Stormy Daniels takes the stand in Trump trial

This is The Guardian.

Politics can seem quite loud at the moment.

Shut up a minute!

And sometimes even a bit incomprehensible.

They talked about ferrets so much that I was not even able to speak.

To help cut through the noise, Politics Weekly UK is introducing new episodes with me, Pippa Carrera, The Guardian's political editor, and our political correspondent, Kieran Stacey. We'll be bringing you all the insight you need from Westminster to kick off your week. Subscribe to Politics Weekly UK, wherever you get your podcasts, for a new episode every Monday.

It was the moment everyone had been waiting for. Everyone, that is, but Donald Trump.

In a lower Manhattan courtroom,

Donald Trump has come face-to-face.

with Stormy Daniels, the adult film actress,

is on the witness stand today.

The former president could only sit and watch as the adult film actress Stormy Daniels told her version of events about an alleged sexual encounter they had back in 2006.

Prosecutors allege the payment was a cover-up to stop Daniels from going public.

about an alleged sexual encounter.

with Donald Trump. He has denied the encounter and has pleaded not guilty.

Now, Stormy Daniels' testimony was so explicit that even the judge at times found some of the details too hot to handle. So just how bad was it for Donald Trump? I'm Jonathan Friedland, columnist at The Guardian, and this is Politics Weekly America.

None of this is normal, and we're so dug in to politics, as usual, especially in America, especially in this sort of political pundit industrial complex of which I am.

a part of. Molly Jong Fast is a political commentator in the U.S. and host of the Fast Politics podcast. It's like.

this guy makes Nixon look like Lincoln.

Yeah, no, I mean, it is quite true that one precedent has been set after another, one taboo being broken after another, because we've said before, he's the first president, former, or sitting to stand trial in a case that centers on an alleged affair with a film actress, an affair, of course, he denies. Trump did something which he doesn't often do, which is he fires off criticism on his social media platform, and then takes it down. What exactly happened?

You know, this judge knows that everyone is watching him, so he's been really, really careful. And so, Trump has been found in contempt now 10, maybe 11 times.

Former President Donald Trump sounds unbowed by Judge Juan Marchand's threat to jail him if he continues to violate his gag order. It's an unprecedented possibility. A judge threatening to put a former, and perhaps future, American president behind bars. Remember,

this gag order is pretty specific, so, like, it doesn't say he can't malign Alvin Bragg, and it doesn't even say he can't malign the judge. It says he can't malign the judge's daughter, who he was obsessed with maligning. Which, again, these are like these organized crime tropes. Like, these are not things that American politicians do. They're things that people like Al Capone do.

I agree. I've noticed that he does do that, too, as if he's missing the fact that he's likening himself to a notorious criminal. Right, like, you know,

compare yourself to, like, a president,

not a criminal.

But what I think is interesting about this is, so you see, really this judge said, you know, you've been found in contempt all these times. If you do it again, I'm going to put you in jail. Now, and he says, he said, I don't want to put a former president, possibly soon to be, dear God, hopefully not, president again in jail, but if you force my hand, you're going to force my hand. I mean, what I think is important here for a minute is to realize, like, Donald Trump is being treated in a way that no other criminal defendant could ever be treated. And so we had a truth about some element of the trial, and he just deleted it because it wasn't worth going to jail.

he's actually genuinely fearful of jail, and I have wondered if the germophobia is part of the reason why. You said he posted a truth, truth, of course, being his own social media platform, rather than a truth meaning an actual truth. No, anything.

that is actually true, yes.

He was objecting in that posting to the very fact of Stormy Daniels being allowed to testify, but nevertheless, she did testify. And Molly, you, I think, felt that she initially seemed a little nervous.

I think, so what's interesting about her is, first of all, you have to have her testify. You cannot have the woman who is in the centre of the entire story not testify. So much of her story is important because, remember, these people are jurors. These jurors are humans. And again, I just want to talk about this is the power imbalance here.

Stormy. That's interesting because people have been noticing or noting at different points in the trial, the inscrutability of the jury. As if the jury are giving nothing away. and even during parts of Stormy Daniels testimony, looking on neutrally. No signs, no clues on their faces as to what they were, of what they thought, of, what they were hearing.

being in the bathroom and seeing a leather toiletry case. She remembered Old Spice and Pert Plus. and then, when she walked out of the bathroom, she said she remembered seeing Donald Trump there on the bed.

So let's go back to the beginning of the episode. How did she say this encounter, which she alleges he denies? How did she say it was initiated? Take us back to this golf tournament in Lake Tahoe.

Right. In Lake Tahoe, she came over. They had a talk. The thing that's interesting is she felt that they really connected and he said he wanted to have her as a guest on The Apprentice, which I'm sure he told all the women. Then she went to the bathroom and she came out and he was in his boxer shorts.

that detail, because he's famously not a man with much of a sense of humour, particularly if, directed at himself. He doesn't like being mocked. How do you think he... How do you think he made of hearing a court hear that he opens the door in black silk or satin pyjamas. She laughs at him and says does Mr.

