Prosecutor Susan Hoffinger questions Michael Cohen in New York Supreme Court on May 13, 2024
Michael Cohen today surpassed everyone’s expectations of what would happen when the New York lawyer who has been known to be a “loose cannon” took the stand.
Under direct examination by the prosecution, Cohen gave one or two-word answers repeatedly: Yes. No. I did. He did. When they got to the point of his testimony, which was to tie the Stormy Daniels payoff directly to Trump’s anxiety about how her story would affect his campaign, Cohen was stellar.
Referring to the possibility that Stormy Daniels would speak about her one night stand with Trump before election day, Trump told Cohen, “This is a disaster, a total disaster. Women will hate me.” Trump said “guys, they think it’s cool” that Trump had sex with Stormy Daniels in a hotel room in Lake Tahoe, but if women hear about it, “this is going to be a disaster for the campaign.”
Polls in 2016 already had Trump running seriously behind Hillary Clinton with women because of the Access Hollywood tape, in which Trump boasted that with women, he could “grab’em by the pussy” anytime, because “when you are a star, they let you do it. You can do anything.”
Cohen described Trump as desperate at the thought of the Stormy Daniels story coming out days before the election. “Get control of it! Just get past the election. If I win, it’ll have no relevance when I’m president. And if I lose, I don’t really care.”
When Susan Hoffinger, the attorney for the prosecution, asked Cohen if he had talked about Trump’s wife, Melania, with him, Cohen answered, “Yes.” Cohen then described Trump’s attitude about the possibility that his wife would learn about his one night stand with Daniels. “Don’t worry. How long do you think I’ll be on the market for? Not long.”
That comment is a direct reference to the idea that Melania might divorce him over the Stormy Daniels story. It is also the reason that the row of seats for family members behind the defense table has been empty for four weeks, save for one day that Trump’s son, Eric, attended the trial for part of one day. The empty seats in the family row are in full view of the jury box.
Melania has her pride, even if her husband doesn’t.
Lucian K. Truscott IV, a graduate of West Point, has had a 50-year career as a journalist, novelist, and screenwriter. He has covered Watergate, the Stonewall riots, and wars in Lebanon, Iraq, and Afghanistan. He is also the author of five bestselling novels. You can subscribe to his daily columns at luciantruscott.substack.com and follow him on Twitter @LucianKTruscott and on Facebook at Lucian K. Truscott IV.
Please consider subscribing to Lucian Truscott Newsletter, from which this is reprinted with permission.
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Sen. Tommy Tuberville
Donald Trump’s courtroom entourage has expanded in recent days, with a troupe of thirsty elected Republicans jockeying for position to win his favor. But to what end, when even Trump’s own family—except for son Eric—hasn’t bothered to show at the New York hush money trial?
Sen. Rick Scott of Florida skipped a vote last Thursday to stand by his man. On Monday, a trio of elected Republicans showed up in the Manhattan courtroom. Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance, Alabama Sen. Tommy Tuberville, and Rep. Nicole Malliotakis of New York were eager to play to the cameras, but didn’t get much of a chance to bask in the limelight.
“After traveling with him in his motorcade, court officers were ordered to prohibit us from standing with President Trump as he addressed media” and they also “prohibited us from speaking to media,” Malliotakis complained. That’s all because “They WANT to silence the truth, protect their narrative and create the false perception that he has no support. Far from it!” she claimed.
Scott insisted Thursday that he was there because “I have known Donald Trump a long time … I knew him before I was governor. I consider him a friend. And what he is going through is just despicable.”
What could Scott get out of this? Maybe he thinks Trump will return the favor by supporting his reelection campaign. Scott has also been angling for the GOP leadership spot in the Senate since 2022, and might be considering what Trump could do for him there. Or perhaps he’s vying for a Cabinet slot, like secretary of Health and Human Services? He’s certainly shown he knows his way around Medicare—or at least how to defraud Medicare to the tune of $1.7 billion. He even tried to spin that investigation to his favor Thursday, saying Trump was the victim of “political persecution,” just like him.
“By the way, I saw this. It happened to me,” Scott said on Fox News. “I fought Hillarycare, and guess what happened when I fought Hillarycare? Justice came after me and attacked me and my company.”
He could be auditioning for the role of Trump’s vice president, but he’d have a problem there. Scott would have to leave Florida to do it, since the presidential and vice presidential candidates can’t call the same state home. That didn’t stop Dick Cheney back in 2000. He just declared he was a resident of Wyoming, and the courts bought it.
Vance is the likelier veep contender. He’s been circling Trump for weeks, reportedly texting or talking daily with Don Jr. and saying all the things Trump wants to hear, including that “the main goal of this trial is psychological torture” of Trump.
“I think that when you look at all of these attacks on Donald Trump, you have to be honest with yourself and say, this is not about law and this is not about justice,” Vance said on CNN Sunday.
In that interview, Vance also blew off the fact that Trump hangs around with well-known antisemites and white nationalists like Nick Fuentes and said that he would only accept the results of the 2024 election if they are “free and fair.” That’s all music to Trump’s ears, and Vance is clearly working overtime for that coveted top-of-the-ticket favor.
