Stormy Daniels (44) has her place in the history books.
But will she stand there as a heroine? Or as the woman who gives Trump’s slumping popularity a boost because he suddenly dominates all news channels again and has found his new role – as the victim of a “witch hunt” (Trump)?
Above all: Who is the woman whose beautiful legs Trump stumbled upon?
She owes her pseudonym to two of her passions: hard rock and alcohol. Mötley Crüe bassist Nikki Sixx named his daughter Storm, Daniels comes from the whiskey “Jack Daniel’s”.
︎ She was born in 1979 as Stephanie Gregory in Baton Rouge (Louisiana) on the banks of the Mississippi. Her father was an engineer. He left the family when she was 4. She grew up with her mother, “penniless and neglected,” as her memoir (“In All Frankness,” 2018) puts it. Her mother, she writes, “never took care of me.”
︎ At the age of 9 she was sexually abused by an older man.
▶︎ She started performing in strip clubs when she was 17, and her first porn shoot when she was 23. “It was an easy money-making world, so that’s where I got stuck.” She married a porn film director. She is now married for the fourth time – to porn actor Barrett Blade. She has a 12 year old daughter.
In 2006 there was that fateful meeting with Donald Trump.
A golf tournament in Nevada. She was hostess. Trump promised to “make her big” and invited her to his hotel room. “He received me in my pyjamas. (…) It was maybe the worst sex of my life,” she says.
Fateful encounter: Trump with Stormy Daniels at a golf tournament in Nevada in 2006
Trump denies – to this day – the affair.
But then, years later (in 2016, while he was campaigning in the US), why did he pay $130,000 in hush money through his attorney, Michael Cohen? This payment, which Trump illegally recorded as a “business expense” — an accounting offense — now puts Trump in distress.
In a recent interview, she was asked whether she was afraid of Trump. “No, I saw the man naked, so he can’t intimidate me in a suit and tie,” was her reply. She calls him “tiny” and makes fun of the size of his privates.
She undisputedly has insider knowledge and expertise.