Comments

1
Oh shoot, I'm gouging my eyes out that day.
3
"it was never about the money", yet she took the money and signed the NDA, what, 3 weeks before the election?

it was about the money, and she came pretty cheap.
4
When he has IVANKA??? Whoa, major creepy mistake there, troll!
5
Dan

A quick Google search shows that Stormy Daniels has a net worth of about 4 million dollars, so I'm guessing she has $130,000.

If you want to help her pay it back, I'm sure she won't mind, but I think she's got this.
6
Score another victory for our brave freedom fighters. Surely this is the embarrassment that shall thwart his efforts to (successfully) erode our nation.
7
@ 6 - If it is demonstrated in front of a global audience that he has a small dick, being as narcissistic as he is, he might want to disappear from sight forever.
8
To be fair, it is probably more about attention than money at this point. So she may be partially telling the truth when she says it is not about the money.
9
@4: Or WAS it a mistake? I mean, how do we know "Deano" isn't a fake Twitter account created by der Gropenfuehrer himself?
10
@7,

I guess that's the hope. Though the reality is he'll just deny it's his, the same way he denies everything that doesn't fit his narrative and agenda. And I'm assuming it'll be just some gross close-up that won't be really all that verifiable one way or other. On the other hand, if it's like some sort of full body shot, showing his face & everything? Jeez, I'm only now considering that possibility here for the first time. Yikes. What a horrific thought.
11
@ 10 - I did say "If it is DEMONSTRATED in front of a global audience that HE has a small dick." That implies that the pictures allow us to see enough of his body to confirm that it's his. If he wants to deny it, than he'll have to strip in court...

And yes, such images should definitely be marked NSFW - Not Safe For the World.
12
Ricardo- Agreed. Small penises often lead to big bombs.
13
I can't get over how stupid this country is. Now we're supposed to want people to give this woman money so she can share pictures of Trump's dick? Why in god's name would I want that to happen? So Trump made a sex worker sign an NDA probably because he's gross or would be humiliated. Ok, whatever. I don't mind if Trump is a laughing stock- he deserves it. But I just can't get all the energy people are putting into this situation when there's actual real shit going down. Like, are these the same people that are opposing diplomatic talks with NK? Or the ones who think the generals and FBI are the good guys? I mean seriously I can't tell what the fuck liberals are doing anymore.
14
@10 Yes exactly. I can't count how many scandals there have been in the last year that liberals were saying would be THE THING that ends this presidency. I'm really ready for them to wake up to the fact that no one cares about outrage anymore (it's fleeting) and anyway most of the real damage is already done. The problem is structural and Trump is a symptom. If we do eventually get rid of him by exposing some money laundering scheme or something, the problems are still going to be there. Is that going to get rid of the far right? Solve the NK crisis? End the US wars and weapons trades in the Middle East? Stop ICE? (Dan has recently done a lot on this front so kudos to him). This shit about porn stars and Russian puppets has crossed into a crazy delusional place.
15
What a player. First she shakes him down for $130k (do you really think they just happened to remember the Daniels affair from a decade previous - among countless others - a month before the election, and moved heaven and earth to get the payment done?), and now that the story blew up anyhow, she's suing him so she can go on 20/20 or whatever talk show for quite a bit more. She'll probably make more money on the tv and magazine circuit than she ever made in porn (well, in front of the camera - she's owns her own production company and does the directing work). Not a bad way to put a capper on an 18-year porn career before you turn 40.

All that being said, I'm not sure why publicizing pictures/videos of Trump naked *wouldn't* count as revenge porn (assuming Trump doesn't want them published). I'm really not comfortable with the idea that Trump's political opinions or past crimes (both real and alleged) mean that he doesn't qualify for basic legal protections against that type of thing. Good god could you imagine if someone claimed that had a naked picture of Hillary and wanted to publish?
16
@13: I think we can keep a jaundiced eye on l'affaire du stormy and still track all the other ongoing rolling catastrophes. it's interesting to me not because of the hypocrisy of the moralizing right, but because of the legal machinations involved. cohen/trump clearly devised a method to mask the source of the money. if it can be shown that it came from campaign funds (and there's reporting pointing that direction), then it's probably illegal and could carry actual consequences beyond trump losing his fixer.

and yes, I am far more worried about the structural damage being done. every bit of progress wrenched from the RW during Obama's presidency will be erased if this goes on through 2024. worse, we're blithely walking down the road to autocracy.

