In the opening scene of Stormy, the documentary about Stormy Daniels’ life, she says: “I have just been tormented for the last five years or so. And here I am, I’m still here.” Probably the worst of the torment has been from Donald Trump’s supporters, though they’ve never got together to explain what they’re angry about. Is it that Daniels claims she had sex with Trump, in 2006? That she accepted $130,000 to keep quiet about it? Surely, if he’s the richest and most virile man America ever produced, you’d think that was no big deal for him, and nice for her?
Instead, as she described on the stand, giving evidence against Trump, the Maga lot have made her life a misery. Death threats layered with lurid threats of sexual violence, enough that she was constantly worried for the safety of her family, have poured in since 2018, when the Wall Street Journal first broke the story.
Most likely, they are angered at Daniels’ failure to take Trump seriously. Was it the closely observed descriptions of his penis, in her memoir, or her Make America Horny Again strip club tour? Whatever you make of her, she has never seemed cowed; and in the peculiar cross-hatch of prurience and misogyny through which the hard right sees the world, a porn star is golden while she agrees with you, and contemptible once she doesn’t.
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All that virulent hatred alone would be enough to sink a regular person, but Daniels has also spent the past six years in court, on and off, asking Trump to stop lying about her. She lost her defamation case, then lost again on appeal, leaving her owing Trump hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal fees. She came out pretty gung-ho on this debt, vowing not to pay it, but that’s not really how courts work. It’s not a game of chicken.
And now, finally, she is not just vindicated but at the white-hot centre of Donald Trump’s 34 felony convictions, which is 34 more than any former president in the country’s history. Other former members of his team who have been convicted in court include his campaign chairman (Paul Manafort Jr), his deputy campaign manager (Rick Gates), one of his lawyers (Michael Cohen), his chief strategist (Steve Bannon), several advisers (Peter Navarro, Roger Stone and George Papadopoulos) and his company CFO (Allen Weisselberg). I just couldn’t be more thrilled for Ms Daniels – that she’s one of very few people to cross paths with Trump and not end up with a criminal record.
Zoe Williams is a Guardian columnist