Stormy Daniels details Trump's sleazy contempt for women
It wasn't just "locker room talk."
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Adult actress and director Stormy Daniels testified yesterday about her sexual relationship with Donald Trump. Trump is on trial for paying off Daniels to prevent her from going public with the affair before the 2016 election, then allegedly falsifying business records to cover up the payments.
On the stand, Daniels provided ugly details about how Trump treated her, and about how Trump treats, and views, women. These insights are notable, but they’re not new. In 2016, leaked audio of Trump making grotesque and sexist comments about women to Access Hollywood host Billy Bush almost derailed his presidential campaign. Last year, Trump was held liable for sexual assaulting and then repeatedly defaming advice columnist E. Jean Carroll.
But Daniels’s testimony is a reminder that contempt for and mistreatment of women is a core theme of Trump’s life and politics. Both the press and Democratic opponents have struggled to make this issue central to 2024, even though abortion rights and women’s health care are the key issues of the campaign. It’s unclear whether the trial will spark more reporting and discussion of Trump’s treatment of and attitudes about women. But it should.
Daniels testified that Trump manipulated and threatened her
At trial, Daniels repeated the story she’s been telling with varying levels of detail for years about her encounters with Trump. She met him at a celebrity golf tournament in Lake Tahoe in 2006. Trump invited her to dinner and his hotel room, where according to Daniels, they had sex. (Trump denies the sex happened.)
Daniels contemplated making her story public after the Access Hollywood leak in October 2016, before the presidential election. However, Trump offered her a hush money payment of $130,000, and she agreed to remain silent. Trump’s effort to keep the payments hidden allegedly led to illegal business filings and misrepresentations, for which he is being prosecuted.
Daniels’s testimony is intended to establish the background facts of the payment. It also, though, paints Trump as a liar, a bully, and a sexual manipulator. Daniels said while she was in Trump’s hotel room, she went to the bathroom, and when he came out he was in his boxer shorts, a moment Daniels describes as “like a jump scare.” She said, “the room spun in slow motion” and she realized “I’ve put myself in this bad situation.”
Daniels is careful to emphasize that Trump did not physically coerce her. He did, however, according to Daniels, suggest that if she cooperated with him he could help her career through his connections and a possible appearance on the Celebrity Apprentice reality show, where Trump was the star. She eventually agreed to have sex even though Trump did not use a condom — she was adamant about using condoms in her adult film shoots.
She testified that during sex she stared at the ceiling and tried to think of something else, and afterwards she had trouble dressing because her hands were shaking. She said, “I felt ashamed that I didn’t stop it and that I didn’t say no.”
Daniels kept in touch with Trump for some time because he was still offering her the chance to appear on Celebrity Apprentice, which would have been a huge mainstream boost to her career. She met with Trump once more in Los Angeles, at which point “he kept trying to make sexual advances, putting his hand on my leg, scooting closer." She rebuffed him, and in a later phone call he admitted he was not going to put her on his television show. At that point she ceased communicating with him.
Again, Daniels has not accused Trump of sexual harassment or violence, and she says their encounter was consensual. Her testimony makes clear, though, that Trump was pressuring her for sex in return for business opportunities — a variation on the ugly tradition of the Hollywood casting couch. We don’t know if Trump ever had any intention of keeping his promises or of helping Daniels. But whether he did or not, his actions as she describes them were sleazy at best, and she found the experience painful and traumatic enough to leave her literally shaking.
Nor was Trump done with her. In 2011, Daniels was approached by In Touch magazine to discuss her relationship with Trump. She agreed to the interview. Afterwards she said that she was approached by a man in a Las Vegas parking lot who threatened her and told her not to talk about Trump. She was scared to go to the police. The In Touch story was spiked after Trump’s lawyers threatened to sue.
Trump is who he says he is
Trump denies having sex with Daniels. But her story — that Trump used his celebrity and influence in the television industry to pressure her into sex — is consistent with Trump’s own claims about how he treats women. In the Access Hollywood tape, Trump infamously boasted that he used his status and power to harass them and worse.
“You know I'm automatically attracted to beautiful ... I just start kissing them,” he said. “It's like a magnet. Just kiss. I don't even wait. And when you're a star they let you do it. You can do anything."
He added that he was so famous and influential he could even grope women with impunity.
“You can do anything,” he said.
