• by Barbara Lippert , Columnist, May 7, 2024

Stormy Daniels in 2018. Source: Wikimedia Commons.

With Stormy on the witness stand yesterday, the morning played out like a cross between “Law & Order” and modern Shakespeare.

Daniels, aka Stephanie Clifford, had a personality force field as great as the man she testified against, minus some of the vengeance and grievance.

Her storytelling was spellbinding as she relayed the narrative that is the basis of the entire “hush money” case: her hotel room encounter with DJT after meeting him at a golf tournament in Lake Tahoe in 2008. He was at the height of his “Apprentice” fame at the time, and she was there as a vendor representing a porn company.  

She offered a timeline of the interaction in lively, granular (some said excruciating) detail. Much of it rang true. And of course, Trump denies that they did anything other than take a photo together.

Daniels said that after she met Trump initially, he sent his bodyguard, Keith, over to approach her with, “Mr. Trump would like to invite you to dinner. “

She was 27 at the time, and he was 60, and she recalled saying “F---, no!” But then her publicist heard about the offer and told her, “It’ll make a great story! He’s a businessman. What could possibly go wrong?'"

So plans were made for her to meet him at his suite, and then go to dinner.

She got there, and he greeted her at the door, wearing his seduction-wear: “silk or satin pajamas.”  This is so icky for women and cringeworthy and misguided for him, that it’s almost poignant.

“I made fun of him. Does Hugh Hefner know you stole his pajamas?” Daniels  said. “I told him to go and change.”

She said he obliged and went into the bedroom to change into a dress shirt and pants.

Then they had a long conversation at the dining table, and he asked her about the adult entertainment world. He wanted to know about residuals, health insurance, and STD testing. He compared her script writing to that of World Wrestling.

She admitted she got angry about his tendency to talk over and cut her off. So she claimed to have spanked him with one of the magazines that he casually scattered around to impress her with his press attention.

She drank tons of water, she said, so she left to use the bathroom in his master bedroom. (She explained that the suite was three times the size of her apartment.)

Once in the restroom, she spotted a toiletry bag on the counter.  “I did look. I’m not proud of it,’ she said. “And there was Old Spice.”

So I’m going to end recounting the testimony right here (even though he dangles a possible appearance on “The Apprentice “as a way of getting her into bed, and also offered to help her cheat on the show by giving her the questions in advance).

Despite all the other salacious bombshells in her testimony, I want to reflect on the silk pajamas and Old Spice.

I’d never thought of linking Trump to Hugh Hefner before, but it seems that the 1950s Playboy philosophy had a powerful effect on him. (Hefner was 20 years older than Trump.)  

"My dreams are the dreams of an adolescent boy. Everyone's dreams are adolescent," the permanently pajama-ed Hefner admitted to the Chicago Sun-Times in an interview. Despite all the hype about great literature and jazz, he built his empire on nude centerfolds, and the notion of being personally surrounded by bunnies and “nubiles” while partying in his grotto.  Hefner felt that in inventing his fantasy empire for men, he was freeing America from its puritanical shackles. But most of it was one-sided.

At bottom, it’s the same as owning modeling agencies, or Victoria’s Secret: the idea of rich powerful men preying on the bodies of young, naïve women. The women had few work options and thought going along would be glamorous.

Trump showed a similar world-building desire by owning the Miss Universe Organization (including Miss USA and Miss Teen USA) for 20 years. He had to sell it off because of incendiary remarks he made about a Mexican winner. But he famously told the story of creeping into the Miss Teen USA dressing rooms to “check on them.” 

And Daniels recalled that at a party for his vodka, Trump introduced her to Karen McDougal, the Playboy Playmate of the year that he had a relationship with during his marriage to Melania, and arranged for a “Catch and Kill” payoff via David Pecker.

At Mar-a-Lago, he’s built a bit of a Playboy mansion vibe, with the women hangers-on transforming themselves into one type, with blonde hair extensions, excessive facial surgery, and breast augmentations, so that they achieve the fullness of the old Playboy centerfolds.

As for his fondness for Old Spice, the cologne was always sold as part of a 20^th century mating ritual for men. A spot from 1957 included the tag line, "The happiest ending a shave ever had."  By the time Daniels discovered his toiletry bag, the after shave had become eau-de-Grandpa. (It was reborn with a campaign riffing on gender in 2010.)

But Trump’s attitudes toward women are crude and archaic.

The irony is that despite all the desperate sexual cover-ups and finagling leading to the election of 2016, Republican women voted for him anyway.

I doubt the trial will have much effect on the ex-President’s true believers. People don’t care about his ugly immorality, as long as they like his policies.

Daniels humanized herself to the jury and the world. Her testimony proved that the “Access Hollywood” tape was merely DJT being on-brand, an insecure adolescent boy/punitive patriarch bragging about committing sexual assaults on women.