Dear Penthouse: I never thought it would happen to me but I went to a golf tournament and had sex with a porn star…
The testimony offered by Stormy Daniels at Donald Trump’s hush-money trial on Tuesday would have been more shocking if it hadn’t sounded like a classic Penthouse male fantasy from the 1980s.
As Daniels told it, Trump left his post-partum wife and newborn son to attend a 2006 celebrity golf tournament in Lake Tahoe with more than links on his mind. Through his bodyguard, Trump invited the enticing Daniels to dine with him at his actual penthouse suite. He greeted her in slinky pajamas. Suave move. Except Daniels, who is actually there for dinner, mocked them. Trump changed into regular clothes and, for a moment, it looked like the fantasy might never become a reality.
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But after Daniels headed off for a pee, Trump gave it one more shot. As they said in the ’80s: “Guys who hit on women get slapped a lot… but they get laid a lot.” When Daniels emerged from the bathroom, he had arranged himself on the bed, stripped down to a T-shirt and boxers. This time, he got what he wanted.
Daniels kept her bra on and laid flat on the bed. Trump didn’t take the time to put on a condom, and mounted her in the missionary position. He had a goal and he quickly achieved it. This was about notching the score, not creating poetry.
Even better, after what a white guy who lived through the ’80s would absolutely refer to as “doing the deed,” Trump was spared having to make small talk. Daniels was out of there as fast as her shaking hands could get her shoes back on.
“I just wanted to leave,” she testified.
She didn’t mention Trump offering any desire for her to stay and snuggle. This also fits with the classic male “Wham. Bam. Thank You, Ma’am.” scenario. She did add that he said, “It was great,” and for him, it probably was.
Still, Trump has denied the sexual encounter ever happened–not under oath, but to the American public. He claims all he did was pose for a photo with Daniels.
This seems like a miscalculation on Trump’s part. Why not own the bragging rights to this red-blooded American male fantasy?
Daniels testified that the day after the sexual encounter with Trump in the penthouse, she ran into him at a nightclub. Trump was sitting with former Pittsburgh Steeler quarterback Ben Roethlisberger who would later settle a rape accusation.
“He introduced me as his ‘little friend Stormy’ to Big Ben,” she said in court.
Maybe Trump’s marriage to his third wife meant that he was careful not to “kiss and tell.” But Trump finished 62nd out of 80 golfers at the tournament so it seems like his best brag from the event would have been to nudge Big Ben, point to Daniels and say, “You see that gorgeous woman? I fucked her.”
The hush-money trial is not about what happened in the hotel that night. It’s about why Trump, by his own account, decided to pay Daniels six figures for taking a photo with him and then covered up those payments in a web of financial fraud.
Daniels testified that she was “ashamed” of having sex with Trump. That makes sense. But it will never make sense that when word got out that he banged a beautiful woman in a penthouse suite during a golf tournament, Trump didn’t just shrug and say, “Don’t you wish you were me?”