17
@7 & @10: or he'll just say some variation of, “I'm a grower, not a shower” and the pix will disappear into the morass of Trump-related $h1t we can't un-see and un-hear.
18
There is no question the woman is mercenary. She sells sex, either in front of the camera or behind it. What is absolutely breathtakingly enjoyable is seeing her so in control of the narrative. Watching her make Cheeto Jesus and his apologists squirm is the most fun I've had since November 2016. Pass the popcorn.
19
@14: "If we do eventually get rid of him by exposing some money laundering scheme or something, the problems are still going to be there."

Uh... This is campaign finance law he broke. Even if it were "some money laundering scheme" that's still pretty goddamn illegal and should be investigated, regardless of who it is or what letter follows his name on the lower third. Just because everything he does is awful and he's already broken so many laws and it becomes hard to remember that this behavior is not to be accepted by our president, we should just let him break campaign finance laws because he's already done so much else? Is not exactly the sort of structural damage you're decrying?
20
Is this not*
21
Also, yeah, that "Why would he want you when he has Ivanka?" is either a fantastic subtle burn by a skilled troll having some fun with conservatives, or so wildly unaware that it's amazing either way.
22
I’m not sure what motivates Stormy Daniels, but mere weeks before the election, she appeared to convince Donald Trump and/or his legal team that her story would become public before the election unless she was paid money to buy her silence. If she wanted the truth to come out, before the election was when she needed to speak up. But now, a year after the election? This really isn’t a case of better late than never. The ramifications now are limited, unless she believed her story would be more valuable if Trump became president. If that was her game, and it may have been, her actions were shameful.
23
The reason that she has had such a long career and is so successful as a writer/director in porn film is that she is very smart. I enjoy her witty responses to the trolls. One told her her vagina was falling out. Her response? "Shit! Pick it up for me, won't you?!" Her cheerful acceptance of the name calling (Whore? "That's skanky whore to you.") ("Scanc" -- she corrects their spelling.) She is making big bucks off of this -- more dates dancing in clubs for bigger bucks and getting her movies out. And why shouldn't she? Sex workers don't do it for free!
26
Look, trump was in a porno produced by Playboy and he stayed fully clothed the whole time. That's all you need to know. Every dude that's swinging meat cant wait to get their trousers off. Dudes crank probably looks like a smaller version of Cher's kid from 'Mask'.
27
Contest idea: draw Trump's dick
28
I don't care how many women Trump has sex with or pays to pee on him (or maybe he's doing the peeing). I don't care whether he cheated on his third wife, the daughter of a Nazi sympathizer who came into this country and worked without a visa or permit, the way he cheated on the first two. I don't care that he wants to fuck his daughter. I don't care how much money porn actresses are able to extort from him. I don't care about anything having anything to do with Donald Trump's penis. Even if it's oozing and dripping pus, shriveled, misshapen, covered with warts, riddled with scars from the procedures he used to try to make it bigger. Even if it can fucking talk, I don't care about Donald's dick and where it has been.

I don't care about the women who are trying to make money off the fact that they had the undoubtedly unpleasant experience of coming into contact with it. I don't care how he treats his wife.

This man is the single biggest threat to our country's existence in its history and who has or hasn't seen his penis is irrelevant to everything.

Plus, you're kidding yourself if you think this will somehow bring him down. The man has no shame--he lies and lies and lies and sooner or later (generally sooner) a new scandal or hypocrisy or lie or evidence of corruption makes the news and sweeps the last one into the gutter. And none of them matter. None of them will result in his no longer being president. Congress doesn't care; his base doesn't care. The only people that do care aren't in a position to do any more about him than we did in the 2016 election, and we all know where that got us.

