Porn star Stormy Daniels and her attorney Michael Avenatti: NBC

By Glynn Wilson –

Porn star and stripper Stormy Daniels appears to be beating President Donald Trump at his own game, the media manipulation Wrestle Mania game that is.

When Trump was interviewed on the CBS News show “60 Minutes” not long after winning the presidential election in November 2016, he quizzed executive producer Jeff Fager on the ratings. His appearance didn’t break any records. But the Stormy Daniels interview that aired Sunday night is expected to shatter a few.

In spite of facing the threat of a $20 million lawsuit for breaking an alleged confidentially agreement for which she was paid $130,000 not to talk about her brief affair with Trump — an affair Trump denies and an agreement attorney Michael Cohen signed and claims to have paid for himself just a few days before the election — Daniels agreed to be interviewed by Anderson Cooper.

She divulged details of what we now find out was only a one night stand. He was just a rich businessman and reality talk show personality. He was not running for president yet. He was married to Melania at the time, who had just given birth to their son Barron, but he claimed they had separate rooms, she said.

It was not an incident involving coerced sex. She admitted it was consensual. If Trump had simply admitted that he screwed the woman this would not be such big news. But he can’t seem to tell the simple truth about anything.

The attempt to cover it up is what’s getting Trump into trouble, and he must be dumbfounded that she’s getting more media attention than he is. His Twitter feed went eerily silent on Sunday and Monday morning when Trump made it back to Washington after spending the weekend at Mar-a-Lago playing golf, skipping the March for Our Lives protest, which drew about 800,000 people to the nation’s capital to demand action from Congress to stop gun violence. He didn’t tweet about that either.

Many of the details discussed in the interview were already well known and had been reported widely. But to the extent that readers need a summary of the key points to take away from this, here they are.

Stormy Daniels is No Victim or Part of the #MeToo Movement

“I’ve never said I was a victim,” Daniels said during the interview. “I think trying to use me to further someone else’s agenda does horrible damage to people who are true victims.”

But she makes it clear that Trump was using his position as a TV star to get her to have sex with him. He enticed her to his Beverly Hills Hilton hotel room, the same room where he allegedly accosted former “Apprentice” contestant Summer Zervos, and dangling an offer to get her on “The Apprentice” in exchange for sex.

“He goes, ‘Got an idea, honeybunch – would you ever consider going on and being a contestant?’ And I laughed and said NBC’s never gonna let, you know, an adult film star be on. He goes, ‘No, no,’ he goes, ‘That’s why I want you – you’re gonna shock a lotta people, you’re smart and they won’t know what to expect.'”

In a second encounter, after which she says she refused to have sex with him again, Trump continued to dangle the offer of appearing on the show.

“He came and sat next to me and, you know, touched my hair, and put his hand on my leg, and referenced back to how great it was the last time,” Daniels says. “So I then was like, ‘Well, before, you know, can we talk about what’s the development?’ And he was like, ‘I’m almost there. I’ll have an answer for you next week.’ And I was like, ‘OK, cool. Well, I guess call me next week.’ And I just took my purse and left.”

In one of the most disgusting parts of the interview, which may remind readers of another recent Republican Trump supported for office in Alabama, Roy Moore, who was accused of chasing teen-aged girls for sex, Daniels says Trump claimed she reminded him of his daughter Ivanka.

“He was like, ‘Wow, you are special. You remind me of my daughter,” she says he said. “You’re smart and beautiful, and a woman to be reckoned with, and I like you. I like you.'”

The Physical Threat

Daniels had initially agreed to sell her story to an In Touch “sister publication” magazine back in 2011 for $15,000. The story was never published, but at that time, she claims she was approached and physically threatened by a man outside a fitness class in Las Vegas.

“I was in a parking lot, going to a fitness class with my infant daughter. Taking, you know, the seats facing backwards in the backseat, diaper bag, you know, getting all the stuff out,” Daniels said. “And a guy walked up on me and said to me, ‘Leave Trump alone. Forget the story.’ And then he leaned around and looked at my daughter and said, ‘That’s a beautiful little girl. It’d be a shame if something happened to her mom.’ And then he was gone.”

She said she would recognize the man if she saw him again and that the experience “rattled” her.

Seven years later, when Trump won the Republican nomination for president, Daniels said she was approached again by the tabloids to talk about her affair with Trump.

“The story was coming out again. I was concerned for my family and their safety,” she said. “I didn’t even negotiate. I just quickly said yes to this very, you know, strict contract. And what most people will agree with me extremely low number.”

She signed them in her real name, Stephanie Clifford, she said, because “they made it sound like I had no choice… the exact sentence used was, ‘They can make your life hell in many different ways.'”

Physical Evidence?

Daniels and her attorney Michael Avenatti are apparently holding a legal ace up their sleeves, some physical evidence of her encounters with Trump, perhaps photos, text messages, etc.

When asked to reveal physical evidence corroborating her story, Daniels said: “My attorney has recommended that I don’t discuss those things.”

Avenatti recently tweeted a photograph of a CD-Rom suggesting he might have such evidence. When Cooper asked what he would say to people who accused him of bluffing, Avenatti said only, “You should ask some of the other people in my career when they’ve bet on me bluffing.”

On Monday morning, Trump’s personal lawyer Michael Cohen issued a demand in the form of a letter, transmitted through Fox News, for Daniels to “cease and desist” discussing the case any further. He says that Daniels should “leave Trump alone” and refrain from making “false and defamatory statements” about Cohen.

Trump and Cohen could try to sue Daniels for violating the confidentiality agreement, although Trump never signed it so it may not legally be binding, and he’s publicly denied the entire affair on many occasions in speeches and on Twitter, all evidence that could be introduced in court.

While no judge or court has ruled the agreement legally invalid, yet, it is hard to see how Trump could successfully sue to stop a woman from talking about their sexual encounter when he denies it ever occurred.

Daniels sued the president back on March 6, indicating that Trump never signed the agreement for her to keep quiet about an “intimate” relationship between them.

When asked about the cease-and-desist letter on television news shows Monday morning, Avenatti said Cohen “needs to stop hiding behind pieces of paper and come clean with the American public.”