman is very concerned about what’s fair to Joe Biden: “I’m unwilling to discard a great president, a decent man and a loving father after 50 years in public service, over a 90 minute debate,” he said last week, but he’s perfectly willing to discard Stormy Daniels, who he treats as beneath his contempt. Biden and Fetterman should prioritize Daniels’ well-being and at least try to empathize with the legitimate fear she must feel as she watches Trump inch closer by the day to absolute power. He’s not a man who’s known for his forgiveness, and Daniels has every reason to worry that she’ll become a target for Trump’s officially sanctioned SEAL Team Six assault.
The sick threats against Daniels have only escalated since Trump’s conviction, and she’s had to move. She told MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow last week that MAGA thugs have sent social media messages threatening “to rape everybody in my family, including my young daughter, before they killed them.”
Daniels gained very little from telling the truth. Instead, she’s lost “mostly my peace, mostly my daughter’s privacy, and time — time I’ll never get back with her.”
Think about this whenever you’re tempted to dismiss Stormy Daniels — or anyone, really — as just a “porn star.”
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I was watching a comedy special where the comic had an ex who assumed at some point the comic, who is straight, had given another man a blowjob “out of politeness”. The joke being that no one would ever do that. The absolute privilege of that statement!
I guarantee more women than not have felt that same twisting, gut-wrenching realization of finding oneself in a situation where no threats have been leveled but knowing one is in danger, nonetheless. Those long seconds where the decision to make a scene, inviting violence, or to figure out the fastest way to get out of there with one’s life intact. So many predators bank on women especially being socialized to be polite and not make a scene. So many predators bank on holding enough control over the situation that a good number of women would do what Stormy did - decide it was just safer to submit and pray it’s over quickly. That decision is just as brave as any other.
Stormy Daniels is a patriot, a fighter, a survivor, and should be treated with respect by everyone. She’s a hero.
I follow Stormy Daniels on Xhitter, and a few days ago there was a grassroots appeal/fundraiser to help her cover $120,000 in attorneys’ fees, determined by a court in 2018 that SHE owed Drumpf. Looks like she received enough to cover the whole thing, and then some. Hell yes I sent her $$ because she’s a goddam national hero who’s directly responsible for the reason we can now call him a “convicted felon.”