One More Thing …

The Hill: Lawyer paid $130k to silence adult-film star over sexual encounter with Trump: report. The Wall Street Journal broke the story, looks like.

The Wall Street Journal reported that Michael Cohen, an attorney for the Trump Organization at the time and now Trump’s personal lawyer, arranged for Stephanie Clifford, known in the industry as Stormy Daniels, to receive $130,000 as part of a nondisclosure agreement one month before the 2016 presidential election.

Clifford has privately told sources interviewed by the Journal that she and Trump had a consensual sexual encounter in 2006, the year after he and Melania Trump were married. Clifford was 27 years old at the time of the alleged encounter in Lake Tahoe.

I’m less interested in what went on with Ms. Clifford than I am in how Sarah Sanders is going to dismiss it while insulting reporters for even bringing it up.

13 thoughts on “One More Thing …

  1. From top to bottom, this is a nothing scandal. In a scandal someone has betrayed a trust or proven to be something unexpectedly evil, immoral, or illegal (note: unexpectedly). According to this "scandal", the president was unfaithful to his wife and spent some bucks having sex with a professionally sexy woman. Yawn. So what? He probably did that forty times a year, for the past forty years. Everything we know about him supports that supposition.

    Then, scandalously, he had his lawyer pay her off when she threatened to go public. Yawn. Ditto on the above notice about how that describes his entire life, as we understand his entire life: sue, lie about, or pay off anything that causes trouble.

    How will Sarah Sanders defend him? Nope, not interesting at all. I stopped reading about her lies and twisted responses months ago.

    Yes, I wish our president wasn't a sleazy creature of the highest order. But he is. It's not news anymore that he is. There's no scandal here, although I wish we still lived in a world where this was scandalous.

  2. #erinyes,

    For all we know, they just sat and talked.  For people like trump, it is far more important that others think they had sex than actually doing something.

  3. John M from Ct: I agree that this is the kind of thing that sane countries in Europe and elsewhere do not sweat about or regard as scandalous. And it should not detract from the things they do sweat about, things which will damage our standing abroad for a decade or more, things that make Trump an unwelcome visitor in their lands. We can only hope that the Obamas get an invitation to the royal wedding later this year. That will make a point that needs to be made about how presidents should be expected to act. 

  4. From top to bottom, this is a nothing scandal.

    Yeah, until it is reported that the $130,000. came from campaign donations or the RNC. Knowing Trump's history you can be sure that money didn't come from Trump's pocket. Or the fact that if Stormy decides that there is more money to be made by breaching a non disclosure agreement with a tell-all book.  Trump is not in a position to defend himself any longer. If she decides to fabricate or even hint at an elaborate tale describing a bizarre sexual encounter with Trump that entails a deviant sexual appetite or desire Trump will be helpless fight against it.

     He can't afford get dragged into the virtual mine field of giving a deposition. Especially one where his sex life is at issue. No pun intended and maybe it wouldn't be the first time…But Stormy would have him by the balls..so to speak.

  5. erinyes… Check out some of Stormy's online videos. Your sense of surprise that she would admit to having sex with Trump will quickly disappear.. She doesn't seem to be discriminate in her choice of partners, and for her, having sex with Trump would be just another day at the office.

  6. To all,

    Yeah, sadly this is a nothing-burger.

    Just like it would be in Europe – only for a differen reason.  There, they don't treat sexual trysts by their leaders as career enders.

    Here, a sexual tryst by a Democrat is pretty much a career ender, or a near ender.  See:  Hart, Gary, and Clinton, William J.

    As for Republicans – the (allegedly) family values party – Jesus is the 'get out of  political jail' free card.  All a GOP pol has to do is admit the affair, and say that he (I don't know if this works for female GOP pols) made a personal call to The Son of God, and that after explaining the awkward situation,  Jesus and his Father absolutely forgave him.  "Well, if'n Jesus kin forgive 'im, then so kin we!" 

    Now, for this tRUMPian tryst to really harm him, we'd have to find out that he was part of a three-way:

    tRUMP,

    Stormy Daniels, and

    Some male p*rn star whose nickname was, "The HORSE!"

    I think THIS might be one story that, no matter how many times tRUMP claimed Jesus forgave him, even the most gullible Fundamentalist Evangelical "Christian" tRUMPaLOONpa rube could forgive his/her hoary orange hero for.

     

     

  7. The real story appears to be that several (read: hundreds) of women were paid off by the sleazy bagman (read: lawyer) just before the election cycle.

  8. In a double-standard, media driven both-siderist world, this stuff has become sadly acceptable, for a republican.  In that context, yes, it isn't a scandal.  For a democrat,  though, it would be.  I give you Gary Hart and John Edwards, as examples.  Their careers were utterly destroyed over stuff like this.  Bill Clinton got impeached for it, and history will assign his presidency an asterisk as a result.

    The irony here is the GOP is the party of morally superior, "family values" and yet when a republican is caught with his pants down, sometimes literally, then it is waived away as if, that's what they do, we shouldn't be surprised.

    If I as a parent allowed one child to continue to engage in bad behavior because, "that's what he does" while punishing the other severely on the off chance he engaged in similar behavior, I would negate my purpose as a parent.  Same thing here, yes, republicans do this stuff all the time, but we negate our standing as a society among ourselves and in the world when we just waive away bad behavior like this as "business as usual."

    There's been discussion around the potential normalization of Trump's behavior, for fear of the impact of what it will do to society.  Calling this a "nothing burger" has the same affect. Republicans should be held to the same standard we hold anyone else to.

     

  9. What this means is that Mueller is looking into Cohen's bank records. He is the fixer. It shows you where they are.

  10. http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2018/01/stormy-daniels-once-claimed-she-spanked-donald-trump-with-a-forbes-magazine/

    Well here we go… true to my 12:53 pm comment above. Sometimes I think I should change my screen name to Nostradamus. Just kidding! It wasn't really a difficult call. Anybody who's been keeping an eye on Trump could've figured out that a story involving Trump and sex wasn't going to just end up with a ho hum, what else is new? Nothing too bizarre, so far, but I'm sure as the story develops some of Trump's kinks will make their way into newsprint.

    Forbes magazine?…personally, if I was into that kind of kink I would prefer a Reader's Digest or National Geographics magazine.

    http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2018/01/stormy-daniels-once-claimed-she-spanked-donald-trump-with-a-forbes-magazine/

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