Tag Archives: Stormy Daniels

national news

Does ‘innocence’ require ‘flip’ preparation?

This is confusing to me.

Donald J. Trump keeps denying he had a tryst with Stormy Daniels, the porn queen. The president’s personal lawyer and so-called “fixer,” Michael Cohen, has acknowledged paying Daniels $130,000 in hush money to keep quiet about the tumble she took with Trump in 2006.

But …

Now we get word that the Trump legal team — or what’s left of it — is preparing to respond if Cohen “flips” and cooperates with special counsel Robert Mueller who might be looking at whether there are some other issues to examine relating to the alleged dozen-year-old sexual encounter.

Does someone who didn’t do what has been alleged have reason to “prepare” for someone to cooperate with investigators?

I keep wondering what the “flip prep” entails and whether the Trump team is going to challenge Cohen’s credibility, call him a liar, impugn his integrity, you know … do the kind of thing Trump has done with others who have accused him doing something improper.

I can’t stop believing that Trump and Cohen have something for which to prepare — and it’s not good for either of them.

media news

Hannity fluffs a basic tenet

Sean Hannity’s backside is in a bit of a sling for a reason that could have been dodged with a simple declaration. It would have been a painless admission.

The Fox News commentator was revealed this week to be a “secret client” of Michael Cohen, Donald Trump’s personal lawyer, the guy who’s been involved up to his armpits in a sleazy tryst that the president allegedly had with Stormy Daniels, a porn star.

The conflict? Well, Hannity has spent a lot of air time on TV and the radio defending Cohen and Donald Trump.

And … he never disclosed that he had a professional relationship with Cohen. He never told his viewers of his clear conflict of interest. Hannity never thought it was necessary to put his defense of Cohen and the president in anything resembling a proper context.

I get that Hannity isn’t a trained journalist. He does participate in a form of opinion broadcast journalism with his nightly TV commentary show and his syndicated radio show. Thus, Hannity should be forced to operate under the rules of conduct that journalists are obligated to follow when they report or comment on the news of the day.

A simple declaration at the front end of every broadcast that features a defense of Michael Cohen and Donald Trump would be a simple task to perform.

One more thing: To its great discredit, the Fox News Channel says it stands by Hannity. The network that actually does employ legitimate broadcast journalists doesn’t see where its right-wing superstar has gone wrong.

Shameful.

national news

‘An attack on our country’?

Let me try to sort this out for a moment. That’s all it will take.

Donald J. Trump calls an FBI “raid” on a lawyer’s office, which it executed legally through court-ordered search warrants, an “attack on our country.” He calls it a “disgrace.” He condemns the FBI in the strongest terms possible.

Meanwhile, what does he say about Russian efforts to manipulate the 2016 election? What condemnation does he level at Russians who hacked into our electoral process and disseminated information intended to influence that election in Trump’s favor? Nothing, man!

OK. So, which is the greater “attack on our country”? The FBI sought records from Trump lawyer Michael Cohen to tie up some loose ends in connection with a relationship the future president of the United States had with a porn actress. The FBI is trying to determine the source of a $130,000 payment that Cohen made to Stormy Daniels to buy her silence related to the alleged relationship.

That is the “attack on our country” but the actual attack, by the Russians during our 2016 presidential election, is not?

What in the name of election collusion am I missing here?

national news

GOP appointees turn on their benefactor

The president of the United States is steamed that the FBI raided his private attorney’s office in a hunt for evidence related to the president’s fling with porn queen Stormy Daniels.

He calls it a “disgrace” and an assault on “everything we stand for.”

Interesting, isn’t it?

But let’s remember something: The three men who signed off on this raid all are Donald J. Trump appointees. That would be Deputy U.S. Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, Southern District U.S. Attorney Gregory Berman and FBI Director Christopher Wray.

What is the president going to do? Is he going to fire them? All of them? Will he terminate them as a precursor to firing special counsel Robert Mueller?

The raid is intended to bring to light what transpired when Trump lawyer Michael Cohen paid Daniels $130,000 to keep her quiet about the alleged 2006 liaison with the man who would become president a decade later. Oh, but Trump keeps saying he didn’t have a fling with the porn start. He said he didn’t know about the payment of 130 grand in hush money.