Please Dan, I know it's hard to resist a "story" with dicks and dick pics and porn actresses, but this one is a colossal waste of everyone's time. And I think Stormy Daniels is doing just fine for herself, whereas a lot of folks can't actually make ends meet.
29
@14 EmmaLiz +1. Exactly as you say -- we have a structural problem and Trump is a symptom. To your excellent list I'd add rising income inequality, lack of opportunity (especially for minorities but also, often, for everyone other than the 0.1%), spiraling house prices in blue states, health care access and affordability -- neoliberal economics has failed, mainstream Democrats are basically Republicans light when it comes to economic justice and international geopolitics. We need to embrace progressive solutions or otherwise xenophobia, fascism and hatred will continue to spiral out of control while the billionaires continue to exploit 99.999% of us.
30
Yes nocute.
His sad old boy is the last thing any one wants to look at. His ugly face and voice is enough.
31
I hope it looks like a Cheeto.
32
The Stormy Daniels affair is likely small potatoes next to the stuff Mueller is investigating but it's not (as I originally thought) just pointless salacious gossip. It seemed pretty hypocritical of Democrats to try to make hay out of this after defending Clinton, but Daniels or her lawyer or both are very smart and they have backed the Dumpster and his lawyer into an awkward corner. If he admits to being DD, then he is confessing to, among other things, tax fraud, a violation of campaign finance law, and obstruction of justice. If he does not admit to being DD, then Daniels is free to release the evidence proving that he is in fact DD. And if it's proven that his lawyer was a co-conspirator, and gets disbarred, then attorney-client privilege no longer applies to the lawyer's records, the same lawyer who's been representing the Dumpster for years (IANAL but this all came from one). And if the Russians knew about any of this, it's more corroboration that the Dumpster was vulnerable to blackmail, i.e., it's proof that he was willing to pay money to try to cover up his behavior. This is more serious than it looks at first glance.
33
Admittedly given the current make up of Congress and the self serving mendacity of pretty much everybody in DC this by itself probably wouldn't go anywhere. But it's another brick in what will hopefully be a big enough corruption case to take down the dumpster and potentially much of the GOP leadership.
34
The second anybody on the internet types “neoliberal” I feel like there should be an automatic pop-up that quizzes them on what that actually means. Or what they mean by it.

The private sector is absolutely excellent at generating wealth. And that is precisely what post-war neoliberalism was designed to do. And it did not fail at that.

What the private sector is abysmal at is distributing that wealth over time. And recognizing where profit incentives fail and what intangibles like public health are really worth.

Capitalism is awesome. Our problems however stem not from the idea of private sector capitalism itself but from market fetishizing brought about by the rightwing mythology that societies interests and profit interests always align. This was done mainly as an effort to bust unions which ironically has fucked the very industries that purged their unions because nobody can afford to buy the shit they make without debt now.

Neoliberalism and wealth inequality wouldn’t be half the problem if this country would’ve established universal healthcare in the sixties when everyone else did. And there was no conflict between the market and socialized healthcare once you understand that healthcare is not a commodity.

Contrary to rightwing mythology the so-called socialist hellholes of Northern Europe are just as capitalist in most respects as we are.

America is a cesspool of free-market bootstrap delusion. All we need to do is get these rightwing goobers to understand that America has ALWAYS had socialist institutions. The US military and the post office for two.

A functional and less sociopathic free market goes hand in hand with healthy socialist institutions.