Following the release of the Access Hollywood tape, Trump insisted that it was just “locker room talk,” and that he does not actually harass or abuse women. Republicans still pretend to believe him. But Daniels’s testimony indicates Trump in fact did just as he said and used his wealth and power to pressure women for sex.
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Daniels is far from the only woman who has come forward to say that Trump treats women poorly. After the Access Hollywood tape came out, at least 18 women have accused him of sexual misconduct over a period spanning almost five decades.
Jessica Leeds said that Trump groped her on an airplane in the late 70s. Cathy Heller says that Trump grabbed her and tried to kiss her without her consent when she visited Mar-A-Lago in the late 90s. Bridget Sullivan, a Miss Universe contestant in 2000, said that Trump, who co-owned the pageant, would come into the dressing room when contestants were naked. (Trump boasted about entering pageant locker rooms in an interview with Howard Stern.)
E. Jean Carroll’s accusations have been the most damning. In 2019, Carroll said Trump assaulted her in a dressing room in 1995 or 1996 while she desperately tried to fight him off. Trump denied the charges and insulted Carroll’s integrity and character repeatedly. That led her to sue him for defamation. She won $83.3 million in damages, and jury also found Trump liable for sexual assault.
Entitlement, abuse, and abortion
Trump’s treatment of women ranges from what a jury found to be assault, to allegations of groping, harassment, and manipulation.
The common thread that links all these accusations and statements is Trump’s sense of immense impunity and privilege. He owns the Miss Universe pageant, so he should be allowed to see the contestants naked; he owns Mar-A-Lago, so he can kiss women who show up there, regardless of consent. He was a reality television star, so he should be allowed to use his fame to sleep with whomever he wants.
In her book Entitled, philosopher Kate Manne explains that misogyny is not necessarily defined by hatred of women. Instead, she argues, misogyny is often best understood as “an illegitimate sense of male entitlement.”
When Trump says, “When you’re a star they let you do it. You can do anything,” he’s saying that as an powerful, important, famous man, he can do anything to women. They will not object and if they do, based on his treatment of Carroll, he will just ignore them. Women are there for Trump’s aggrandizement. Their own desires and preferences — for bodily autonomy, for respect, for privacy, for professional respect and career opportunities, are, to Trump, irrelevant.
Trump’s treatment of women and his sense of entitlement are especially disturbing given the current state of abortion rights. The conservative Supreme Court, packed with far right Trump appointees, ended federal abortion rights in the US in 2022. Trump has recently tried to claim that he’s not an abortion extremist, and he’s said that he would not sign a federal abortion ban.
But we know that Trump lies to and about women; he has literally been found liable for defaming a woman he sexually assaulted. We know that he does not respect women’s bodily integrity. Daniels’s testimony, too, suggests Trump is willing to say whatever he feels he needs to in the moment to get what he wants, and has no compunction about failing to deliver on his promises to women.
Daniels is offering evidence in a trial about false business filings and about a conspiracy to affect the 2016 election. But she’s also providing more evidence, if any is needed, that Trump is a misogynist bully who thinks women exist for him rather than for themselves. Whatever the result of this trial, Daniels makes it clear that Trump should never again have power over anyone — and certainly not over women.
That’s it for today
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I agree that the Access Hollywood tape is probably not 'locker room talk'. But let's be charitable and say it is. What sort of creep would want to falsely brag (he was clearly bragging) about repeatedly sexually assaulting women? A sort of creep who is utterly unfit for any sort of elected office. The people who voted for him in 2016 should hang their heads in shame,
"...contempt and mistreatment of women is a core theme of Trump’s life and politics. Both the press and Democratic opponents have struggled to make this issue central to 2024, even though abortion rights and women’s health care are the key issues of the campaign. " It's not just a core theme for Trump but also for many Republicans who support Trump, and silence is complicity. As most women know, this attitude is directly related to abortion rights. Women are secondary to men; they are breeders who have no independent rights. Women who die while pregnant or soon after are simply collateral damage. Those who publicly claim women kill their children after birth should be publicly shamed to prove it. There's more outrage at Kristi Noem killing a dog (which is horrid) then women dying while pregnant. Make America Great Again wants to go back to the days when women had few economic and social rights, and few choices. Vote Blue to protect yourself, your sister, your cousin, your niece, your aunt, your children, your grandchildren and all pregnant people. I'm 72, well past child rearing, but this issue is about all women in the US.