Trump's insecurity and 'bullshit' hush money: key takeaways from Stormy Daniels' book

While its level of salacious detail about the sitting president is extraordinary, Stormy Daniels’ memoir also chronicles her career and her life.

Full Disclosure, a copy of which was obtained by the Guardian, describes an abusive childhood; how Daniels, born Stephanie Clifford, began stripping as a high schooler; and how she began working in adult films. She includes running commentary on her twin loves: animals, especially horses, and heavy metal. Here are five key themes:

Trump is insecure

Apart from salaciously describing an alleged affair with Trump in 2006, Daniels writes about her impressions of the future president. She liked that he seemed to respect the fact she was a film director and appeared to value her business insights. But she also took his apparently compulsive need to brag about himself as a signal of deep insecurity.

“He was just run-of-the-mill insecure, which I find happens a lot with people with money that they didn’t earn themselves,” she writes.

Because he seemed to enjoy being teased, Daniels writes, she asked him about his hair.

“‘I know,’ he said with a smile. ‘It’s ridiculous. Come on. First of all, I have a mirror.’”

Daniels says Trump told her “every celebrity stylist” had offered to fix his haircut but he had declined because he didn’t want to start a fight and because “it’s my thing. It’s my trademark.”

Daniels also describes using Trump’s bathroom and notes: “His nail clippers and tweezers … were gold. This guy, I thought.”

Her description of watching a shark documentary with Trump, previously known, details a fear of and disgust for sharks that might also suggest insecurity. But she also writes that as they watched a film called Ocean of Fear: The Worst Shark Attack Ever, “to make it crazier, Hillary Clinton called”.

Daniels recounts Trump’s side of the conversation, in which he seemed at ease speaking to one of the most powerful people in the world. Trump and Clinton, Daniels writes, discussed “a family trip they wanted to take together” and “repeatedly mention[ed] ‘our plan’.”

Alas for the world, perhaps, she did not hear what that plan was.

Daniels regrets signing statements denying their affair

In January 2018, after the Wall Street Journal reported a $130,000 hush payment to Daniels, she signed two statements stating that no such payment was made. In her book, she describes how the statements were coordinated between Trump’s personal lawyer at the time, Michael Cohen, and her lawyer at the time, Keith Davidson.

Daniels thought the statements were necessary to observe the nondisclosure agreement, she writes, adding that she accepted the payment and NDA to protect her daughter and her husband – and because she believed her life was in danger. But she resented signing the statements, because they were “bullshit”.

Asked to sign the second statement just before an appearance on Jimmy Kimmel Live!, she writes, she forged her own signature: “I purposely signed it wrong. I wanted to signal there was something amiss here.”

On the show, Kimmel noted the discrepancy in her signatures and asked her about it.

“That does not look like my signature, does it?” she said.

Daniels accused Davidson in a subsequent lawsuit of working as a “puppet” for Cohen and Trump. Davidson counter-sued for defamation but later dropped the lawsuit.

Daniels grew more frustrated as she saw Cohen admitting to the hush payments and, she said, shopping a book project using her name.

“I was the only person taking this [nondisclosure agreement] seriously,” she writes.

Daniels had an abusive childhood

Daniels describes being abused by a man in his 40s, beginning when she was nine and lasting for two years. She accuses her mother of knowing and not intervening. Her mother has denied knowledge of the alleged abuse.

Daniels says she was first abused because she tried to stop a friend being abused by the same man.

“I was nine,” she writes. “I was a child, and then I wasn’t.”

Daniels writes that the first adult to whom she told the story did not believe her. “In my world, adults were not people who helped you,” she writes.

She loves heavy metal

A child of the 1980s, Daniels loves metal and glam. When she was in high school, after one of her mother’s boyfriends shot a hole in her closet with a shotgun, she moved in with a boyfriend who had “an encyclopedic knowledge of metal and hard rock”.

“He turned me on to all the music I still listen to today,” she writes. “Metallica, Mötley Crüe, Ratt, Skid Row and Poison.”

Daniels, who claims to have a photographic memory, describes songs that evoke powerful memories. Bon Jovi’s You Give Love a Bad Name accompanied her first kiss; Alanis Morissette’s You Oughta Know recalls the first time a boyfriend cheated on her. Several songs evoke strippers she has worked with: Ozzy Osbourne’s Crazy Train, Heart’s Magic Man, the Ratt catalogue.

Her rock’n’roll dream came true, she writes, when she met Pantera at the Cheetah club in Pompano Beach, Florida, accompanied by members of Slipknot and Slayer. The band invited her to join them on tour and she hopped on the bus for two weeks, raising hell.

Her career is a source of pride

When she met Trump, Daniels writes, he seemed impressed by the fact she was a director as well as a star.

As she explained to Trump, she worked on contract, not freelance, which meant she might make 10 movies a year as opposed to as many as six a week. Unlike other stars, she retained the rights to her name and website domain. She has won awards as writer, director and star.

Daniels tells how she got her husband (who filed this year for divorce) into the business, casting him in scenes with her and then other partners.

“The sex is completely different,” she writes. “Sex at home is about what feels good; sex on camera is about what looks good. Especially for women.”