In a new documentary, adult film star and producer Stormy Daniels remarked that even before former President Donald Trump was elected to office, he took advantage of the imbalance of power between the two when they first met.
The Daily Beast's Laura LeMoon wrote Saturday that Daniels (whose government name is Stephanie Clifford) delved into the details of her first encounter with Trump in the documentary Stormy, which is streaming on Peacock. The two met in July of 2006 at a charity golf tournament in Lake Tahoe, Nevada, when Daniels was just 27 years old and Trump was a wealthy 60-year-old businessman known at the time for his NBC reality show The Apprentice. Notably, that encounter took place just months after Trump's wife, Melania, gave birth to his third son, Barron.
At the event, Trump invited Daniels to his hotel for dinner. While she arrived early and was planning to discuss business with the entertainment mogul, the eventual 45th president of the United States was clad in black silk pajamas when she knocked on the door of his room.
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"He was a playboy and he was used to getting his way," Daniels said of Trump, whom she described as a "goofy reality star."
According to Daniels, Trump propositioned her after he came out of the bathroom. Daniels made it clear that while the experience was consensual, she felt pressured to not decline his advances due to his stature and influence.
"I didn’t want it, but I allowed it to happen," she said of their sexual encounter in the documentary. "I blame myself because I didn't shut his a-- down in the moment."
After Trump's ascension to power, journalist Anderson Cooper asked Daniels point-blank if she wanted to sleep with Trump at the time, with her responding, "No. But I didn't say no."
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"As a sex worker myself, I can tell you that most people assume an adult film actress is fair game," LeMoon wrote. "[Daniels] does it for a living, people might argue, so why would her 'no' count? And it’s not hard to imagine a certain presumption on the part of a man who has said he likes to 'grab 'em by the p---y.'"
"To be clear, I would never attempt to define Daniels’ experience for her. She is the only one with authority to speak on her experiences," she added. "Daniels has historically said in interviews that this was not 'rape.' However, the documentary brings up questions around the issue of consent, power, and misogyny that go beyond just one woman’s experience."
Daniels is likely to retell her story at the former president's upcoming criminal trial in Manhattan, where he is charged with nearly three dozen felony counts of falsifying business records relating to a $130,000 payment to the adult film star in exchange for her silence about their affair in 2016. Even though that charge is normally a misdemeanor, District Attorney Alvin Bragg is arguing that because it was for the purposes of advancing his presidential bid that the hush money payment was an illegal campaign contribution.
The trial itself is scheduled to take place in late April, after Bragg pushed for and received a 30-day delay in proceedings. That delay came about after Trump's lawyers requested documents relating to the DOJ's prosecution of former Trump attorney and fixer Michael Cohen — a key witness for the prosecution. While the DOJ dumped more than 200,000 pages, Bragg's office stated recently that only a few hundred pages are actually relevant to the case.
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