Tuberville’s Monday appearance in the courtroom is probably just a ploy for media attention. It’s possible he imagines he could be Trump’s No. 2. Or maybe he’s eyeing a Cabinet position—like secretary of Defense. Tuberville probably thinks he’s an expert and proved his bona fides through his months-long blockade of military promotions.
It’s hard to believe that the biggest Trump toady of them all—South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham—hasn’t shown up yet. And other veep contenders are really letting Vance get the jump on them. Where has South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott been? Don’t forget Marco Rubio, who also has a Florida man problem, but that’s fixable.
What about North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum, who Trump likes because he’s “very rich”? Or Trump’s “killer” friend, Rep. Elise Stefanik of New York? They’re missing a big opportunity here.
Navigator collects, analyzes, and distributes real data on progressive messaging. The Hub Project's Bryan Bennett and Gabriela Parra talk with Kerry about what they are seeing in their research this election cycle, and which messaging can help progressive candidates win elections in 2024—and beyond.
Reprinted with permission from Daily Kos.
Former Trump “fixer” Michael Cohen in damning testimony Monday told jurors about Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump’s fears in 2016 when the “Access Hollywood” tape dropped, and what his real concerns were about the bombshell audio that nearly ended his nascent political career.
Cohen revealed that in 2015 when the then-real estate magnate announced he was running for president, Trump told him, “Be prepared. There’s going to be a lot of women coming forward,” according to Courthouse News.
Cohen told jurors that in 2016 “he caught wind of the fact that adult film star Stormy Daniels was shopping her story that she had sex with Trump a decade prior. Cohen said that he was concerned about the impact it could have on Trump’s presidential campaign, particularly after the release of the infamous Access Hollywood tape.”
“At this time, Mr. Trump was polling very, very low with women,” Cohen testified, adding that Trump “said to me, ‘This is a disaster.’”
“‘Women will hate me. Guys, they may think it’s cool. But this is going to be a disaster for the campaign.’”
Cohen also revealed from the witness stand that he had asked Trump how his wife, Melania Trump, was taking the news about Stormy Daniels, the adult film star who Trump allegedly paid hush money to then falsified his business records to hide the transactions in an effort to influence the election, according to prosecutors.
“How long do you think I’ll be on the market for? Not long,” Trump told Cohen, according to his former attorney.
“He wasn’t thinking about Melania,” Cohen said. “This was all about the campaign.”
CNN’s Kaitlan Collins called that a “Remarkable moment.”
The Daily Mail adds, “Asked if Trump was angry during this frantic period of damage control that could surface the Stormy Daniels story, Cohen said ‘Yes. Because there was a negative story that could impact the campaign as a result of women.’ ”
Watch MSNBC’s report below or at this link.
Reprinted with permission from Alternet.
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- Melania Irked By Hush-Money Trial and Trump's Birthday 'Celebration' ›
- 'Deny, Deny, Deny' Is No Longer Working So Well For Donald Trump ›
- How Felix Sater — Former Mob-linked Hustler And Ex-Trump Adviser — Sought To ‘Protect’ Ukraine’s Nuclear Plants ›
- Star Witness Cohen Predicts 'Surprises' In Trump Hush Money Trial ›
After the ratification of the 13th, 14th and 15th amendments to the U.S. Constitution — abolishing enslavement, awarding citizenship to Black Americans and guaranteeing their right to vote (Black men, anyway) — it was a time of progress and celebration.
African Americans were elevated to positions in cities, states and at the federal level, including American heroes such as Robert Smalls of South Carolina, first elected in 1874, who served in the U.S. House of Representatives. He was well known by then, though. His sailing skills were crucial in a dramatic escape from enslavement that saw him hijack a Confederate ship he would turn over to the U.S. Navy.
But not everyone viewed the success of Smalls and so many like him as triumphs, proof of the “all men are created equal” doctrine in the Declaration of Independence. For some whites, steeped in the tangled myth of white supremacy and superiority and shocked by the rise of those they considered beneath them, the only answer was repression and violence, often meted out at polling places and the ballot box.
It didn’t matter that these newly elected legislators, when given power, promoted policies that benefited everyone, such as universal public schooling.
In incidents throughout the South, the White League and the Klan killed Black men who had the audacity to exercise their right to vote, intimidating and silencing those who considered doing the same. In the Colfax Massacre in April 1873, an armed group set fire to the Colfax, Louisiana, courthouse, where Republicans and freed people had gathered; between 70 and 150 African Americans were killed by gunfire or in the flames. In Wilmington, North Carolina., white vigilantes intimidated Black voters at the polls, and in 1898, in a bloody coup, overthrew the duly elected, biracial “Fusion” government.
Reconstruction gave way to “Redemption,” couching a return to white domination in the pious language of religion, not the first or last time God was used so shamelessly as cover.
The perpetrators then were Democrats, allied against Lincoln’s Republican Party.
Today, it’s most often Republicans — afraid they can’t convince a majority with ideas alone — who engage in tactics to shrink the electorate to one more amenable to a “Make America Great Again” promise, one that harks back to a time that was not so great for everyone.