I’m left to wonder: If Trump and Daniels didn’t take a tumble, what in the world is the hush money is all about? And are we supposed to believe that Trump’s lawyer would do something so foolish and stupid as pay someone off without telling his client?

Bizarre. Yes?

national news

FBI launches raid and the mystery deepens

FBI agents conducted a quick-hit raid on the office of Donald J. Trump’s personal lawyer, Michael Cohen.

He’s the guy who shelled out that $130,000 hush-money payment to porn queen Stormy Daniels to keep her quiet about an affair that the president denies ever occurring.

Stay with me on this.

Cohen allegedly paid the money without his client’s knowledge. It supposedly came from a personal account. Trump has said he didn’t know about the payment. And surely we believe the liar in chief’s denial. Isn’t that what we’re supposed to do? I mean, he’s the president of the United States … after all.

I’m no expert on legal ethics, but this one just doesn’t pass the smell test. It stinks to high heaven.

So the FBI wants to take a look at the documents that Cohen had squirreled away in his office. They may — or may not — have anything to do with special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation in the “Russia thing” that Trump calls a “witch hunt” and the product of “fake news” and Democrats who are still steamed over losing the 2016 presidential election.

As an American taxpayer with a keen interest in seeing this mystery play out, I welcome the FBI raid on Cohen’s office. It tells me that the nation’s premier law enforcement agency is on the hunt. It is seeking the truth behind — at a bare minimum (no pun intended) — this seedy, tawdry story involving our nation’s head of state.

There might be some element to this story and the payment of the hush money that hasn’t come out just yet.

So, the mystery deepens. Same for the intrigue.

national news

Righties’ duplicity = hypocrisy

My friend made a great point today after lunch.

“If Barack Obama had done a half of the things, a third of the things, that Donald Trump has done,” he said, “the evangelicals would be screaming for his scalp! But with this guy — Trump — they shrug and give him a pass. They say, ‘That’s just Donald.'”

Yes. Indeed.

His point is worth examining a bit more closely.

The issue of the day is the fling he took with Stormy Daniels, the porn star. And then we have the 10-month romantic relationship he allegedly had with Karen McDougal, the former Playboy model.

Are these issues by themselves worthy of an impeachment? Oh, I don’t think so. Then again, there might be more “there” there to discover … take it away, special counsel Robert Mueller.

The notion that the evangelical voter base would give the president a pass on a 12-year-old sexual episode speaks loudly and clearly to the duplicity those voters are exhibiting.

If we flash back about, oh, 25 years to the 1992 presidential campaign of Arkansas Gov. William Jefferson Clinton, you understand where I’m going with this.

The far right of the Republican Party that today is giving Trump a pass because what he did was so long ago was going apoplectic because of alleged affairs Clinton had with women well before he ever became president.

I cite the cases involving, oh, Gennifer Flowers and Paula Jones … to name just two of them. Flowers came forward with an allegation that she and Clinton had a fling. What was the right wing’s response then? They went ballistic, man! They flew into paroxysms of rage!

These days? No sweat. He’s a changed man. He wants to “make America great … again.” The president deserves God’s grace.

To be fair, I’ll concede that progressives who largely gave Clinton a pass in 1992 are filled with rage and anger at Trump today. But their tolerance then is ancient history. I’m talking about the here and now.

Which brings me back to the point my friend made this afternoon. If someone other than Trump had done what he’s being accused of doing, our friends on the right and the far right would be … um … beside themselves with rage.

Hypocrites.

national news

‘She’s not my type’

Blogger’s Note: On the advice of a family member, I am going to resume using the name of the porn star who allegedly had sex with Donald J. Trump.

The president of the United States has delivered one of the more curious “denials” of a tryst with a porn star that I’ve ever heard.

“She’s not my type,” Donald J. Trump said of Stormy Daniels, the woman who said on “60 Minutes” this past Sunday that she and the future president had a one-night stand in a hotel room back in 2006.

Is that curious, or what? How does the president get away with saying something like that?

It reminds me of the time another woman said during the 2016 presidential campaign that candidate Donald Trump had groped her. The Republican nominee made some snarky comment that her physical appearance didn’t meet his high standards for the type of women he would choose to grope. “Look at her,” he said.

