Kudos to 60 Minutes and to Anderson Cooper and his producers who did a “bang up” job of handling a difficult subject in the most professional manner – I know, I’ve been there.
But if someone thinks Ms. Daniels story will in any way affect Donald J Trump’s future – or the effort by many of us to see him gone from the Oval Office – I certainly didn’t see the evidence for that in tonights’ 60 Minutes Interview.
In the world of Real Politics, and with apologies to William Shakespere for the reference, Stormy Daniels story amounts to “Much Ado About Nothing.”
Oh, I believe her and her most able attorney – clearly any reasonable person would conclude she is telling the truth about a 2006 one time consensual sexual act with the married man Donald J Trump and the Trump people who tried to cover it up.
Trump’s lawyer’s claim that his personal payment of $130-thousand dollars to Daniels was done simply out of “frienship” for Trump to spare him the trouble of having to deal with a false accuation and not meant as “hush money” to silence something that in fact happened is simply not going to be believed by anyone with two grains of sense.
But here’s the rub, like it or not.
There was a time when the revelation that a married man in public life would be driven from his ambition to high office by the disclosure of sexual pecadillos was a given.
Former Senator Gary Hart will tell you about that time in 1987. Even Elliott Spitzer will tell you about that time in 2008. The Honarable Judge Roy Moore in 2017 doesn’t count; I said “consenting adults.”
And disclosure of a sexual indescretion can still be a problem for some, depending not on the fact itself but on the attendant circumstances.
But after Bill Clinton survived Jennifer Flowers, Paula Jones and later Monica Lewinsky, well, the real politics of such things changed markedly and rapidly.
Many do not like that change which no longer cares very much if at all about sexual indescretions; I don’t personally like that change.
But the change is a fact. Sexual peccadilloes between consenting adults regardless of marital status is no longer a sure political game changer.
As to the 130-thousand dollar payment and the trouble Trump’s lawyer may be in for violationg the legal limits of campaign giving, well in this struggle of Trump & his merry band of selfish thugs and enablers against the rest of us, that, as the old expression goes, doesn’t amount to “diddly squat.”
A final note about tonight’s Stormy Daniels 60-minutes Interview.
She did not come across as a likeable person.
Give her all the benefit of not having been schooled in public presentation or the handy cap of being a porn star (an occupation still not accepted by a majority of Americans as laudable), she didn’t give us reasons from listening and watching her to want to be on her side.
The facts, yes, the emotion of why we like or don’t like someone, no.
When she said she came out of the bathroom and found Donald J trump sitting on the bed ready to go and she thought she had gotten herself into something she really didn’t want to do, well,
Laugh Out Loud!
Oh well, there are several other women just “itching” to tell their story about an alleged affair with Donald J Trump, so let’s stay tuned.