Yahoo News ‘Stormy’s Going To Save America:’ How Sex Workers Feel About The Trump Trial Verdict
Last week, Donald Trump was found guilty on all 34 counts in his hush money trial after a jury unanimously agreed he had falsified business records to cover up allegations of an affair with adult film star Stormy Daniels.
Daniels’ credibility on the witness stand became a linchpin in the prosecution’s case.
“All the jury really needs to believe is that Trump and Daniels had sex and years later Trump paid Daniels off to keep her quiet, then ‘cooked the books’ to hide that payment, in violation of an election fraud law,” David Ring, a partner at Taylor & Ring in Los Angeles, told Newsweek during the trial.
Despite Trump’s lawyers’ best efforts to slut-shame Daniels and portray her as someone trying to shake down a powerful man by selling a fabricated, salacious story, in the end, the jury found Daniels’ testimony convincing. That felt especially gratifying ― even vindicating ― to fellow porn actors and sex workers, communities that have long been marginalized and stigmatized in U.S. society.
“I wish I could believe that we’ve seen the last of Donald Trump, but I’m not that optimistic. But one thing I am pleased about is that despite the attempts at character assassination, the jury still clearly considered Daniels, a credible witness,” said Maggie McNeill, a retired sex worker and the author of the blog The Honest Courtesan.
Though she admits it might be aiming high, McNeil wonders if Daniels’ impressive comportment at the trial will change the conversation surrounding sex work.
“Back in the ’90s ― before ‘sex trafficking’ hysteria was heavily promoted by politicians and other propagandists recently, the U.S. public was largely turning against sex work criminalization,” she said. “Perhaps this is a small sign that we’re going back that way again.”
You have to admire someone who knows they are going to be crucified in the court of public opinion, but still stands up to it anyway.Ember Snow, an adult film star
“Stormy’s reputation is pretty high up there for me,” Ember Snow, a porn actress who’s been in the industry for seven years, told HuffPost.
“She’s not the kind of woman to falsify a story just to become famous because she already is famous and a veteran in our industry; you don’t get to the level that she has without being professional, reliable and dependable,” Snow said.
“Regardless of where you stand politically, you have to admire someone who knows they are going to be crucified in the court of public opinion but still stands up to it anyway,” the adult film star said.
Jessie Sage, a sex worker and writer of a weekly sex column in the Pittsburgh City Paper, said that a lot of sex workers ― herself included ― celebrated the fact that “with all of the things [Trump] has done, the only person that could really impact him in terms of him having to be responsible for his actions was a porn star.”
Sage told HuffPost, “The thing that is harder for me to be excited about is the fact that she very much paid a high price for that through the years.”
Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford, said she wore a bulletproof vest to the courthouse in light of death threats she’s received.
“I got some serious death threats ― daily ― threats against my family and my daughter,” she told Good Morning Britain on Tuesday. “Graphic, horrifying things that they said they were going to do.”
Daniels’ two days on trial were arguably the most tense, and certainly the most attention-grabbing, of the all the witness testimonies: On day one, Daniels described her odd, alleged sexual encounter with Trump in a Lake Tahoe hotel room in 2006 ― a meetup that happened months after Melania Trump gave birth to son Barron.
The “dinner” date ― there would be no dinner ― included Trump saying that Daniels reminded him of his daughter, Ivanka Trump. At another point, the adult film star said she playfully slapped Trump “right on the butt” with a magazine after he bragged about being featured in it.
“Are you always this rude?” Daniels said she told Trump in response to his self-centered chatter. “You don’t even know how to have a conversation.”
On day two, defense attorneys endeavored to discredit Daniels, painting her as money-hungry and vindictive.
When Trump’s attorney, Susan Necheles, invoked Daniels’ pornographic past to the jury, accusing the actress of “selling herself” as an exotic dancer as her anti-Trump profile increased, Daniels held her own.
“You have a lot of experience making phony stories about sex,” Necheles taunted, implying Daniels’ encounter with Trump was falsified.
“Wow. That’s not how I would put it,” Daniels replied. “The sex in the films is very much real, just like what happened to me in that room.”
Later, she quipped that if her story about sex with Trump “was untrue, I would have written it to be a lot better.”
A ‘Cathartic’ Moment For Some Women
Given Trump’s sordid history with women, many online noted how cathartic it was to see this trial’s outcome, especially after E. Jean Carroll, who accused Trump of raping her in the 1990s, defeated him twice in civil trials for defamation.
Emily Ratajkowski ― a model who’s written candidly about her own experiences with sexual assault in Hollywood ― signaled her support by wearing a Stormy Daniels graphic T-shirt on the streets of New York City on the day of the verdict.
Daniels, too, feels “a little vindicated” by the trial’s outcome, her husband, Barrett Blade, told CNN’s Erin Burnett last week. He added that she’s “processing” the ruling and knows the hush-money case ultimately isn’t about her.
Sage, the sex worker and writer, hopes that Daniels can have some semblance of peace in the aftermath of the trial. She admits that reading transcripts from the trial and watching the recent Peacock documentary on Daniels has tapped into some of her own trauma.
“I know the way that she was damaged in the process, not only as a sex worker but also just as a woman in the world who has had men who are more powerful than me coerce me into doing something by carrot-dangling career opportunities,” Sage said.
Daniels said she stayed and even met up with Trump again because he was suggested there might be an opportunity to appear on his reality TV series “The Apprentice.”
On the stand, the adult film star maintained that the 2006 Tahoe sexual liaison with Trump was consensual (albeit not very pleasant), but new, alarming details emerged from that night, too: She claimed that Trump stood between her and the door at one point and that she “blacked out” and stared up at the ceiling during the encounter, wondering “Oh my God, what did I misread to get here?”
As New York Times contributing opinion writer Jessica Bennett wrote, “The whole thing sounded a lot darker, and murkier, than it had before.”
Sage found the moment sobering, too, and also worth highlighting: Globally, one 2014 study found that sex workers have a 45- 75% chance of experiencing sexual violence on the job.
“But there’s this continual belief that sex workers can’t consent to their own like rape or their own subjugation,” Sage explained. “I think that what Stormy did that was really powerful is say, ‘I absolutely consented to this, but it doesn’t mean that it was right.’”
Sage added, “She can have mixed feelings about something that happened to her because of the power structures involved.”
Daniels has said she never wanted to be in the spotlight for something so sordid ― in the Peacock documentary, she says she accepted hush money from Trump because she was “terrified” for her life. She also still owes the former president half a million dollars in legal fees ― a debt resulting from a failed defamation case brought by Daniels against Trump in 2018.
Looking at the bigger picture, though, the way Daniels has carried herself has helped affirm the dignity and humanity of those who engage in sex work, said Antonia Crane, an author, activist and sex worker.
“Stormy refuses to be seen as a tragic figure and is open about being a sex worker and a mom,” Crane said. “She’s also hilarious on Twitter ― she teases trolls right back and even thanks them for their help promoting her shows and her book.”
Crane said she recorded Daniels’ interview on “60 Minutes” with Anderson Cooper back in 2018 as a reminder that a fellow stripper and adult performer could insist on being heard and believed.
“Every since then, I’ve been telling folks that ‘Stormy’s going to save America,’” Crane added, “and she may have just done that during the falsified records trial.”
