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Justin Lane

The woman who walked into Manhattan court this week, subpoenaed by prosecutors in People v. <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/donald-trump/" target="_blank" class="contextual_link">Donald Trump</a>, is also known as Stephanie Clifford, but on this occasion, she specified that she was to be addressed as Stormy Daniels: D-A-N-I-E-L-S, as she spelled it out for the record. She unleashed a torrent of words at a speed that left court reporters struggling to keep up and that had lawyers and New York Supreme Court Justice <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2023/03/31/trump-judge-merchan-indictment/" target="_blank" class="contextual_link">Juan Merchan</a> imploring her to slow down.

Daniels was there to testify in the criminal trial that alleges that Trump falsified business records to conceal hush money payments to her. She was there to help convince the jury that the defendant had the capacity to be <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2024/04/20/trump-hush-money-increasingly-quaint-notion-embarrassment/" target=_blank>embarrassed</a> enough about his actions that he would take pains to hide them from an electorate that still had the capacity to be shocked. Trump has denied even having sex with Daniels. She was exhaustive in her retort.

Her vivid, detailed testimony didn’t drift into the weeds so much as it blossomed into a field. One that was so sprawling and wide open that there was no place for the former president to hide. Trump was wholly exposed.

Daniels spoke expansively and specifically about herself and about Trump. She reminisced about her childhood dream to become a veterinarian and about being accepted into Texas A&amp;M University on a full scholarship. She expounded on the intricacies of the adult-film industry, from budgets to condom requirements. And she contrasted the modest image that most people envision when they hear “hotel room” with the reality of the sprawling penthouse accommodations where she and the defendant had their <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/05/08/stormy-daniels-transcript-trump-trial/" target=_blank>alleged sexual encounter</a> in 2006, when she was 27 and he was 60. The Lake Tahoe resort suite, she said, had “almost a full-size dining room table with a full-size — some people call it a buffet, some people call it a credenza, depending on where you are from.”

Clifford is from Louisiana. But Daniels? To use a provenance favored by Trump, she is from <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/donald-trump-is-holding-a-government-casting-call-hes-seeking-the-look/2016/12/21/703ae8a4-c795-11e6-bf4b-2c064d32a4bf_story.html" target="_blank">central casting</a>. Daniels testified that Trump told her “you remind me of my daughter because she is smart and blond and beautiful and people underestimate her as well.” The porn actress and director is a physical archetype of the sort of women who surround Trump. And on the witness stand, she demonstrated some of the very traits that define the man himself, including his laser focus on making money and his liberal use of mockery and belittlement as both a weapon and a defense.

Much has been made about the <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CtzUsWdC2fI" target=_blank>explicit nature</a> of Daniels’s testimony, which Trump’s lawyers deemed so prejudicial that they twice requested <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/05/09/stormy-daniels-testimony-cross-examination/" target=_blank>a mistrial</a>, which was twice denied. But Daniels’s testimony was really only salacious by the squeamish standards of Americans when it comes to any conversation about sex between adults.

“Was it brief?” the prosecutor asked.

The testimony was neither lurid nor gynecological, but it was certainly bruising to the image of a man who once reportedly engineered the <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/04/23/trump-tabloid-history/" target=_blank>tabloid headline</a> “Best Sex I’ve Ever Had,” which was attributed to his second wife, Marla Maples.

Daniels’s testimony, which was spread over two days, was distinguished by her mannerly use of “ma’am” and her professed belief in the enduring appeal of American capitalism. “I would rather make money than people make money off me,” Daniels said regarding a gossip magazine interview about her liaison with Trump that she agreed to do for cash.

Daniels accomplished, with precision and simplicity, what Trump has taken glee in doing to others. She made him look <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2024/04/23/call-him-president-trump-pretty-please/" target=_blank>small</a>. She depicted him as needy and basic and silly. She declared him “old.” When prosecutors asked Daniels to identify Trump in the courtroom, she did so by mentioning his navy blazer and his position at the defendant’s table, as if simply pointing at the former president would not have provided absolute clarity. As she narrated their interaction in his hotel suite, she described the self-proclaimed billionaire’s Walmart taste in toiletries — Old Spice, Pert Plus — and suggested that his shaving kit might have been some sort of cheap plastic, “There was a leather, or like a leather looking toiletry bag on the counter with products and stuff in it …”

She made plain that she’d confronted him about his hubris. She complained that he asked her questions and then didn’t bother letting her answer them. She highlighted his insecurity: “He kept cutting me off and it was almost like he wanted to one-up me, which was just really hilarious when you think about it.”

Charly Triballeau

Yes, it’s funny in a sad and pathetic way. Here was a man more than twice Daniels’s age who’d meticulously crafted a reputation as a billionaire developer and then used the brand he’d created to turn himself into a reality television star with “The Apprentice.” Still, he felt the need to interrupt, to beat his chest, to boast about being on magazine covers and to dangle the possibility of a role on “The Apprentice,” as a way of holding Daniels’s interest. The basics of this story are not unusual; bragging and gamesmanship is what some men with money and power have been known to do ever since there was Hollywood, recording studios, Wall Street, business offices, blue-collar assembly lines and white-collar cubicles. Daniels painted Trump as common and predictable, which is exactly what Trump has worked so hard not to be.

He didn’t want to be an ordinary builder working on nondescript housing in Queens. He didn’t want to be an average sex partner. He didn’t want to be a run-of-the-mill bureaucrat meticulously working through the system. He didn’t want to be a guy-next-door patriot abiding by the norms and traditions of the country. He didn’t want to be a docile defendant quietly submitting to the rule of law. But here he was. He was forced to listen to the smart blonde who was constantly underestimated tell the world how she “swatted” him with a rolled-up magazine bearing his picture and how he was more polite after he’d been disciplined. It’s hilarious when you think about it.

Daniels sparred with a defense lawyer who suggested that her work in pornography made her skilled at making up stories about sex. She explained that the sex is real, which is why it’s called pornography. The defense said her statements were inconsistent. She accused them of trying to trick her into saying something that wasn’t true. Unlike the women who worked for Trump and who also have testified — Rhona Graff, Madeleine Westerhout, <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/05/03/trump-hush-money-trial-hope-hicks-testimony/" target=_blank>Hope Hicks </a>— Daniels did not marvel at his success as a businessman. She didn’t extol his ability to multitask. She didn’t cry. Daniels was the singular character who said that, yes, she hated Trump.

Cloaked in black, a pair of eyeglasses perched on her head, Daniels had a lot to say. Perhaps too much. Her words were embarrassing and diminishing of Trump. They were explicit. But very few of them were about sex.

Pulitzer Prize for criticism, 2006

Princeton University, BA in English

University of Michigan, MA in journalism

Robin Givhan is senior critic-at-large writing about politics, race and the arts. A 2006 Pulitzer Prize winner for criticism, Givhan has also worked at Newsweek/Daily Beast, Vogue magazine and the Detroit Free Press.

Robin Givhan

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Former US president Trump's hush money criminal trial continues in New York City, USA - 09 May 2024

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