'Bizarre timeline': Columnist laments 'political madness' of Stormy Daniels’ lurid testimony

07 May 2024

On Tuesday, adult film star and director Stormy Daniels took the witness stand in former President Donald Trump's ongoing criminal trial in Manhattan. One columnist used her testimony as an example of how "bizarre" American politics has become.

Even though Judge Juan Merchan took great care to keep Daniels from disclosing the salacious details of their encounter, Daniels and prosecutors still occasionally veered into risqué territory, particularly when Daniels recounted how Trump was wearing silk pajamas, asked her to spank him with a magazine and didn't wear a condom during their 2006 rendezvous. While Daniels maintained the encounter was consensual, she added that it was unpleasant, and that the reality TV producer and business magnate reportedly told her that sleeping with him was "the only way you're getting out of the trailer park."

"I was trying to think about anything other than what was happening there," Daniels said of their encounter at a Lake Tahoe casino hotel. "I didn't say anything at all."

In his latest column, MSNBC producer Steve Benen wrote that Daniels' nearly four-hour testimony marked a low point in American politics. He commented on a New York Times report in which young voters who will be casting their first ballots in 2024 (an 18-year-old today would have been nine when Trump first announced his presidential campaign in 2015) can't remember politics without Trump, and lamented that "folly has become normal."

"Too much of the political world has simply become acclimated to truly ridiculous circumstances — such as those unfolding today in a Manhattan courtroom," Benen wrote. "Many have gotten so used to Trumpified politics that it becomes easy to lose sight of the fact that we’re confronted, on a daily basis, with insanity that would’ve been unthinkable in the recent past."

To underscore that point, Benen contrasted the airing of Trump's dirty laundry with the comparatively vanilla examples of former President Bill Clinton's extramarital affairs, and former President Ronald Reagan sparking controversy for being the first divorced president. He acknowledged those controversies seemed "quaint" when put side-by-side with Judge Merchan's request for witnesses and prosecutors to not discuss the defendant's genitalia.

"It’s worth pausing from time to time to realize not only that American politics hasn’t always been like this, but also that it doesn’t have to remain this way," he added. "Breaking free of a bizarre timeline is a matter of will. It can start with realizing that the broader context surrounding Trump’s trial reflects political madness."

The encounter in question is one of the events at the center of the trial, in which Trump is accused of covering up hush money payments to alleged mistresses in order to prevent American voters from learning about them prior to the 2016 election. American Media Inc. executive David Pecker testified at the start of Trump's trial about how his publication, the National Enquirer, engaged in a "catch-and-kill" scheme to pay Daniels for the rights to her story in order to prevent it from running.

Pecker testified that he was under the impression that Trump wanted to kill the story not out of a desire to protect his wife and his family, but to help his campaign. Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg's 34-count indictment alleges that Trump's cover up of the hush money payments for political reasons made them illegal campaign contributions.

Daniels' night with Trump at Lake Tahoe took place in early 2006, not long after Trump's wife, Melania, gave birth to their son, Barron. She said that while Trump dangled an offer of an appearance on his NBC show The Apprentice in exchange for her sleeping with him, she was never cast.

Click here to read Benen's full column on MSNBC's website.

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