At The Daily Beast’s Obsessed, we think the ongoing Trump Trial is about as gossipy and enthralling as any episode of The Real Housewives. With that in mind, we’re recapping the drama like we’d write about any weekly Bravo show—with plenty of wit and snark.
On Tuesday, the Donald Trump trial begins with an objection to sex. Kind of a shocker, right? Trump isn’t known to protest those kinds of topics. Alas, Trump’s lawyer, Susan Necheles, starts things off by objecting to Stormy Daniels testifying “about any details of sexual acts” which would be “unduly prejudicial.”
Perhaps Necheles just didn’t want this to happen because she’d have to sit next to Trump as he twiddled his fingers underneath the table, reliving his wildest fantasies. But the prosecutor Susan Hoffinger chimes in, saying that there would be “no descriptions of genitalia or anything”—much to Trump’s apparent dismay.
Before we get into stormy weather, though, it’s worth noting that our first witness today is Sally Franklin, a SVP at publishing outfit Penguin Random House. Trump’s lawyer wants Franklin to say he didn’t write his books. If he did write them, sections of the text could be used to argue that he knew all about the falsification of records and hundreds of thousands of dollars of hush money spent on his behalf.
For example, in How to Get Rich, Trump wrote: “I always sign my checks so I know where my money is going.” Oh, really?
It’s lose-lose here for Donny. If Franklin says it was mostly ghostwritten, it makes Trump look like a failure who can’t write his own books. If she says he wrote most of it—which she does, basically—this witness doesn’t work out in his favor. The latter happens. Womp, womp. I know you’re all waiting on Daniels’ remarks, here, but this just made me laugh, so I had to include it.
Okay, okay, I hear you, you want to know about THE Stormy Daniels. She takes the stand right after Franklin. Here, Daniels is like the special guest star we’ve seen in trailers teeing up the new season of a favorite TV show—and we’re finally getting our first look. She begins by recounting her first time getting dinner with Trump, a move that was suggested by her publicist. “If nothing else, you’ll get a great story,” Daniels recalls her publicist saying. “What could possibly go wrong?” This feels like one of those record-scratch moments in movies: Well, you’re probably wondering how I got here.
Daniels begins recapping how everything went down back in 2006, when she agreed to dinner and was brought straight up to his hotel room. Chivalry? Dead. Daniels’ first remark to Trump was a snide comment about his silk jammies. “Does Hugh Hefner know you stole his pajamas?” she recalls snarking. He then changed into boxer shorts. “Jump scare,” Daniels says, I imagine with somewhat of a smirk.
Daniels then goes on for quite awhile about their two-hour long conversation together, but fear not: We’re going to get into the juicy sex scenes soon. Or maybe I should warn you to brace yourself? Either way, it’s worth noting that Trump is fully alert and awake and actually listening to Daniels on the stand. This is a departure from his usually snoozy self. But considering the circumstances, it makes sense that he’s finally come to.
The foreplay begins. Daniels says that Trump asked a lot about her...STD tests…because nothing really gets you in the mood like a lengthy chat about STDs. In return, Daniels says she asked Trump about wife Melania; Daniels says that Trump and his wife weren’t even sleeping in the same bed. At this point, Daniels recalls getting fed up with Trump’s incessant talking and interrupting.
To fix that? She rolled up a newspaper and spanked him. Reader, I covered my eyes. I gasped. I reacted as if I were there, watching this all happen in real time.
After the spanking, “he was much more polite,” Daniels tells the jury. Did anyone try taking an issue of the New York Times to Trump’s bum after he lost the 2020 election? Maybe that could’ve fixed, y’know, democracy. Jurors are seen giggling as Daniels tells the story. I can’t even imagine how hard it would be to contain my laughter, hearing this play out.
IT. GETS. WORSE. “You remind me of my daughter,” Daniels recalls Trump telling her, seemingly referring to Ivanka. At this point, Judge Merchan slams Daniels for giving a bit too much detail. Apparently, Judge Merchan is not as big of a gossip as the rest of the world. We want the tea! Let Daniels spill.
Daniels says she went to the bathroom (and laughed at his Old Spice products), and when she came back, Trump was ready to make the magic happen. They had sex—she doesn’t get too detailed here—without a condom. Was that concerning? “Yes,” Daniels says. After the “brief” intercourse ended, Daniels says she “left as fast as I could.”
“I felt ashamed that I couldn’t stop it and I couldn’t say no,” Daniels says. This is just sad. The foreplay got all of our hopes up—maybe, sex with Trump would be this huge, goofy story. In reality, it’s just a terrible moment in this woman’s life that she now has to relive, with the entire world watching.
After everyone takes lunch, Trump’s lawyer Todd Blanche calls for a mistrial following Daniels’ steamy recounting of their short-lived love affair. Judge Merchan denies the request: “I agree that there were things that would have been better left unsaid,” he says. “I think the witness was a little difficult to control.”
But if Trump and his team were really so upset about this, Merchan asks, why didn’t they call for more objections? Well…I think we all know why. Something tells me the former President really enjoyed hearing about his past sexual escapades. Ah, memories!