Now this?

For what it’s worth, I found Daniels’s interview with Anderson Cooper to be highly believable. All of it, man! Even the part about someone approaching her in a parking lot and threatening her with bodily harm if she sold her story to a publication.

That so-called “denial” simply blows my mind.

I guess it prompts the question: “Uh, Mr. President, what type of woman would be your type?”

national news

Prior restraint? No can do, Mr. President

Now we have this: Reports have surfaced that Donald Trump’s legal team is researching ways to prevent “60 Minutes” from broadcasting an interview with the porn queen with whom the president allegedly had an affair in 2006.

Let’s see. What do we make of that?

I believe it tells me that there’s something to all this baloney about a six-figure sum of money being paid to keep the porn queen quiet.

The president denies that he had an affair with this woman, who’s making quite a bit of hay of late over the publicity that has swarmed all over her — and the president. The affair allegedly occurred about a year after Trump married his third wife, Melania, and right after his wife gave birth to the couple’s son.

The porn queen/adult film producer and director has filed a lawsuit claiming that the non-disclosure agreement is null and void because Trump never signed it. He didn’t even sign it using an alias he was using at the time … sheesh!

Thus, she contends, she is able to talk all she wants about whether she had an affair with the man who would become president of the United States, despite being paid $130,000 in hush money by Trump’s personal lawyer, Michael Cohen.

One more thing.

The First Amendment protects a “free press.” In the 21st century, that also includes broadcast media. The U.S. Constitution prevents government from interfering in the media’s effort to do its job.

I shall add that Trump is always the president. He is the head of government. He cannot compartmentalize these issues.

Prior restraint of the media, Mr. President, is not an option.

national news

Porn star sues POTUS … so, we just shrug?

Does anyone ever remember — or has anyone ever heard of — a pornographic performer suing the president of the United States?

I believe we are now officially, one more time, sailing through uncharted water.

Stormy Daniels has sued Donald John Trump over a non-disclosure agreement Daniels said is not valid because the president of the United States never signed it.

So, this means — according to Daniels — that she is free to speak with all deliberate candor about an affair she allegedly had with Trump back in 2006, shortly after his third wife gave birth to their son.

Trump’s lawyer paid Daniels 130 grand to keep quiet about the affair. Daniels has gone on TV talk show to smile and act coy when the show hosts ask her if she had the affair.

Now she is suing the president, seeking judicial affirmation that she can talk about it if she damn well feels like it.

What is so utterly astonishing is that we are talking about this matter while so many other issues need our attention and that many millions of Americans are just shrugging this seedy matter off.

Imagine if any of the men who preceded Donald Trump were being sued by porn queens.

national news

Thinking of a particular WH ‘victim’

There’s no getting around these thoughts regarding the first family, the current residents of the White House.

I cannot stop thinking about how Barron Trump is able to cope with the hideous news surrounding his parents — chiefly his father.

I thought specifically about Barron this morning when I heard that the president’s personal lawyer paid that porn queen $130,000 in supposed “hush money.” Stephen Cohen’s payment came from his personal account, according to media reports. It’s not yet known whether Donald Trump knew of the payment in real time, or has just learned about it along with the rest of the world.

The president denies an alleged affair took place with the porn queen. That begs the obvious question: What’s with the six-figure payment?

We’ve heard already that first lady Melania Trump reportedly is furious over these revelations. But … what about the son? How is the boy’s mother handling that in the family’s private moments?

Barron is the sole innocent victim in all of this, as near as I can figure.

Melania Trump’s reported outrage is real, as it should be. The so-called affair took place in 2006, just after Barron’s birth and only about a year after Donald and Melania Trump were married.

Melania was all grown up when she and Donald got hitched. So she’s not an entirely innocent victim here. She knew of her then-new husband’s previous marital infidelity. I mean — damn! — he bragged about it at the time!

Barron, though, is in an entirely different place altogether. He is now nearly 12 years of age. He is coming of age before our eyes. To be candid, Barron is not the first White House child to be subjected to this sort of tawdry gossip. Chelsea Clinton went through much of it herself while her father was being impeached in connection with an “inappropriate relationship” he had with a White House intern.

At this moment, though, I am saying a prayer for Barron Trump.