I think he doesn't like being made fun of. He doesn't like.

Now, of course, he denies both those claims, and that's why it's gone to this trial because he says he didn't have the affair and didn't write the hush money check. Just on exactly the point you make about how the old political standard was. it would have been just terminal for a Republican, the party of family values, to have admitted an affair. We're way beyond that point. obviously.

So I think it hurts him and I think a lot of the punditry that's been like if you do this, it will bounce back, it will blow up on Alvin Bragg. I don't agree. I think this. so far, this case has been pretty tight and I think it does hurt him with voters as well. it should.

definitely wouldn't have wanted any of this to be heard again. Now, the way that Stormy Daniels described it, and of course we'll say again Donald Trump denies any of this happened, but what she says is that she was surprised when he came on to her and she initially tried to laugh off his approach but ended up having sex with Donald Trump and Trump's lawyer. Todd Blanche, argued that this part of her testimony, the bit talking about the actual act of sex, was enough to void the trial, to throw out the whole trial. it should be declared a mistrial. the argument was that this is the kind of testimony that makes it impossible to come back from said Trump's lawyer.

There is no there there. he wanted a mistrial because he thought maybe he could get it right? The lawyers thought maybe there's some chance, and Mershon, the judge, has been really, really careful about making sure that this kind of thing doesn't happen. so, for example, he said if you wanted a mistrial, you should have made more objections during the testimony, and in fact the judge himself made objections to the testimony. when she was talking about sexual positions, he was saying this could bias the jury.

case, New York Judge Juan Mershon, has warned the prosecution that Stormy Daniels, the adult film star, should be focused on the details of her allegations, not random details, about this alleged sexual encounter with former president Donald Trump, and that was an intriguing moment inside the courthouse behind me.

The reality is like. you can't ascribe logic to these Trump lawyers. Remember, even though some of these lawyers are actually really good, fundamentally they have a client who is really, at the end of the day, trying to run the show.

And the judge did actually, as you say, say that there were probably some things that would have been left better unsaid, which is a nice, discreet way of putting it. The case centers on this alleged hush money payment. Stormy Daniels telling the court that she met Donald Trump a few times after that encounter in 2006, until he finally said he couldn't in fact get her an appearance on The Apprentice, the TV show he was fronting at the time. But it wasn't until 2016, a full 10 years later, that she was approached by Trump's lawyer, Michael Cohen, then lawyer about sending her or giving her any money. Now do we have any idea why exactly it took a decade from meeting together in that hotel room to this offer of cash?

Right, well, so that's what's so important about this case is that the Access Hollywood tape comes out. A long time. Trump aide Hope Hicks still on the stand, testifying about her role in the former president's 2016 campaign and her time at the White House. During her testimony last hour, Hicks recounted learning about the infamous Access Hollywood tape and called it a quote, crisis within the campaign. And Michael Cohen is like, oh my god, Stormy Daniels is gonna destroy.

Yeah, that is exactly the prosecution case, and the defense denied that and indeed the defense had their turn to cross examine Stormy Daniels, Trump's lawyer, Susan Necklace. her goal, it seemed, was to essentially go to the credibility of the witness and paint a less than flattering portrait of Stormy Daniels and sort of essentially say to the jury look, you can't trust what this woman says. at one point Daniels did admit to hating Donald Trump, and I wonder if you think and saying that she wanted to see him punished. I wonder if that, you think that will damage the prosecution case in the eyes of the jury that she is can be painted as a vindictive witness.

Well that, you know again. that's also the problem with Michael Cohen. that's why this case, everyone was so anxious about this case, and that's why David Pecker was such a brilliant witness, because he's still friends with Trump. this was not about an axe to grind, this was just about what David Pecker said happened, which is totally different. it's a documents case.

Straight after the day in court, Trump did speak.

comments? He just says whatever he thinks will play well with his people, and look Trump has this entire time while facing these numerous counts, he has all these criminal counts against him, this whole time he's felt that he was candidate Trump and candidate Trump defended Trump would help candidate Trump. so during the E. Jean Carroll case, which is a civil case, he was out there saying I have a gazillion dollars, you know, I don't have a million dollars, I have a gazillion dollars. I have hundreds of millions.

Yeah, which doesn't speak to what happens in a general election. So, Molly, what happens next in this case? Stormy Daniels, back on the stand on Thursday. what are you expecting on that day?

So, more across from Susan Necklace, we'll see if she, how hard she wants to go on Stormy and if she can think of anything else. The thinking is that, you'll remember, the prosecution said that probably only two more weeks. It seems unlikely that Michael Cohen will go on the stand this week, probably start next week, because you don't want him on the stand for one day and then the weekend. you really want to get that all put, you know, these big witnesses, you want it all put together. And Michael Cohen has tapes and he has a lot of documentation and he's not a great witness because he wrote a book called Revenge, which is not what you want your witness to do.

Mollie Jongfast, on another extraordinary day in American politics. Thanks so much for joining me. Thank you.

This is The Guardian.