The Seth Rich lawsuit matters more than the Stormy Daniels case

When I hear the name Stormy Daniels, and that’s a lot lately, I have the same vision inside my head. It’s Donald Trump, right before the presidential debate with Hillary Clinton in St Louis on 9 October 2016. At the time, I, along with just about everyone I knew, mistakenly thought Trump was finished because the notorious Access Hollywood tape had just come out.

But there he was sitting next to three women with far less memorable names – Paula, Kathleen and Juanita – who had accused Bill Clinton of past sexual harassment and assault. Trump had claimed, without offering evidence, that Hillary had brutalized and threatened the women in order to silence them. He brought them to St Louis to rattle Clinton. (This was also the debate in which he loomed over Clinton, Frankenstein style).

But all along, surprise, surprise, it was Trump who was doing the silencing.

The usually prim Wall Street Journal has taken the lead on the Stormy story, detailing how Trump’s personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, paid the porn star, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford, $130,000 in hush money to keep her quiet about an affair she had with Trump in 2006.

On 18 February2018, Cohen publicly declared that he used his own funds to pay Daniels in October 2016, just 10 days before the presidential election, to maintain discretion regarding the alleged affair with Trump.

On 6 March 2018, Daniels filed a lawsuit against Trump claiming that her non-disclosure agreement is inoperative because Trump never signed it. It’s been wall to wall Stormy ever since.

Certainly, hush money paid by Trump’s lawyer is a legitimate news story, but not one that rivals nuclear talks with North Korea. Rex Tillerson’s exit couldn’t even throw Stormy offstage. That’s a problem.

There are now so many scandals swirling around Trump that everything becomes a fetid, confused sideshow. It’s a warped kind of entertainment. Every new scandal shrouds the previous one. But it’s hard to beat the president and the porn star. Bill Clinton’s purported harassment of an Arkansas state employee or sex with a White House intern don’t even come close.

We can’t wait to hear from Stormy herself. Will 60 Minutes air its rumored blockbuster? Will Jimmy Kimmel get an interview? Oh where oh where will our Stormy be?

It’s thrilling to think Buzzfeed may unlock Stormy’s lips by making her a witness in the libel action Cohen filed against Buzzfeed after the site published the Christopher Steele dossier. Trump blasted Buzzfeed as a “failing pile of garbage”, after it published the dossier. But Stormy’s a better scandal star than even the Russian prostitutes whom Steele described Trump cavorting with.

Buzzfeed was already selling “failing pile of garbage” merch on its website (with proceeds going to the Committee to Protect Journalists). Can “Free Stormy” buttons be far behind?

This all wouldn’t be as troubling if Stormy weren’t overshadowing the brave Florida students demanding gun control. She’s the perfect bait for our media snacking habits and shortened attention spans.

But there are far more serious lawsuits than Stormy’s that we should be focusing on.

I’ve previously written about Fox News’ shameless coverage of the 2016 unsolved murder of a young former Democratic National Committee staffer named Seth Rich. Last week, ABC News reported that his family has filed a lawsuit against Fox, charging that several of its journalists fabricated a vile story attempting to link the hacked emails from Democratic National Committee computers to Rich, who worked there.

After the fabricated story ran on the Fox website, it was retracted, but not before various on-air stars, especially Trump mouthpiece Sean Hannity, flogged the bogus conspiracy theory suggesting Rich had something to do with the hacked messages.

This shameful episode demonstrated, once again, that Rupert Murdoch’s favorite network, and Trump’s, has no ethical compass and had no hesitation about what grief this manufactured story caused to the 26-year-old murder victim’s family. It’s good to see them striking back, since that is the only tactic that the Murdochs and Trumps of the world will respect or, perhaps, will force them to temper the calumny they spread on a daily basis.

Of course, the Rich lawsuit does not have the sex appeal of the Stormy case. The rightwing echo chamber will brazenly ignore its self-inflicted wounds. And, for the rest of the cable pundit brigades, the DNC emails and Rich are old news.

A porn star who once frolicked with a president beats a murder victim falsely tarnished every time. And what better distraction could there be to deflect attention from the outrageous firing of Andrew McCabe than threatening to pursue Stormy for millions and millions for breaking her oath of silence?

So now we wait, with bated breath, for Stormy to tell all to Anderson Cooper. I can almost guarantee that this interview will be a letdown, but we will all tune in, anyway.

It’s a cliche to say that this administration is like a car wreck. It’s terrible, but we can’t turn away.

This is how Donald Trump wants it. Better than anyone, he knows how to create mayhem as a distraction and ride on its waves. That’s why he is threatening to seek $20m in damages from Stormy. It keeps this ridiculous story going, at least until something even more outrageous comes along.

• Jill Abramson is a Guardian columnist