Stormy Daniels on Trump Indictment: ‘It’s Vindication’
“I’ve seen him naked. There’s no way he could be scarier with his clothes on,” said porn star Stormy Daniels in an interview with UK newspaper The Times, when asked how she feels about potentially testifying against former President Trump. Daniels, who is at the center of a criminal case against the former president related to his 2016 hush money payment to her, gave her first public comments on the matter since Trump’s indictment was announced Thursday.
As the case moves forward, Daniels is concerned that her own safety may be at risk, explaining that while at the time the scandal between her and Trump first broke in 2018 people called her a “’gold digger’, ‘slut’, ‘whore’, ‘liar’ whatever,” this time it’s “‘I’m gonna murder you’. [the reactions are] way more violent and graphic.’”
Daniels lays the blame with Trump himself for “inciting violence and encouraging it.”
“He’s already gotten away with inciting a riot, and causing death and destruction,” Daniels said, adding that “whatever the outcome is, it’s going to cause violence, and there’s going to be injuries and death…There’s the potential for a lot of good to come from this. But either way, a lot of bad is going to come from it, too.”
Regardless of the outcome, the actress says that while sometimes she regrets coming forward about her affair and its subsequent fallout, she would “still do the same thing,” if given the chance to go back, because “it was the right thing to do.”
Trump’s entanglement with Stephanie “Stormy Daniels” Clifford allegedly began with a sexual relationship during the George W. Bush era, when the married Trump starred on The Apprentice, and Clifford hoped to land a spot on reality show. When the former president later campaigned for the White House, Clifford was about to spill the tea to the press in an “October surprise” — but was instead persuaded to sign a non-disclosure agreement in exchange for a $130,000 payment from Trump’s fixer Michael Cohen. Cohen was later disbarred and served approximately 13 months in prison after admitting he made the $130,000 payment to Daniels and that Trump reimbursed him for it.
“It’s vindication,” Daniels said in the interview. “But it’s bittersweet. He’s done so much worse that he should have been taken down [for] before. I am fully aware of the insanity of it being a porn star. But it’s also poetic. This pussy grabbed back.”