It’s not a coincidence that those most amenable to the leader of that movement are white Christian nationalists, eager to align a flawed messenger with a higher power, in order to gain more power on earth.
But the tools are subtle in 2024.
In Republican-led states, with like-minded legislatures, a proliferation of laws has erected hurdles to voting, ones that opponents say disproportionately hit minorities, the poor and the elderly. This week, a federal court in North Carolina is hearing a case brought by the NAACP that is fighting voter ID requirements that Republicans in the state say are not tough enough.
Donald Trump and the Republican National Committee have announced an effort to recruit 100,000 poll watchers in battleground states. You don’t have to be a mind reader to imagine where they could be stationed — Philadelphia, Atlanta, Detroit, Milwaukee — the places where minority voters are concentrated and where Trump insists fraud is going on.
From the 1980s until a few years ago, the RNC was hampered by a consent decree after complaints that posting armed, off-duty law enforcement officers at polls in minority neighborhoods just might intimidate voters. You have to wonder if they’ve learned anything.
America has seen it all before.
The Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and the Fair Housing Act of 1968, laws that simply sought to balance the scales, right wrongs and achieve some semblance of justice, were all greeted with pushback that the government was going too far, too fast — that whites were losing something when minorities gained long-denied rights.
Some in the crowd in America’s 21st-century attempted coup, on Jan, 6, 2021, toted Confederate flags and signs demanding a violent take back of a country they don’t recognize and don’t want to accept.
Trump in Time magazine echoes the grievances that have never faded away, as he lays out his plans if elected in November. He promises policies to address what he calls a “definite anti-white feeling” in America.
“If you look at the Biden administration, they’re sort of against anybody depending on certain views,” Trump told Time. “They’re against Catholics. They’re against a lot of different people. … I think there is a definite anti-white feeling in this country and that can’t be allowed either.”
No proof, of course, that Mass-attending President Joe Biden is anti-Catholic, or that African Americans, with disproportionate outcomes on everything from maternal health to housing, are cruising along. But division and victimhood are all Trump knows. He supports his followers’ views, all FBI evidence to the contrary, that discrimination and hate crimes against whites are bigger problems than discrimination and violence against African Americans.
Trump and Republicans have already succeeded in states across the country, outlawing the teaching of basic history like the facts at the top of this column, for fear the truth about hard-fought gains, often accompanied by bloody sacrifice, might hurt someone’s feelings or perhaps provoke empathy and understanding for the “other.”
Ignorance of history makes it much easier to sell the lie that the 2020 election was stolen and that byzantine rules and poll watchers are needed to prevent the same in 2024.
Trump’s antics in a Manhattan courtroom have drawn all the attention, understandable with headlines about adult film stars, tabloids and the like. Trump won, in part, in 2016 because he knew how to suck up all the oxygen in the room.
But it’s important to pay attention to the words and actions of those who only love an America that excludes rather than includes the voices and votes of all its citizens, those who look back and like the view.
We’ve seen that America — throughout history and as recently as January 2021. It wasn’t pretty.
Reprinted with permission from Roll Call.
Charlie Kirk
The Washington Post reported the Republican National Committee describes its 2024 approach as “leaner” and “more efficient” than in previous cycles, and that it intends to operate with a smaller staff and more robust partnerships with outside groups.
One of these outside groups is Turning Point USA, the conservative “youth” organization founded by Charlie Kirk in 2012 that has since grown into a social media juggernaut, with a massive digital footprint, and a major player on the conservative conference circuit. The group has long-standing ties with extremists, and Kirk himself frequently pushes racism on his radio show and weekly podcast.
The Washington Post reports that a weekend fundraiser for the Republican National Committee included meetings between James Blair, political director for both the RNC and the Trump campaign, and representatives from Turning Point and other outside groups. From the report:
Blair praised Turning Point in particular as a group that is doing “great work.”
Turning Point’s founder, Charlie Kirk, has been similarly effusive, recently announcing on social media: “As someone who has been a skeptic of the RNC in the past, I am very encouraged by what is happening.”
“Instead of them being sort of outside allies now, they’re more like partners for us. And we are going to be the battlefield commander,” Blair said. “The new regime is top down. The new regime is, ‘You get in our rowboat and you row. You dance to the beat of our music, or we’ll just simply say who’s not playing ball.’”
Turning Point and its leader Charlie Kirk have spread racism
Of particular concern is Turning Point and Charlie Kirk’s racism and ties to far-right antisemitic, white supremacist movements.
On a April 30 stream on Rumble, Holocaust denier and far-right cult figure Nick Fuentes claimed that Turning Point is being taken over by young extremists associated with his “groyper” movement.
Fuentes said, “Turning Point, we had a big rivalry with them and they hated us, they fired everyone that was associated with me, and then this past year, their CFO Tyler Bowyer said, well, you know, some groypers are OK."