34
Check out this podcast for the details:

Stormy Daniels is a legal genius
35
@33: Trump routinely ignores the conventions by which most politicians play the game, and no one has yet made him suffer the consequences. He and the far right wing of the Republican party are pretty much showing contempt for the rule of law. If no one is stopping him for far graver offenses, why do you think that this would stop him? Who among the congressional Republicans is going to call for impeachment or his resignation (not that he'd resign if called to do so). He's trying as hard as he can to become the dictator of a non-banana republic and he's being assisted by conservatives. Even if this is all as big as you say, the chances of it having any real effect are slim-to-none.
37
@Dr. Zaius talking points generally b/c I agree with most of your post- Just because words are often misunderstood doesn't mean they don't have meanings. This word is currently hip so you'll hear people misusing it or expanding the meaning, but it's not a new term. I think what's happened is that it's conflated in people's minds with social/cultural liberal vs conservative labels, so they hear the term "liberalism" and assume it's referring to social/cultural liberalism rather than economic liberalism. In economics, liberalism is a kind of free trade that revolves around individuals. It's the focus on individuals that makes the word the same we use in cultural/political descriptors (liberal politics focuses on individual rights). Liberalism as an economic term focuses on free market, individual ownership, etc. rather than a group/state/collective. The government is only supposed to intervene to keep the market free. You can be a conservative culturally and believe in liberal economic theory- in fact this is the norm for most Republicans. From that root word, as an economic theory, comes libertarianism (which is a whole other ball of yarn) and neoliberalism. Neoliberalism is an economic term, but I think people get confused because they mix it up with liberal politics as I described and think it means a new way of being liberal culturally. It has nothing to do with that. Specifically, it refers to economic policies that transfer from the public sphere into the private sector (so austerity programs or deregulation that favors industry or slashing taxes on the rich and cutting social programs while controlling interest rates also fighting any public sector or collective forms of economic consolidation such as public schools, social services, or unions). Most people who have used the term over the decades say that we moved from liberalism to neoliberalism as our guiding economic policy during the oil shock of the 70s. Regan and Thatcher are usually credited with making it a mainstay, though certainly Dems and Labor contributed as well (think 3rd way Dems like Clinton or New Labor Blairites). The reason the term has become popular now (as well as misused frequently) is because the Sanders and Corbyn campaigns have started to popularize language around austerity and wealth concentration, but these conversations are not new- they are just newly popular. And when people start to have ah-ha moments on a grand scale, they sometimes misuse popular words to describe what they are realizing. So while I understand the frustration, I'm also very happy to see that these topics are a part of the common discourse. Also, as with the term "libertarian" and "social democrat" and "democratic socialist", what it describes in the English speaking world and in the US specifically is different than in other countries.
38
@34 Dr.Zaius - Agree capitalism is great at wealth creation, and producing excellent commodities, commercializing technology / science. But I used the term neoliberalism correctly.

It is, as EmmaLiz says @37, a political economic philosophy where the free market is believed to be better for all problems and was embraced by the "left" in anglophone countries and is behind most of the present ills in said countries: free trade without consideration for union jobs, privatizing the trains in England (which are now more expensive and don't run on time), neoliberalism underpins the health system in the USA vs. the rest of the world where the market is much more controlled (many models, from single payer like Canada, nationalized in UK, to heavily regulated private insurers like in Germany).

And it is a fantasy that capitalism is best: in the modern world very few true Adam Smith commodities exist, very few markets can be free. Just as it is a fantasy that communism works for producing commodities cleanly or consumer goods. (Every time tried, miserable failure.)

For capitalism, the capital costs for new entry once a market is established are so high that early entrants face no serious competition. Sure, you could launch an online store to challenge Amazon, or a new home improvement chain like Home Depot or Lowe's, but you'll never be able to match the existing network of warehouses or their head start. Many markets are like this.

Your faith in capitalism for delivering commodities is also wrong. I am not anti-capitalist, capitalism is great at creating Samsungs, Apples, Amazons, Huaweis - a handful of large companies that then have domination within a market. Then it falters.

Even in commodities -- consider aluminum, a few large companies like Alcoa, the only time new major players are created is when new markets open like China where domestic political protection shelters the internal market long enough allowing a major new company to form: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_la…

Hence, companies like Amazon (first successful entrant to a new market) will continue unchallenged for decades, and can exploit their workers -- unless we regulate them, unionize their workforce, or possibly break up their monopoly to encourage some competition. Neoliberals oppose such interventions. I am not anti-capitalism but for thoughtfully regulated capitalism.
39
By embraced by the "left" I mean mainstream left-- Clinton (both), Obama, Tony Blair in the UK. Obama when he campaigned in '08 looked like a progressive, but in office, supported mostly neoliberal policies (e.g. ACA instead of single payer or universal coverage).
40
I'll never buy from Amazon. Trump has fired Rex Tillerson. wtf is going on over there.
41
LavaGirl, military steps in to fill the void in political leadership. Basically all the posts in the executive branch are run by either the military/defense intelligence or industry. What we've seen with Trump is a culmination of a long trend in US where market hegemony + political ideology make foreign policy decisions, but lately the civilian political viewpoints (the political ideology) has been less and less significant. For example, Congress has basically not been involved in US foreign policy at all since the early Bush years, and they were already hardly involved before then. But now all they do is sign checks for the DoD. So you have the military running the show, and of course industry has a huge influence on what they do- what weapons deals are made and what regions we want to dominate, etc. But there has been some tension between the new people Trump brought in and the older core of the military/intelligence for some time, and as Trump's people disappear one by one, they are replaced by the military/intelligence. Basically all the people who think that Trump is a unique threat need to recognize that he and his folks haven't been running the show for a year or so now. I don't know the details of the palace intrigue that got us here or what special issues there are between Trump and Tillerson- who gives a fuck. Bigger picture is that, yet again, we have someone from the CIA/military stepping into a cabinet position in the executive branch.

