Can we say that Stormy lied and justice died? This question is especially relevant now that video has emerged, courtesy of comedian-cum-commentator Bill Maher, showing that porn actress and ex-stripper Stormy Daniels’ testimony in President Donald Trump’s trial is completely contradicted by earlier statements she has made.
In other words, she likely has perjured herself. Commentator Andrea Widburg introduces the story:
[New York District Attorney] Alvin Bragg’s case against Donald Trump alleges that Trump committed multiple felonies of unknown nature by writing checks to his attorney in a way that did not violate federal campaign laws. Although the attorney had used that money to cut a check to porn actress Stormy Daniels, anything Daniels had to say about an alleged tryst with Trump is irrelevant to these ludicrous charges. But Bragg and [New York Supreme Court Judge Juan] Merchan couldn’t resist trying to embarrass Trump, so there she was. That may have been a mistake because Daniels’ testimony was a disaster…and Bill Maher has now unearthed an old Daniels interview contradicting a major part of her testimony.
One of Daniels’s main contentions on the stand was that she felt used and abused by Trump. How dare a man assume that, just because she had sex for money and was an exhibitionist and allegedly went up alone to a billionaire’s hotel room and didn’t object to his advances, she wanted to have sex. She was the victim here. She was traumatized.
Except, this is not at all what Stormy said in 2018 while being interviewed by Maher. Responding to Maher’s statement, “You say it’s not a MeToo case,” Daniels confirmed at the time, “It’s not a MeToo case.”
“I wasn’t assaulted,” she definitively explained. “I wasn’t attacked, or raped, or coerced or blackmailed.”
“They tried to shove me in the MeToo box to further their own agenda,” the porn actress continued. “And first of all, I didn’t want to be part of that because it’s not the truth and I’m not a victim in that regard.”
Maher, a lifelong Democrat who has increasingly been bucking his own party of late, played Daniels’ 2018 comments on the Friday night episode of his show Real Time. Responding to them, he then remarked, “That’s not what she’s saying now.”
“Daniels claimed that Trump ‘was bigger and blocking the way,’ that at the end of it, saying ‘my hands were shaking so hard,’ and ‘I just wanted to leave,’” reports the New York Post. “She also claimed that she ‘blacked out’ during the encou[n]ter.”
Clearly, either Daniels was lying in 2018 — for some unknown reason — or she’s lying now and perjured herself, for very obvious reasons.
As I’ve pointed out in the past, however, if you want to know what someone wants you to believe he believes, listen to what he says.
If you want to know what the person really believes, listen to how he says it.
Now, below is the video of Daniels’s 2018 comments. Watch and listen and then ask, “Do they not exude sincerity?”
The aforementioned Widburg knows where she stands. “If I were Trump’s attorneys, now that Maher has unearthed this footage, I would ask the judge to re-open her cross-examination so that I could impeach her earlier testimony,” she writes.
Unfortunately, this appears as likely as Dr. Seuss’s North-Going Zax (or a north-going illegal) suddenly and giddily turning south. As the top commenter under Widburg’s article wrote, referencing Trump trial judge Juan Merchan, “Joke Judge Merchan would break his limp wrist slamming his gavel down hard to deny that request.”
“The defense would be screaming, ‘Hasn’t this poor women been through enough?’” another poster responded.
But others may ask, isn’t enough, enough? Many observers (example below) have already noted that Daniels has “blown up” the prosecution’s case with her incredible, anti-Trump testimony.
Moving on to a deeper issue, however, there’s the cultural matter of how, to an extent, we’ve blown up people’s judgment. That is, can we acknowledge that a porn actress and ex-stripper may not exactly be the most reliable witness?
Of course, everyone deserves his “day in court,” but this doesn’t mean we need to court detachment from reality and pretend as if making a living on your back doesn’t reflect character.
This has been happening culturally, too. Just consider how strippers and even prostitutes have been portrayed positively in film for many decades now. Examples are 1983’s Flashdance and Trading Places and 2009’s The Hangover. The message:
Strippers (or prostitutes or porn actresses) aren’t damaged and desperate women with loose morals. Perish the thought! They’re much like you and me; they just have different jobs. In fact, they’re better than you are — because they’re not privileged.
This thinking’s real-world consequences are profound. Just consider the Duke University rape frame-up case in 2006. Media pseudo-elites and social activists portrayed black stripper Crystal Mangum as being more credible, and more sympathy-worthy, than the three white Duke lacrosse players she, it would later be shown, was falsely accusing of rape.
Oh, the media-beatified Mangum would subsequently be incarcerated for murder in an unrelated incident.
Then there’s how if you object to having perversely (and sometimes demonically) dressed drag queens read stories to five-year-olds, you’re the problem.
And then there’s the storm of deceit called Stormy. But at least now, according to an X user responding to the Maher video, we know who convinced her to change her story. To wit:
But, hey, the bright side is that if Stormy is willing to listen to the Founders, all hope for her is surely not lost.