Turning Point Action Chief Operating Officer Tyler Bowyer said that some of Fuentes’ groypers are “OK-ish” and “just want to have an honest debate” while appearing on TPUSA founder Charlie Kirk’s podcast last month to talk about former Daily Wire host Candace Owens. Owens recently left the right-wing outlet following a string of comments against Jewish people. Figures associated with the “groypers” have previously spoken at Turning Point USA events on college campuses.
In November 2022, Fuentes dined with Donald Trump and pro-Hitler rapper Ye (formerly Kanye West) at Trump’s Florida resort Mar-a-Lago. Fuentes has repeatedly praised Adolf Hitler and compared himself to Hitler. He has also denied the Holocaust and called for a “holy war” against Jewish people.
Kirk himself has drawn hostility within the conservative movement for his own racist comments. In the last few months, he has remarked on his podcast that if he sees a Black pilot he’s going to doubt his qualifications and launched a campaign to discredit the work of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.
These comments resulted in significant backlash from conservative commentators and Trump allies. Longtime Trump surrogate pastor Darrell Scott described Kirk’s comments as “bullcrap,” saying, “That boy’s a racist right there.”
In the same NBC article that reported Scott’s comments, an anonymous Trump ally said the former president is “f---ing pissed that Charlie is out causing problems for him in the Black community.”
Kirk’s record of racism and antisemitism is extensive. He has suggested that Black women including Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson and MSNBC host Joy Reid “do not have the brain processing power to otherwise be taken really seriously” and used affirmative action to “steal a white person’s slot,” said that “Haiti is legitimately infested with demonic voodoo,” and attacked the Democratic Party coalition as “resentful, government-addicted minorities and people that want government benefits."
He has also pushed antisemitic stereotypes in the wake of Israel’s invasion of Gaza, blaming “Jewish dollars” for funding “cultural Marxist ideas” and saying Jews control “not just the colleges; it’s the nonprofits, it’s the movies, it’s Hollywood, it’s all of it,” among other comments.
Kirk has made negative comments about Trump’s ground game
Kirk has not expressed confidence in the Republicans’ ground game ahead of the 2024 election, going so far as to attack their efforts.
On The Charlie Kirk Show, he said that the Biden campaign has a “superior ground game."
“The bad news,” he added, “is I do not know if we have the infrastructure, if we have the troops, the plumbing to translate the public sentiment into election success."
In another clip posted to X (formerly Twitter) by the Biden campaign, Kirk said, “We are struggling right now to open up the necessary field offices to compete against Joe Biden."
He praised Trump campaign operatives Chris LaCivita, who has been at the forefront of the RNC’s pivot, and campaign senior adviser Susie Wiles, then listed off Biden’s extensive ground operations in battleground states.
He continued, “Thankfully, we at Turning Point Action, we have well over a hundred people now chasing ballots in Arizona, trying to close that gap.”
As The Associated Press reported in October 2023, Turning Point Action, the organization’s political arm, has been fundraising for a $108 million campaign effort to turn out votes for Trump in the battleground states of Arizona, Wisconsin, and Georgia.
This push comes amid scrutiny. Kirk himself has become a millionaire as a result of his political prominence. Additionally, the group is relying on a mobile app, which will serve as a platform for its get out the vote campaign, developed by the company Superfeed Technologies. Superfeed’s board is chaired by Tyler Bowyer, Turning Point’s chief operating officer, who has suffered financial setbacks in recent years. Bowyer was recently indicted by a grand jury in Arizona for being part of former President Donald Trump’s fake electors scheme to overturn the 2020 election.
Veteran Republican campaign operatives have warned that such a large investment goes far beyond the scope of what is needed for field operations in just three states. Jon Seaton, a former aide to the late Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), told the Associated Press that “there’s not even enough doors” to knock on in the territory.
Concerns about Turning Point’s connections to extremism, Kirk’s history of racism and antisemitism, and dubious fundraising scheme should ring alarm bells among any political operatives seeking to build a campaign for Trump. Instead, they’re leaning in.
Reprinted with permission from Media Matters.
Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse
Former President Donald Trump recently made a controversial proposal to a gathering of oil executives and lobbyists at his Mar-a-Lago residence in Florida: Favorable policy in exchange for $1 billion in campaign cash. Now, it looks as if the U.S. Senate may launch an official inquiry into the ex-president.
That's according to The New Republic's Greg Sargent, who spoke to Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) about Trump's recent entreaty to the oil industry. Whitehouse said it was "highly likely" that the Senate Budget Committee would investigate the former president over his brazen offer.
"The phrase that instantly came to mind as I was reading the story was ‘quid pro quo,’" Whitehouse said, adding that he was also concerned about a series of proposed executive orders oil lobbyists drafted for Trump and to have ready to sign on day one should he win a second term in November. "Put those things together and it starts to look mighty damn corrupt."
Many of the environmental policies Trump suggested he would do away with in a second term are in the Inflation Reduction Act, which was the $485 billion bill Biden signed into law in 2022 that included a swath of clean energy infrastructure initiatives and incentives for electric vehicle development. Economists projected the clean energy development grants could generate roughly $1.5 trillion in new economic activity, and could reduce carbon dioxide emissions by five billion tons before the next decade.