As far as ethics goes, I don't know that any of this is actually worse than it was before. The State Dept has been full of civilians who make ruthless decisions that destabilize entire regions of the world (and sometimes commit war crimes) for decades upon decades now, including Hillary Clinton when she had her bloody stint in that role. So I don't know that it actually matters in the here and now, but big picture, I'm disturbed by what is basically a soft coup.
42
@delta, I don't think Dr. Zaius' post was in contradiction to most of the things you defended against.
43
@19 No this is a perfect example of what I'm talking about. Our campaign finance laws are one of the main problems we have in this country, structurally. If Trump figured out a way to either get around those laws or if he broke them outright - even if he took campaign money and bought sex workers and drugs and any number of illegal things with them and then paid hush money, etc- that is really irrelevant to the larger picture. The evil thing about campaign finance is how industry literally purchases politicians who then do things like destroy the environment, destroy public schools, pass massive tax breaks for the very wealthy, sell billions of dollars worth of weapons to the Saudis, refuse any sensible health care reform, etc. And this is all legal! So if Trump broke campaign finance laws to pay hush money to a sex worker, I just can't be bothered to give a single flying fuck. The problem is bigger than him. This bullshit is palace intrigue. But aside from all of that, when I said that about money laundering, I was talking about the bigger hullabaloo around Manafort and Podesta and all that with the Russians and Ukraine. Which is also stupid shit but not even half as stupid as this.

It's like living through the Lewinsky thing all over again- one side desperate to uncover some shady business deals that will finally get rid of the politician they hate and their investigations sidetrack them into a sex scandal in the hopes of uncovering some technically illegal thing that could bring them down. Meanwhile, there's plenty of more important shit going down right before your eyes if you bother with it. Why the hell is the liberal media (yes, I'm referring to the liberal media right now, not Fox) suddenly opposed to attempts to solve the crisis with North Korea in a diplomatic way? Why are liberals suddenly cool with FBI and military people, voting for survelliance powers, etc? WTF about DACA and health care, etc? And don't tell me that we can focus on sex scandals AND all this other stuff, because that's not what I see. What I see is everyone super excited that THIS will be the thing that gets rid of Trump. Just like with Clinton's sex scandal, it will come to nothing. But let's say I'm wrong and this is the thing that gets rid of Trump. Fine, good riddance. Now we still have Pence, the GOP and the same fucking structure in place and all of our politicians are still owned by the private sector which purchased them through LEGAL campaign finance policies. None of the problems go away, we just don't have to listen to this asshole talk anymore.
44
NoCute, I agree with most things you say, but I have to push back against this a bit:

"This man is the single biggest threat to our country's existence in its history"

What do you mean here? Give him some time, I think the people running the show during the Trump years could seriously fuck up the world, and I think a lot of what they've done is already really damaging domestically, but he's not yet done anything even remotely as bad as what other presidents have done. I mean, several of our presidents have carried out genocides. Others have destabilized entire regions of the world. And a lot of the domestic destruction that Trump has carried off were natural results of policies put in place under Reagan then exacerbated by Clinton and Bush. Even if you are referring to the casual way he flirts with the prospect of nuclear war- which I agree is the most alarming thing about him- this is not new either and we've been closer to nuclear war before than we are now.

