Defiant Stormy Daniels spars with ex-prez’s lawyer, riveting jurors at Trump’s ‘hush money’ trial

A defiant Stormy Daniels batted back attempts by Donald Trump’s lawyers to poke holes in her story about a 2006 sex tryst with the ex-president — in a fiery clash that riveted jurors in Manhattan court Thursday.

The 12 Manhattanites serving on the jury at Trump’s hush money trial tried to keep a poker face during the often racy and entertaining testimony, looking back and forth at the attorney and the former porn star trading blows as if watching a tennis match.

“You made all this up, right?” Trump lawyer Susan Necheles asked bluntly at one point.

“No,” Daniels shot back.

“Your story has completely changed, hasn’t it?” Necheles asked later, raising her voice.

“No!” Daniels replied.

Trump, 77, sat up straight in rapt attention during the fervid back-and-forth, in which his defense lawyer claimed that Daniels’ porn career making “phony stories about sex” made her story about sex with Trump less believable.

“Wow,” Daniels, 45, responded, and then paused. “That’s not how I would put it. The sex in the films is very much real, just like what happened to me in that room.”

“If that story was untrue, I would have written it to be a lot better,” Daniels added — in a dig at Trump about the sex, which she testified was emotionless and didn’t last long.

Necheles tried several times during her cross-examination to identify inconsistencies in Daniels’ account of her sexual encounter with Trump over the years.

Daniels dug in her heels when pressed about why said she was “shocked” to discover a married Trump posing on his bed in his underwear when she emerged from the bathroom inside the Lake Tahoe hotel room where he’d invited her after meeting at a celebrity golf tournament.

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Necheles claimed that Daniels should not have been surprised to see a half-naked man on the bed, considering her familiarity with nude bodies from her career starring in and directing porn films.

But Daniels shot back that her porn career in no way prepared her for the sight of a half-naked and “older” Trump displaying his body to her on the bed, where she testified they had “brief” sex that night.

Daniels told jurors that she would absolutely be shocked “if I came out of the bathroom and saw an older man in his underwear that I wasn’t expecting to see there, yeah.”

One juror could not help cracking a smile at that comment.

Necheles also spent 20 minutes grilling Daniels about whether she received dinner, as promised, from Trump that night.

The attorney confronted Daniels with a 2011 interview with InTouch magazine in which she said they talked “over dinner.” Daniels — describing herself as “food motivated” — has denied that food was served, and explained Thursday that though she met Trump “for dinner,” and “it was dinnertime, I maintain that I didn’t see any food.”

The porn star, wearing a black hooded robe over a forest green dress, also gave a cheeky response when she was questioned about profiting from selling merch based on Trump’s legal woes — including “Saint of Indictments” devotional candles featuring Daniels’ image that went for $40.

The jury was also shown other items like a “#TeamStormy” T-shirt and a $30 “Political Power: Stormy Daniels” comic book.

When Necheles characterized Daniels’ e-commerce operation as “shilling,” the adult film star snapped back that Trump — who is currently hawking sneakers and Bibles with his name on them — does the same.

“Not unlike Mr. Trump,” she replied.

Daniels also admitted to profiting from a strip club tour called “Make America Horny Again,” but insisted that she “hated” that name.

“I did not name that tour, and I fought it tooth and nail,” she proclaimed to jurors.

In another eyebrow-raising moment, jurors were shown a March post on X in which Daniels fired back at a commenter calling her a “human toilet” by writing, “Exactly! Making me the best person to flush the orange turd down.”

“You said you were going to flush President Trump?”  Necheles asked her.

“It doesn’t say President Trump. It says ‘orange turd,'” Daniels quipped back.

Daniels was more muted in other moments during her testimony, like when prosecutor Susan Hoffinger asked her whether her saga with Trump has been a net positive or net negative on her life.

“Negative,” she testified, speaking softly.

Daniels left the stand Thursday afternoon after eight hours of tense testimony over two days. As she walked behind him at the defense table and out of the courtroom, Trump turned his gaze away from her, and toward a screen in front of him.

Trump, the presumptive 2024 GOP presidential nominee, has pleaded not guilty to 34 counts of falsifying business records related to the $130,000 payment made to Daniels ahead of the 2016 election.