Conversely, some of the executive orders the oil industry has prepared for Trump would undo the progress on climate Biden has made since taking office. Politico reported that some of the orders would lift Biden's pause on new natural gas export permits, open up new protected federal lands for more oil drilling and allow for more offshore oil drilling leases.
Trump casting Biden as an opponent of Big Oil is somewhat confusing, given that the United States officially hit record-high domestic oil production levels earlier this year. The U.S. Energy Information Administration found that in 2023, the U.S. produced 13 million barrels of oil per day on average, making the United States the world's largest oil producer.
Reprinted with permission from Alternet.
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An aide to former President Donald Trump's 2016 campaign is now alleging that millions of dollars in campaign donations were paid out to an untold number of women, and that a law firm helped cover it up.
The Daily Beast reported on a recent court filing by A.J. Delgado, a senior advisor to Trump's first campaign for the presidency who also worked on his presidential transition team. In the filing, Delgado accused the campaign of sex discrimination, saying that she was sidelined after it became known she was pregnant. The Beast reported that the father of Delgado's child is Trump advisor Jason Miller, whom Delgado says sexually assaulted her (Miller has denied the allegation).
However, one portion of the filing raised the antennae of a nonpartisan anti-corruption watchdog group. Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) has filed a complaint with the Federal Election Commission (FEC) in response to Delgado's claims that the campaign used a law firm to act as a "middleman" to funnel payments to women "who raised complaints of gender discrimination, pregnancy discrimination, and sexual harassment." Those payments were notably marked as legal expenses, though Delgado's filing claimed that was a ruse (this is very similar to the scheme Trump is accused of in his Manhattan trial).
"The allegations made in AJ Delgado’s declaration paint a deeply troubling picture of potentially illegal activity carried out by Donald Trump’s campaign," CREW president Noah Bookbinder said. "The FEC must conduct an investigation to determine the validity of these claims and establish the degree to which any wrongdoing occurred."
According to Delgado, Trump's campaign made several large payments to the Kasowitz Benson Torres law firm following the 2020 election totaling more than $4 million, that she says were explicitly done to circumvent federal campaign finance law. Millions of dollars were also paid to the firm's compliance firm, Red Curve Solutions, which the Beast reported does not conduct any legal services.
Delgado claimed in her declaration that during settlement negotiations in 2017 that ultimately fell apart, Trump campaign attorney Marc Kasowitz said that "Trump and the Campaign would need to keep this confidential," and stressed that Trump was "known for ‘not settling.'"
"My attorneys expressed this would not be possible because disbursements by a Campaign are public record," Delgado recalled. She said Kasowitz then "dismissed the concerns easily," saying her concerns about campaign finance disclosure laws was "not a problem at all." He allegedly then told her "what we would do is the campaign pays me and then I cut a check to you guys."
A spokesperson for the firm dismissed Delgado's concerns, telling the Beast that "Ms. Delgado’s accusations that there were FEC violations or that the firm acted as a ‘middleman’ to ‘hid[e] settlement payments to women’ from the Campaign are pure fantasy and false."
According to FEC records, Trump's Make America Great Again PAC and his primary campaign organization, Donald J. Trump for President, Inc., paid the firm roughly $4.5 million between 2016 and 2021. The Beast reported that Trump using PACs and law firms as pass-through entities for payouts is a common practice. An FEC record from February of this year, for example, shows a payment to attorney Alina Habba in the amount of $392,638.69 for "legal consulting," which was the exact dollar amount the ex-president was required to pay the New York Times for defamation.
The 45th president of the United States is in the midst of a criminal trial, in which he faces 34 felony counts of falsifying business records relating to hush money payments to women claiming to have had extramarital affairs with him. In a manner similar to what Delgado described, Trump is accused of disguising reimbursements to his former attorney Michael Cohen — who will testify against him next week — by classifying them as legal fees. Cohen is expected to say on the witness stand that there was no such legal retainer and that the payments were reimbursement for him personally covering the hush money payments.
Reprinted with permission from Alternet.
Stormy Daniels
It wasn’t a crime to meet a woman who acts in pornographic movies at a golf tournament. It wasn’t a crime to hit her up, so to speak, and invite her to have dinner later with you at your hotel. It wasn’t a crime to have failed to inform her that the dinner would be in your hotel room. It wasn’t a crime to greet her at the door in a pair of satin pajamas. It wasn’t a crime that you changed into regular clothes when she teased you about trying to imitate the lifestyle of Hugh Hefner
Chatting with the woman about her profession in the porn trade, it wasn’t even a crime to dangle the suggestion that she would make a good contestant on your hit television show, The Apprentice, as your quid for a yet unspoken quo. That’s the way a lot of business opportunities happen – you meet someone, you get to know them a little, and it occurs to you that they would be a good fit in your business endeavor.
The case could be made that it was all just banter between two adults getting to know one another. That is what Donald Trump’s lawyer, Susan Necheles, was attempting to do in cross-examining Stormy Daniels on Friday morning. She set the scene:
There was Stormy Daniels in Donald Trump’s hotel room, taking a moment to use the bathroom to freshen up. When Daniels comes out of the bathroom, the lawyer states, she was a woman who “acted and had sex in over 200 porn movies, right?”
