“Whether you like it or not, Stormy Daniels is here,” Jimmy Kimmel said at the top of his post-State of the Union show Tuesday night.
The reality is, Kimmel’s post-State of the Union interview with the now-infamous porn star was never going to be the bombshell-filled blockbuster many viewers were probably hoping for.
Before his monologue, the episode opened with a shot of Kimmel and Daniels watching the speech together. “OK, Stormy, enough of this,” the host said. “Show me on the puppet what he did to you.” As he pulled out a Trump doll, Daniels revealed one of herself with tape over the mouth.
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Even before Daniels released a statement denying her alleged affair with Donald Trump just a few hours before Kimmel’s show was set to tape, she was not exactly spilling secrets about the president. When she appeared on Inside Edition last week, she refused to answer nearly every question she was asked about Trump. “Did you have a sexual relationship with Donald Trump?” the host inquired, to which she simply sat silently and smiled.
Now that she is saying the affair “never happened” and will have “no further comment on the matter,” what on earth was Kimmel supposed to talk to her about?
The host was determined to get more out of the adult-film actress, who has embarked on a “Make America Horny Again” tour in an attempt to further cash in on her alleged tryst with Trump. But as expected, she wasn’t giving him a whole lot to work with.
“Stormy, it’s great to have you here,” Kimmel began. “Thank you for being here. I had a pretty clear idea what I wanted to ask you tonight, but then about three hours ago I go on the internet and I see this letter that pops up.”
In that statement, Daniels wrote, “I am not denying the affair because I was paid ‘hush money’ as has been reported in overseas owned tabloids. I am denying this affair because it never happened.”
“That’s not the craziest thing I read about myself on the internet tonight,” Daniels quipped.
Kimmel cast doubt on the statement that Daniels released earlier in the day, noting that the signature on it does not appear to match previous versions of her autograph. Asked if she signed the letter herself, Daniels shrugged, saying, “I don’t know, did I? That does not look like my signature, does it?”
At first, Daniels said she “did not know” where the statement came from, but then threw doubt on that assertion by adding, “I also work for the FBI and I’m a man, according to the internet today.”
Moving on, Kimmel said he likes to imagine that Trump was watching their interview after his State of the Union address, “lying in his bed with cheeseburger wrappers all over the place,” and thinking, “Oh, Stormy, why are you on that talk show when you could be here in bed with me, having the most fantastic love-making of your entire life?”
“It’s an unpleasant picture you’re painting there,” Daniels said.
As Kimmel tried to find out whether it was a nondisclosure agreement with Trump that was making her act so coy, she would not even answer that line of questioning. The host argued that if she doesn’t have an NDA with Trump then she could say she doesn’t have an NDA, to which Daniels replied, “You’re so smart, Jimmy.”
As for the 2011 InTouch interview that seemed to confirm the affair with Trump, Daniels would only say that she did not participate in it “as it is written.”
“But they did release a transcript of what you said. Is that transcript incorrect?” Kimmel asked.
“I honestly haven’t seen the whole transcript, I’m too scared to look at it,” Daniels responded.
With that, he began going through it with her line-by-line. As Kimmel listed off the lurid details, Daniels would neither confirm nor deny their veracity, instead delivering one-liners like, “He does have good taste, I guess” and “Everyone loves Shark Week.”
“You said in the interview that you could describe, in detail, Donald Trump’s junk,” Kimmel said.
“What is wrong with you?” Daniels asked in response. And that was before he pulled out three differently sized carrots and asked her to pick one that looked most familiar (she declined).
By the end of the interview, Kimmel was playing a game of “Never Have I Ever” with the Stormy Daniels puppet, who still would not give up the dirt on Trump.
All in all, Kimmel had to admit that the entire endeavor was sadly “unsuccessful,” even if it did make for some oddly compelling television.
