Stormy Daniels. I shouldn’t really, but I can’t help rather loving her. I realise she’s a porn star and I loathe porn, especially online porn. Then again, I didn’t grow up in grinding poverty in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and I wasn’t sexually abused from the age of nine, so who am I to judge?
In any case, whatever reservations about who she is and what she represents, if she ends up being the person who finally brings Donald Trump to book, all credit to her. She’ll have done the world a favour.
For years, Trump has faced off all kinds of murky questions about his behaviour – from financial irregularities to his handling of classified documents, to inciting the Capitol Hill riots in 2021 following his defeat to Joe Biden. But however much these things might stink, they never seem to stick. Until now.
‘This p***y grabbed back!’ is what Daniels said after the news that 76-year-old Trump must turn himself in on Tuesday to New York prosecutors or face arrest.
It’s a crude but witty assessment of The Donald’s predicament, a reference to the notorious recording when he elaborated on his seduction technique. ‘I 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 p***y.’
If Stormy Daniels (pictured) ends up being the person who finally brings Donald Trump to book , all credit to her. She’ll have done the world a favour.
For years, Trump (pictured) has faced off all kinds of murky questions about his behaviour – from financial irregularities to his handling of classified documents, to inciting the Capitol Hill riots in 2021 following his defeat to Joe Biden
Now, it seems, he’s the one with his proverbials in a vice.
The allegation is that he falsified business records over his payment of $130,000 (£105,000) to Daniels in hush money after they supposedly had sex in a hotel room. Trump claims the liaison never took place – though he admits giving her the money, which rather undermines his case.
Either way, the affair is proof of that old Nixon adage: it’s not the crime that gets you, it’s the cover-up.
As Daniels put it: ‘He banged another hot chick – which he’s known for doing – and nothing about that is illegal.’
If he had just admitted it at the time, this saga would have been long forgotten. But the fact that he paid her off, and the manner in which he allegedly did so, now brings him to court.
The irony is that in some ways the pair are a match made in heaven. Both have spent their lives in pursuit of fame and money – Daniels through her career as one of the most highly paid porn stars, writing, directing and starring in her own X-rated movies but longing for mainstream success.
In fact, the only reason she (allegedly) slept with Trump was because she thought he was going to cast her on his TV show The Apprentice – something he never did.
If he’d just kept his side of the bargain, none of this would be happening.
Instead, he made the mistake of thinking – like so many men before him, including Harvey Weinstein (to name but one), that he could get away with it, because Daniels was a woman – what’s more, merely a porn star, thus just a piece of trash he could throw away afterwards, like a used tissue.
But the problem with women such as Daniels, familiar more than most with the rock bottom, is that they have nothing left to lose. They can put up with anything because they’ve probably dealt with worse. As Daniels says: ‘I couldn’t be shamed or threatened with nude photos – they are everywhere.’
In the end, what brings politicians down is not incompetence, failed policies and bad government – or even the brilliance of their political opponents (certainly not in Trump’s case). It’s their personal weaknesses. Arrogance, money, laziness, stubbornness, hubris, drink, sex: the one thing their special advisers and supporters can’t protect them from is themselves.
Alongside money and fame, Trump’s main vice is women, ideally showy, trashy blondes. Ergo, Stormy Daniels, vice-girl extraordinaire.
There’s a kind of delicious – almost biblical – justice in that.
Is Prince Andrew really planning a tell-all memoir? He already gave an account of his actions to Emily Maitlis, and as I recall that didn’t go so well.
What a brave man, Rael, for defending your wife
Home Secretary Suella Braverman (left) with her husband Rael (right)
Huge respect to Rael Braverman for standing up for his Home Secretary wife in an interview in yesterday’s Daily Mail. Unless you have first-hand experience of front-line politics, it’s impossible to understand how it feels to have a loved one ripped to shreds.
In Suella Braverman’s case, her immigration policy was compared by Gary Lineker to Germany under the Third Reich, and she’s been depicted by some as a crude caricature without any recognition of the complexities of either the person or the situation.
‘There have been mocked-up images of Suella standing outside concentration camps, laughing,’ her husband said. ‘Well, I’m Jewish. I lost family members in those camps. I find that offensive.’
Good for him. Sadly, it’s unlikely to make much difference to anti-Tory baiters who believe all Conservatives are ‘scum’. But hopefully it may remind some people that politicians – and their families – are human.
Kate’s titanic call
Kate Winslet at the Emmy Awards in Los Angeles in September 2021
Congratulations to Kate Winslet, above, who’s won a top award for her film role as a parent desperately trying to stop her daughter disappearing down the toxic rabbit hole of social media.
I found the movie harrowing, not least because my own daughter’s experience of online abuse some years ago left me feeling helpless.
There’s nothing worse than watching your child being eviscerated online. Though it’s not a physical assault, the emotional response is gut-wrenching, and the effects carry into the real world.
Winslet said it’s ‘never been a harder time to be a parent’ or ‘a more dangerous time to be a child in an online world’. She called for ‘significant and seismic’ change in the new Online Safety Bill. I couldn’t agree more.
The Italian government rarely gets much right, but last week it became the first country to ban ChatGPT over privacy concerns. Belgium may follow after claims a young father took his own life after developing a relationship with a similar piece of AI technology. Maybe I’ve read too much sci-fi, but I agree with Elon Musk: we must pull the plug on this stuff – before it pulls the plug on us.
Have we learnt anything from the Gwyneth Paltrow court case, apart from the fact that it costs a lot of money to ski in Deer Valley? I think yes: that so-called ‘ordinary’ people don’t always have the best intentions, and that just because someone is rich and famous doesn’t make them a bad human. To be fair, we also saw this with Johnny Depp’s trial ordeals – but so far the message hasn’t sunk in.
Thomas Cashman’s girlfriend Kayleeanne Sweeney leaving Manchester Crown Court
It was court, not catwalk!
Troll of the week: the girlfriend of nine-year-old Olivia Pratt-Korbel’s shotgun killer.
Kayleeanne Sweeney was in court for his murder conviction wearing a £350 pink coat and showcasing expensive blonde highlights, Instagram pout, acrylic nails and immovable expression.
She looked like she was auditioning to take part in Love Island, not attending the trial of a child-killer. Still, now her scumbag boyfriend is facing years behind bars, she’ll have to find another way of paying for all those treatments…
There’s a simple and eco-friendly solution to the problem of wet wipes clogging up our waterways. It’s called a bidet. They never were for washing your feet, you know.
A new report shows that a majority of secondary schools won’t inform parents of their child’s desire to self-identify as non-binary or trans, with one arguing it would be ‘illegal’ under the Data Protection Act.
Since schools won’t even give a child Calpol or let them leave early without parental permission, this is extraordinary. But it says a lot about how terrified teachers are of the powerful trans lobby (see ‘decapitate TERFs’ et al) that they compromise fundamental principles of responsible safeguarding.
By Daily Mail Online, April 1, 2023