“Right,” answered Stormy Daniels.
“And there are naked men and naked women having sex in those movies?”
“Correct.”
“But according to you, seeing a man sitting on a bed in a T-shirt and boxers was so upsetting, you became light-headed and almost fainted?”
“Yes,” answered Daniels. “When you’re not expecting a man twice your age, yes.”
She didn’t have to spell it out for the lawyer, or the judge, or the press and public attending the trial. It was the moment she knew that all the banter about The Apprentice and whether there were unions in the pornographic film business, all of it had been leading up to the moment when she realized that Trump intended to have sex with her whether she wanted to or not.
Everyone could fill in the blanks. You don’t sit on a bed in your underwear waiting for a woman, any woman, to come out of the bathroom unless you assume that she is going to have sex with you. Not want to have sex with you. Not agree to have sex with you. Because you want to have sex with her.
Trump’s lawyer put it quite inartfully: because this was a woman who has acted in more than 200 pornographic movies with “naked men and naked women having sex,” the reasonable assumption by her client was that the woman would now have sex with him because he was Donald Trump.
See, there’s the gap in this whole thing – the yawning chasm that exists not just between Donald Trump and Stormy Daniels, but between Donald Trump and every woman in the world. Trump thought he could push E. Jean Carroll up against the wall in a dressing room and sexually assault her. He thought he could grope a woman who just happened to be sitting next to him on a flight across the country. He thought he could do the same thing to a woman sitting next to him in a restaurant. According to women who came forward to tell their stories in 2016, he sexually harassed and assaulted more than 25 women over the previous 30 years.
He's been doing it all his life, exploiting the gap between his privilege and everyone he comes in contact with, but especially women. What was it he said to interviewer Billy Bush on the famous Access Hollywood tapes? “So just start kissing them. It’s like a magnet. Just kiss. I don’t even wait. And when you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything. Grab ‘em by the pussy. You can do anything.”
Those are the unspoken words at the Trump trial on Friday -- unspoken by Trump’s attorney as she did her cross-examination. The words were not spoken when Stormy Daniels answered questions. And of course, those words were not spoken by Donald Trump as he sat at the defense table, and they will remain unspoken throughout the rest of the trial until the jury is dismissed to begin its deliberations. Trump knows what happened between himself and Stormy Daniels in a Lake Tahoe hotel room 18 years ago because he knows what has happened between himself and women for his entire life.
You can do anything.
He stripped down to his boxer shorts and t-shirt while she was in the bathroom because “you can do anything.” He had sex with her because “you can do anything.” He paid her off and bought her silence in the final days before the 2016 presidential election because “you can do anything.” He falsified his New York state financial reports to conceal that pay off because “you can do anything.”
So-called consensual sex between adults is not a crime, but every functioning brain cell in every human brain in that courtroom on Friday, including Trump’s female attorney, knew the truth. Donald Trump’s crime is his assumption that he can do anything and get away with it because he is Donald Trump.
Trump’s lawyer seemed to think that because Daniels was “acting” in pornographic films, that the sex wasn’t real. “So, you have a lot of experience in making phony stories about sex seem real,” the lawyer asked her, clearly not expecting the answer she got from Daniels: “The sex in the films, it’s very much real. Just like what happened to me in that room.”
In fact, in the motion picture business, everything that happens on screen is fake – the laughter, the tears, the blanks fired by guns, the car wrecks – everything, that is, except the sex in pornographic films, because the sex act in porn can’t be faked. The sex act is what porn is about. It’s what viewers pay for.
Donald Trump didn’t think about any of this because Donald Trump assumes that he can do anything he wants. Now in a Manhattan courtroom, he is being made to sit in a chair and listen to what he did. The crime he is charged with isn’t the sex, it’s the pay-off, in a kind of backhanded bookkeeping way. But quintessentially, Trump’s crime is his attitude. He is on trial for being Donald Trump and acting like Donald Trump has always acted, and it’s driving him crazy.
Thank you, Stormy Daniels. Thank you.
Lucian K. Truscott IV, a graduate of West Point, has had a 50-year career as a journalist, novelist, and screenwriter. He has covered Watergate, the Stonewall riots, and wars in Lebanon, Iraq, and Afghanistan. He is also the author of five bestselling novels. You can subscribe to his daily columns at luciantruscott.substack.com and follow him on Twitter @LucianKTruscott and on Facebook at Lucian K. Truscott IV.
Please consider subscribing to Lucian Truscott Newsletter, from which this is reprinted with permission.
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Nobody likes Big Oil, a monopolistic and heavily polluting industry with a legendary history of abusing its excessive power that can be traced back over the past hundred years.
But Donald Trump has promised to be the oil industry's best friend — if its bosses give him a billion dollars.
In the latest instance of the former president's mind-blowing corruption, he is reported to have entertained a group of two dozen top U.S. oil company executives at Mar-a-Lago. Over dinner at his Palm Beach sanctum, Trump is quoted as telling the chiefs of Chevron, ExxonMobil, and Occidental Petroleum and their colleagues that if they collectively coughed up $1 billion to ensure his reelection, he would take very good care of their corporate needs.