If this is what you meant, let me tell you something that helps me sleep a little at night. Under JFK, Nixon and Reagan, in all three cases, the Pentagon developed informal backup plans in case those presidents called in a nuclear strike. All three of them had long periods of time in which they were severely unstable- either because of substance abuse, mental illness or cognitive decline. There isn't literally a red button that launches nukes (I'm sure you know that) but rather the president must call the Pentagon and give the nuclear codes. The Pentagon is supposed to do what he says, but as I said, throughout history they have had backup plans in place informally when the people who would be in charge of launching nukes knew that the president was unstable. Given the fact that in this particular presidency, the military and Pentagon are literally taking over the entire executive branch and making military decisions on their own that he then just agrees to, I think it's nearly impossible that Trump would unilaterally make a decision to launch a nuke and even less likely that the Pentagon would agree to it if he did.

If you mean his exacerbation of the tensions with NK, then again I agree it's very alarming, however as brutal as that regime is, they are not suicidal, and cooler/smarter heads have been prevailing in SK under the Moon admin- he came to power in May and made it a priority to de-escalate the crisis, and he knows (much better than the American media on both sides it seems) how to handle Trump. All the American concern about how Trump would negotiate have completely ignored the fact that it's SK and Moon that have been leading the negotiations, and Moon recognizes that Trump is more game show host than dictator. If you flatter him and let him take the credit for "saving the world", he'll go along with anything. He's like a toddler that wants attention. I have no doubt he'd start a war just to show off how tough he is, but he's also lazy and stupid and is motivated by attention not murderous intent, and if you offered him a similarly starring role as peacemaker, he'll take that too.

In any case, you might be referring to any number of things and I've misunderstood, but to me it seems that people are freaking out about Trump as himself some unique threat that I find to be very overblown and distracting from a historical moment in which we could be examining the shit hole that our system is, with or without Trump. I think of the Trump presidency more like the moment in Oz when they reveal the man behind the curtain. This is what the US has been for a long time. Trump is just the first time a lot of people are seeing it.
45
@EmmaLiz: Trump is altering the judiciary in lifetime terms in a staggering way; he has appointed people to positions of power who are incredibly unqualified for those positions and who seem to have been chosen to dismantle the very department they're supposed to head up. He disregards the rule of law. He encourages a culture of hate and divisiveness and distrust for the facts that I think is dangerous I might have been overreacting, but I still think that who he does or does not touch with his penis should be the very least of our concerns.
46
Regarding the judiciary, yes that's extremely disturbing. Likewise with his rollbacks on regulation, environmental protections, etc. Also his continued expansion of presidential powers and loss of civilian rights (though this was happening under Bush and Obama too and so far Trump has done nothing so bad as them in that department, but give him time I think it will get worse). Also the cultural effect- absolutely. The rise in reactionary politics / visible fascism / scapegoating, etc. All that was happening before Trump, but his legitimizing those conversations have emboldened people. However, in THAT case, the cat was already out of the bag during the election. There is no going back by changing the presidency, and this has been the current beneath the Rep party for a long time now. I disagree about the unqualified people being a new thing. It's really alarming to discover that people in charge of decisions that affect the course of human history are incompetent or ideologues or industry-serving unethical bigots, but this has mostly always been the case. The difference with Trump is just that it is so visible now, especially since some of them had non-mainstream ideologies- and so more and more people are discovering this unsettling fact. In many cases in the past, people in charge of things knew absolutely nothing about the things they were in charge of (look at the Dulles brothers dominating a decade of world history, look at the Bush admin in regards to the Middle East). In other cases, they are knowledgeable but just evil (look at Kissenger or Albright). And in other cases, they have all the qualifications on paper but managed to fuck up every single thing they ever put their hands on- look at Hillary, supposedly the most qualified candidate ever in history if you look at her resume, but she fucked up every big project she ever had.

Anyway, like I said, I agree with your post, mostly, I'm just beating a dead horse here because I think it's a long and hard process to get poeple who are rightly disturbed by Trump to zoom out a bit and see that it's actually not about Trump. Sympton/cause.
47
I would just like to highlight the strap-on implications of Ms. Clifford’s pseudonym in the NDA—Peggy Peterson. That is all.

Please wait...

Comments are closed.

Commenting on this item is available only to members of the site. You can sign in here or create an account here.


Add a comment
Preview

By posting this comment, you are agreeing to our Terms of Use.