Stormy Daniels Intvw Has It All: Death Threats, Spanking & Ivanka

US President Donald Trump and adult film actress Stormy Daniels.

(Photo: AP/Altered by The Quint)

Porn star Stormy Daniels, who has alleged a 2006 affair with US President Donald Trump, gave a much anticipated interview to CBS’ ‘60 Minutes’ that aired on Sunday night EST. In a candid chat, she detailed the affair itself, and the threats to her family and her life that she encountered afterward. The affair has been controversial because Trump had reportedly made Daniels sign a non-disclosure agreement, paying $130,000 for her silence.

Talking to CBS anchor Anderson Cooper, she alleged that in 2011, when Trump became aware that she had given an interview to a publication about the affair, she received a threat from an unidentified man in a parking lot.

(Graphic: Mytheree Ramesh)

Why Break the Agreement?

Daniels said that her decision to finally speak out was motivated by the smears on her reputation and character.

Because people are just saying whatever they want to say about me, I was perfectly fine saying nothing at all, but I’m not okay with being made out to be a liar, or people thinking that I did this for money. People are like, “Oh, you’re an opportunist. You’re taking advantage of this.” Yes, I’m getting more job offers now, but tell me one person who would turn down a job offer making more than they’ve been making, doing the same thing that they’ve always done?

The Sordid Details

In a description of the affair that is sure to set tongues wagging on the internet, Daniels described how she caught Trump off guard, gave him a spanking with a rolled up magazine that had his face on the cover, and subsequently saw his behaviour “become more appropriate”.

(Graphic: Mytheree Ramesh)

She spilled details of the moments that followed after he showed her the magazine with his face on the cover.

And so I was like, “Does this... does this normally work for you?” And he looked very taken back, like he didn’t really understand what I was saying. Like, I was, “You know, does talking about yourself normally work?” And I was like, “Someone should take that magazine and spank you with it.” And I’ll never forget the look on his face. [...] I don’t think anyone’s ever spoken to him like that, especially, you know, a young woman who looked like me. And I said, you know, “Give me that,” and I just remember him going, “You wouldn’t.” “Hand it over.” And so he did, and I was like, “Turn around, drop ‘em.” [...] So he turned around and pulled his pants down a little – you know, had underwear on and stuff and I just gave him a couple swats. [...] From that moment on, he was a completely different person. [...] He quit talking about himself and he asked me things and I asked him things and it just became, like, more appropriate.

All Praise for Ivanka?

In a disturbing nugget from Daniels’ account of the affair, she alleges that Trump compared her to his daughter.

(Photo Courtesy: Mythreyee Ramesh)

The Non-Disclosure Agreement

Daniels also spoke about the ‘hush money’ she was given to stay silent, a non-disclosure agreement that she signed 11 days before the Presidential election that Trump went on to win, along with a payment of $130,000.

According to Daniels, when the story broke months later about the agreement, she was pressured to deny the affair. She even signed statements to that effect, that were then publicly released by Trump’s lawyer, Michael Cohen.

They made it sound like I had no choice. [...] As a matter of fact, the exact sentence used was, “They can make your life hell in many different ways.”

Stormy Daniels to Anderson Cooper on ‘60 Minutes’

‘I’m Not a Victim’

Anderson Cooper pressed Daniels on people ‘using her for their agenda’, to which she replied:

(Photo Courtesy: Mythreyee Ramesh)

Emphasising that the sexual encounter was entirely consensual, that she didn’t say no and that she wasn’t a victim, Daniels nevertheless admitted that she was not attracted to Trump and didn’t want to have sex with him, while revealing that he did not use a condom, despite having a wife who had just given birth a few months prior.

Cooper asked if the topic of his wife came up in conversation.

I asked. And he brushed it aside, said, “Oh yeah, yeah, you know, don’t worry about that. We don’t even... we have separate rooms and stuff.”

Stormy Daniels

Daniels also made a comment that has got many women on Twitter talking about the insidiousness of rape culture and the tendency of women to blame themselves when things go wrong. Describing how she saw Trump “perched” on the bed expectantly when she came out of the bathroom of his hotel room before she had sex with him, she said, laughing:

I realised exactly what I’d gotten myself into. And I was like, “Ugh, here we go.” And I just felt like maybe [...] I had it coming for making a bad decision for going to someone’s room alone. I just heard the voice in my head, “Well, you put yourself in a bad situation and bad things happen, so you deserve this.” 

(With inputs from CBS News.)