According to The Washington Post, he promised to toss out all of President Joe Biden's efforts to mitigate climate change, including new rules aimed at reducing automotive exhaust and promoting electric vehicles. For that measly billion bucks, he vowed to increase oil drilling in the Gulf of Mexico, where we have already seen catastrophic well blowouts, rescind restrictions on drilling in the Alaskan wilderness, pull down the windmills that he hates, and cancel the recent White House decision to pause new natural gas export permits.
"You'll get it on the first day," said Trump, according to someone who was present and blabbed to the Post. Speaking as crudely as any gangster, he informed the oilmen that they and their companies can easily raise that kind of money, and that paying him off would be "a deal" because of the high return on their investment.
No doubt they found it hard to argue with Trump's logic, since oil lobbyists are already writing dozens of executive orders that they want him to rubber-stamp if and when he returns to the Oval Office.
So is anybody surprised?
Only perhaps by the audacity of Trump explicitly soliciting a gigantic bribe, before a large group of witnesses, at a time when he is in fact on trial for campaign finance offenses and facing scores of additional criminal charges. But he has never felt abashed in displaying his venality. He lives in a world of miscreants who behave much the same way, from his son-in-law Jared Kushner, who sought and obtained an even bigger payoff from the Saudi dictator, to his adviser Steve Bannon, who will face criminal charges next fall for swindling the dopey donors to his fake "We Build the Wall" outfit.
As the eminent journalist Laurie Garrett observed on social media, Trump's attempt to extort the oil industry echoes one of the greatest government scandals in American history, under another Republican president owned by corporate power. Beginning in 1921, the Teapot Dome affair implicated officials of President Warren G. Harding's administration in the crooked leasing of public lands for oil exploration. Harding's Interior secretary Albert B. Fall ultimately went to prison for bribery, although none of the oilmen who paid him off did any time.
What we can expect from a second Trump administration is the most naked orgy of swindling and boodling that this country has ever seen. He thoroughly exploited the presidency during his first term, as outlined in my forthcoming book, The Longest Con. But his second term, should such a disaster occur, would be the conman's last big chance to score, and he can be expected to enrich himself to the maximum — at ruinous cost to the rest of us.
Joe Conason is founder and editor-in-chief of The National Memo.He is also editor-at-large of Type Investigations, a nonprofit investigative reporting newsroom formerly known as The Investigative Fund, and a senior fellow at Type Media Center. His new book, The Longest Con: How Grifters, Swindlers and Frauds Hijacked American Conservatism, will be published by St. Martin's Press in July 2024.
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Daily Wire Claims New Vitamins Will Boost Sperm Counts (And End Wokeness!)
Matt Walsh
The Daily Wire announced the launch of a new “men’s lifestyle” company named Responsible Man on May 1, promoting its only current product — a men’s dietary supplement that it says is “designed to help … sharpen brain cognition” and that it suggests will help address what the outlet calls the “increasing health risk” of declining “sperm concentration.”
On April 30, The Daily Wire’s parent company Bentkey Ventures registered the assumed name “Daily Wire Ventures.” The next day, on May 1, it debuted Responsible Man, a new company for men’s health products.
The Daily Wire is promoting Responsible Man as an alternative to “woke” companies and by fearmongering about some of the outlet’s frequent targets, namely gender-affirming care and drag queens, asking its readers, “Do you want to buy your men’s health products from a company that partners with drag queens and supports radical organizations that push gender procedures on children?” Responsible Man’s website uses similar language, promising its customers that “together, we can reclaim masculinity” and claiming that “Emerson’s Vitamins are a simple step towards improving yourself, creating order, and building the future.”
The Daily Wire’s promotion suggests Responsible Man’s products can help address various health issues, including the purported “increasing health risk” of declining “sperm concentration” worldwide, promising to help men stay healthy “for the survival of the human race.”
The company’s only product, a men’s multivitamin, is marketed as being “professionally engineered by medical doctors” to “support your immune system, maintain energy production, sharpen brain cognition, and support the health of your heart and muscles.”
Claims made by The Daily Wire’s new company are not FDA-approved
According to disclaimers on Responsible Man’s website, the claims made to promote the company’s vitamins “have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration.” Multivitamins do not need to go through an evaluation process prior to entering the marketplace, and have generally proved ineffective in reducing the risk of heart disease and mental decline.
In the past, The Daily Wirehas targeted certain medications used in gender-affirming care for trans youth for their use off-label without FDA approval, even though this is a common practice in prescribing pediatric medications. The Daily Wire’s Matt Walsh has been particularly fervent in wielding this point to target gender-affirming care.
The Daily Wire is promoting the new company by targeting Men’s Health magazine
The Daily Wire’s previous ventures into consumer goods have been framed in opposition to specific companies it deemed too “woke,” such as Harry’s Razors and Hershey’s Chocolate, for refusing to advertise with The Daily Wire and featuring a trans woman in an advertisement, respectively. (Jeremy’s Razors and Jeremy’s Chocolate, The Daily Wire’s answers to Harry’s and Hershey’s going “woke,” have received poor feedback from customers.)
