I just learned that when Stormy Daniels went to Donald Trump's luxury suite, on the evening that's at the center of the current Trump criminal trial in New York, she was shocked when she emerged from the bathroom and found that the former president had stripped off his fancy jammies down to his t-shirt and boxers. This revelation came in an Atlantic article, "What Happened to Stormy Daniels Is Not Salacious," by a writer named Quinta Jurecic. Stormy just couldn't have ever imagined that the pussy-grabber had invited a porn actress there for sex!
Jurecic begins by writing that, in March of 2018, she joined some friends in a Washington D.C. bar to watch an Anderson Cooper interview with the star of The Witches of Breastwick and Summer Hummer. Maybe in that strange town, people's idea of a good night out involves watching a porn actress talk about having sex with a notorious horndog in a hotel room 12 years ago. But, despite the headline, it still sounds salacious to me: the Hefneresque silk PJs, the spanking, the barebacking, the missionary position, etc.
This article's an example of taking a set of facts that point in a single direction and massaging them until they tell a completely different story—the story the writer and her editor want. Although the writer's trying to convince me that the hookup was something more sinister than salacious, it stretched the limits of credulity to claim that a veteran porn actress with nearly 200 film credits got all aflutter over Trump greeting her while still wearing more clothing than all of her male co-stars, who she'd have just met, did.
"She was shocked," writes the author—meaning she claims to have been shocked—before quoting her testimony: “I felt the room spin in slow motion. Oh my God, what did I misread to get here?” Who's buying that one?
I'd assumed that the #BelieveWomen movement had already run its course after it came out that women sometimes lie too, but Jurecic takes everything Daniels said about that "unsalacious" 2006 evening in Lake Tahoe at face value. At one time, journalists knew their job was to be skeptical about potentially self-serving statements made by people who have a motivation to lie, but such journalistic rigor could probably get a writer fired at narrative-adhering places like The Atlantic nowadays. Today's media establishment sees its mission not as reporting the facts, but rather as stopping Trump from re-election.
The author wastes little time in comparing Trump to convicted serial rapist, Harvey Weinstein, based solely on what someone who took $130,000 to shut up about banging Trump claims, without corroboration. It's reminiscent of the journalistic malpractice that led to the Rolling Stone 2014 fake rape story debacle. Jurecic writes that what Daniels talked about on the witness stand "wasn't tawdry or salacious… it was sadder, uglier— and for many people who have lived in some way in the shadow of sexual violence—more familiar."
"Sexual violence," even though Jurecic reported in this same article that Daniels said in court that the encounter was "consensual" and that she "didn't feel threatened"? But Jurecic doesn’t let facts get in the way. She writes that when Daniels came out of the bathroom "he was larger than her and standing between her and the bedroom door."
Most men are larger than most women, and what danger is involved in blocking entrance to the bedroom? Then the writer descends into pure nonsense with this passage: "Daniels’ insistence that she is not a victim locates the interaction in a queasy, blurred space of complicated sexual interaction that has become more culturally familiar in the years since #MeToo." Huh?
Since Stormy Daniels' own words nullify the narrative Jurecic wants to promote, the author needed to find a workaround, which she does by stating that Daniels said she was aware that there was a "power difference" between herself and Trump. Using #MeToo language is an attempt to demonstrate that Trump used coercion, a subtle form of violence, but that power difference is exactly what drew Daniels to Trump's room on that day. And what relevance did the power difference have? Was Trump going to fire her or deny her a promotion if she didn't put out? Or not let her appear on The Apprentice, as if he was ever going to do that in the first place?
Here's a more plausible theory: Daniels went to Trump's room to trade sex for an appearance on that TV show, or anything else she could get, including a payoff, which she got, and $130,00 isn't bad for what the performer claims was for a session that was over in a matter of minutes.
While Daniels is suddenly talking about a power imbalance, in a 2018 interview she did with Bill Maher, she spells it out that this was not a #MeToo affair:
Maher: “You say it’s not a #MeToo case.”
Daniels: “It's not a #MeToo case. I wasn't assaulted, or raped, or coerced, or blackmailed. They tried to shove me in the #MeToo box to further their own agenda. I didn't want to be part of that because it's not the truth and I'm not a victim in that regard."
Jurecic refers to what happened in Tahoe as an "assault," although Daniels had already said "I wasn't assaulted." This is what modern journalism has come to. The narrative the writer presents is that Daniels went to Trump's suite as The Innocent who’s without guile or corruption. As Jurecic puts it, "She had wanted to be taken seriously as a writer and director and hoped that appearing on The Apprentice might help get her there."
So being able to write dialogue involving, say, a woman who orders a pizza and realizes that she has no money to pay for it once the delivery man arrives is a talent that just needs some exposure on a primetime TV show to pave the way for script writing gigs on feature films? Only in the bizarro world of The Atlantic does that make any sense.