TV host Bill Maher has dismissed claims by pornstar Stormy Daniels that she was a victim against the former US president Donald Trump, by releasing footage of his 2018 interview with her in which she laughed off suggestions she was coerced into having sex during the alleged hook-up 12 years earlier.
‘It is not a ‘me-too’ case,’ she told Maher at the time, ‘I wasn’t assaulted, I wasn’t attacked or raped or coerced or blackmailed.’
But she told Trump’s New York trial last week that her hands were shaking and she ‘blacked out’ during the encounter, adding: ‘There was an imbalance of power, for sure. He was bigger and blocking the way.’
‘You really think she blacked out?’ Maher asked.
‘A porn star is used to having sex with people she does not know. That’s the job. She’s not a good witness.’
Daniels is at the center of claims that Trump paid hush money to avoid negative stories coming out ahead of the 2016 election. He denies 34 counts of falsifying business documents
Maher said he felt Trump might be convicted two weeks ago after magazine publisher David Pecker revealed the ‘catch-and-kill’ scheme to keep stories about Trump’s alleged infidelities under wraps as the billionaire ran for president in 2016.
‘If this goes that way and Trump loses, it’s going to change the whole election,’ Maher said.
‘A number of independents, a significant number, and Republicans say their vote will change if he is a convicted criminal. And he’ll look like a loser, not that he doesn’t already.’
But on Real Time with Bill Maher, he said that the three other criminal trials facing the former president were going nowhere and it was now ‘Stormy or Bust’.
‘The Democrats have had four years to put Trump on trial and it is all just going away. They blew it at every turn,’ Maher complained.
‘Here’s what’s happened this week. Georgia; They’re gonna take up Trump’s argument about Fani Willis. You know, she’s the prosecutor: she’s having an affair with the guy she hired.
‘I mean, it’s not really relevant to the case, but they left an opening. And now that one’s gonna be delayed.
‘The stolen documents one? That’s never gonna happen because that’s a Trumpy judge down there. So it’s Stormy or bust.’
In the 2018 interview, Maher bluntly asked the Full Disclosure author: ‘Why did you f*** Donald Trump?’
‘I have no idea!’ she exclaimed to laughter from the audience.
‘OK but you say it’s not a me-too case?’ he responded.
‘It is not a ‘me-too’ case,’ she replied.
‘They tried to shove me in the ‘me-too’ box as part of their own agenda, and first of all I didn’t want to be part of that because it’s not the truth and I’m not a victim in that regard.’
But she told the trial on Tuesday last week that she could not remember how she ended up on a Nevada hotel bed with Trump and how he allegedly failed to wear a condom.
Coming out of the bathroom she said she was startled to find Trump on the bed wearing only boxer shorts and his t-shirt.
Daniels said she ‘wasn’t expecting someone to be there minus their clothing.’
She said Trump stood between her and the door, adding ‘He said I thought we were getting somewhere…If you ever want to get out of that trailer park’.’
At one point, she says she ‘just blacked out,’ although she wasn’t drugged, and she and Trump were just drinking water.
Asked if the pair ended up on the bed having sex, she replied simply, ‘Yes.’
Asked to briefly describe the event, she said, ‘Next thing I know, [I] was on the bed, the opposite side of the bed, I had my clothes and my shoes off. My bra was still on. Missionary position.’
She said she did not remember how or who took her clothes off but did remember that the sexual encounter was brief.
The lurid testimony nearly derailed the case with Trump’s defense team demanding a mistrial.
‘This is the kind of testimony that makes it impossible to come back from,’ defense lawyer Todd Blanche said.
‘How can we come back from this in a way that’s fair to President Trump?’
There was no need for her to mention that Trump did not wear a condom, he said, other than to ‘enflame’ the jury.