The Daily Wire’s promotion of Responsible Man singles out for criticism Men’s Health, the largest men’s lifestyle magazine in the United States. Claiming that Men’s Health was “afraid of manhood itself,” The Daily Wire has declared itself “here to give you a better option.” The lone source of outrage cited by the outlet is a Men’s Healtharticle from November 2021 on “LGBTQ+ Language and Media Literacy.”
Reprinted with permission from Media Matters.
Stormy Daniels in New York State Supreme Court on May 9, 2024
What was adult film star Stormy Daniels doing on the stand for a second day in a criminal trial about Donald Trump falsifying New York state business records? She may have been called by the prosecution, but it was Trump’s lawyers who put her there, Judge Juan Merchan said.
The exchange came in a hearing after testimony on Friday when Merchan denied a second motion for a mistrial by the defense based on prejudicial testimony by Stormy Daniels. Merchan took time to tell Trump’s lawyers that he went back over Stormy’s testimony on Tuesday, as well as their opening statement. “You denied that there was ever a sexual encounter between Stormy Daniels and the defendant,” Merchan told Todd Blanche, Trump’s lead attorney, so it was the defense that opened the door to her testimony and the “messy details” they object to, such as her statement that Trump refused to wear a condom during sex.
Additionally, Merchan found that the defense did not object to the “messy details” when they were revealed in direct testimony during questioning by the prosecution, so the testimony they failed to object to cannot now be used as grounds for a mistrial. Judge Merchan even said he could not figure “why on earth” Trump’s lawyer, Susan Necheles, had not objected to the question that elicited the “messy detail” about the missing condom.
Friday’s testimony by Stormy Daniels did not go well for the defense. Trump lawyer Necheles spent nearly an hour comparing and contrasting Daniels’ testimony on Tuesday with interviews she had given previously, like the one she gave to gossip magazine In Touch in 2010. She accused Daniels of making up the story about sex with Trump in the Lake Tahoe hotel in 2006. Daniels replied that if she had made it up, “I would have written it to be a lot better.” In another exchange, Necheles challenged Daniels about her account of the sex with Trump saying that as a porn actress, “You have a lot of experience in making phony stories about sex appear to be real.”
Daniels responded that “the sex in the films is very much real, just like what happened to me in that room.” That ended that line of questioning.
Another line of questioning that went flat was when Necheles challenged Daniels about how she had monetized her relationship with Trump by writing a book and selling a votive candle with an illustration of herself depicted as a saint. Daniels responded that her attempts to make money with branded products and her strip club tour were “not unlike Mr. Trump,” bringing that line of questioning to a quick close. The prosecution later called two publishing executives to read into the record from Trump’s books his claims of how much money he made monetizing the Trump brand and how he vowed to always exact revenge on anyone who “betrayed” him, clearly implying that Daniels was Trump’s victim, not the other way around.
The unasked question that hung over the courtroom throughout the testimony of Stormy Daniels and during Judge Merchan’s denial of Trump’s motion for a mistrial was, if Trump didn’t have sex with Stormy Daniels in 2006 in a Lake Tahoe hotel room, why did he have his lawyer pay her $130,000 and have her sign a non-disclosure agreement about what happened between them?
Until the trial for the lawsuit filed by E. Jean Carroll in which the judge found that under common definitions of the term, Donald Trump had raped her, and this trial, when Stormy Daniels has been able to get her story about her sexual encounter with Trump on the permanent record, Trump has gotten away with his practice of “deny, deny, deny.”
This time, by causing his lawyers to “deny, deny, deny” that he had a sexual encounter with Stormy Daniels, he exposed the truth not only to the world, but to a Manhattan jury that will now have to decide who to believe: Donald Trump, who has relied on his lawyers to deny the story, or a very smart and credible witness who parried every attempt by those same lawyers to poke holes in her story.
The prosecution is nearing the end of its case. They will call a few more witnesses to establish the facts of how Trump falsified his business records, and then they will call his former lawyer, Michael Cohen. Jurors have already heard an audio tape of Trump and Cohen discussing making a payoff to Playboy model Karen McDougal, and Cohen is sure to be a deadly witness who will provide more details of the payoff to Stormy Daniels.
Maybe Michael Cohen will answer the question about why Trump found it necessary to pay off Stormy Daniels to buy her silence, because it’s a sure thing that a stone-faced and silent Donald Trump won’t take the stand to do it.
Lucian K. Truscott IV, a graduate of West Point, has had a 50-year career as a journalist, novelist, and screenwriter. He has covered Watergate, the Stonewall riots, and wars in Lebanon, Iraq, and Afghanistan. He is also the author of five bestselling novels. You can subscribe to his daily columns at luciantruscott.substack.com and follow him on Twitter @LucianKTruscott and on Facebook at Lucian K. Truscott IV.
Please consider subscribing to Lucian Truscott Newsletter, from which this is reprinted with permission.
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