Stormy

Hello and Happy May. The usual housecleaning:

Watch X-Men ‘97, read Chip Zdarsky’s Joker: Year One (and if you buy from the link, guess what happens?) and listen to our latest Leaguepodcast, because we just posted the milestone 500th episode and it’s something I’m pretty proud of. Mostly that I can count to 500. We cover Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man 2, so you obviously want to hear our take on that, right?

While you’re doing all that, you can also check out my Red Bubble store and my comic. If you are reading this before May 4th, then you still have a chance to participate in Free Comic Book Day! Awhile back, I sometimes had in-store signings on the first Saturday in May, and it was a really cool thing to chat with people and sign their copies of Robin Hood. I did usually have to disappoint them and explain that my comic wasn’t free, because I couldn’t affford to do that, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t cool.

Anyway, on to the post. But don’t forget to Share and Subscribe!

I usually write about movies that were made decades ago and how I view them today. It’s a fun little distraction from the issues of the world, but occasionally, the real world creeps its way in.

I decided to watch the recent documentary on Stormy Daniels, simply titled Stormy, because it piqued my interest. Not because she is an adult film star, but because our former President, constantly-accused criminal Donald Trump, is on trial for paying her to keep quiet about a sexual encounter they had in 2006, and that’s quite fascinating to me. And I will say right here (so feel free to stop reading and following if you don’t agree with me) that I hope he is found guilty on all 32 counts and is disgraced to Hell. Sadly, I actually feel like, guilty or not, he is going to be elected again, and just pardon himself or grant himself immunity or whatever, but it will bring me some pleasure for a little while. He can’t pardon himself from being an asshole.

Some facts, if you aren’t aware: in 2006, Donald Drumpf was simply the host of a reality TV show, and from the way Stormy tells it, he pulled a Harvey Weinstein on her and convinced her to come to dinner, which ended up being in his hotel room, because he claimed he could get her an appearance on Celebrity Apprentice. This then-sixty year-old creep (Stormy was in her 20’s) then came out of the bathroom in his silk pajamas and made a move on her, and Stormy did not resist, although she claimed she did not really want to have sex with him. Because who would? She never denies that their sexual encounter was consensual in any way, although it was a one-time thing and, as it turned out, the network did not want her on Celebrity Apprentice, so she had no reason to speak to him again. She contends that he did reach out repeatedly over the next year, but nothing ever came of it. I guess sex with him was just that good. She does say in the doc that she was sexually abused by a neighbor when she was 9 years-old and that, when Trump advanced on her, she did not turn him away because she felt “9 years-old again.” Stormy said she regrets it because if she had turned him down, it might have given him pause if he tried it on other women. It’s a nice thought, but I doubt it. Also, it should be noted that he was married to Melania at the time, although I’m sure that made no difference to him or anyone.

Fast-forward to 2016 and, while Trump is running for President, he had his lawyer, Michael Cohen, pay Stormy some hush money to not go public with the affair. Allegedly (but probably), he falsified New York business records to conceal the payments he made to pay Cohen back, and obviously what they were for. Trump, as always, has pleaded not guilty to these charges and claims it is just liberal agenda. Everyone is out to get him, in his mind.

(Election Day note: He was found guilty, and yet can still vote for himself in Florida. What a place.) 

That is the background, and the basic gist of why most people know the name Stormy Daniels at all. In truth, the doc doesn’t go into a lot of detail about what her and Trump did or did not do. It is actually more about her life and how it has changed since all this came out. First of all, Stormy has a young daughter, and was married at the beginning of the filming. After directing a couple of her own movies, she actually had set her sights on writing and directing mainstream movies, mostly with an eye for horror, which is probably out the window now. She appeared with Seth Rogan in 2007’s Knocked Up, and has appeared on Jimmy Kimmel, who both appear in the doc. Her appearances on Kimmel are pretty funny, in case you’re interetsed:

The second one, she’s a lot more open:

Honestly, she comes across as a pretty normal person, all things considered. She was pretty honest about just wanting to get some money out of a scumbag.  

When all the hoo-ha started to make the rounds in 2018, a lot of Trump followers started calling Stormy some nasty names on social media, like liar and slut, but as a public figure, she was a little annoyed, but her life went on. By the time 2023 rolled around, and he was actually going to trial, the harassment ramped up. According to her, now the posts are “direct threats.” Now, it is 'I'm going to come to your house and slit your throat.' " People also threatened her daughter. The pressure and the scrutiny may have also contributed to her marriage falling apart during the filming (Although, full disclosure: she did mess around with another guy.) If that wasn’t enough of a kick in the head, she attempted to sue Trump in 2018 for defamation for a tweet (what else?) he posted about her. A federal judge threw the case out and forced her to pay Trump’s legal fees, so she now owes him over $600,000.

To try and allay some of these financial woes, and to get away from the house because members of the media had camped out on her lawn, Stormy wrote a book and went on a sort of strip club tour (which apparently is a thing) and discovered that a lot of the folks who bought tickets to see her were women who now found her to be a liberal and feminist hero. It wasn’t really anything she intended on happening, but apparently when a guy says that he can just “grab them by the pussy and they don’t care,” it tends to piss some people off. It doesn’t hurt your chances at being President, unfortunately, but that’s more of an issue with the voters in this country than a Stormy Daniels thing.

So, basically, this is a story about a woman named Stephanie Clifford, a.k.a. Stormy Daniels, a girl who had goals of making it in film and instead became a porn star, who once had an affair with a reality TV show host, and now has to navigate a federal lawsuit, MAGA schmucks threatening her and her child, her marriage falling apart, multiple lawyers, and now being $600,000 in the hole to the leader of the schmucks and possibly the next President of the United States. And the real kick in the head is that she is actually a registered Republican.

I don’t normally like to get political, but to paraphrase Stormy in this movie, I am tired. Not as tired as she is, I'm sure, but tired nonetheless. I am tired of this man. It’s been 8 years that he has been taking up a lot of space in my brain, and even if he does not win in November, he’s not going away, because that’s what he does. He can’t just throw up his hands and say, “Welp, I guess the people have spoken and they just don’t want me as President” like everyone else. He has to claim fraud and a liberal agenda and all this other crap. It was pretty much proven that there was no election fraud, but let’s face it, if there ever was a time for fraud… 

But regardless of what you think of him and his politics, Donald Trump has broken laws, and now is attempting to throw it in the face of every regular, hard-working person in this country (including his supporters) by saying that he should be granted immunity for anything he does. And he didn’t break the little laws, like going over the speed limit or crossing the street against the red light. This guy steals money. He takes money from his campaign funds and pays back his lawyer, who paid people like Stormy Daniels and Karen McDougal to not go public with his affairs. I get that this trial is ongoing, and he is technically innocent until proven guilty, but come on. He did it. And he also did all the other things he has been indicted for. And probably much worse that we don’t even know about yet. This is how people like him live. They have enough money to be able to do whatever they want, and when that isn’t enough, they do the stuff that they’re not supposed to do, and assume that it’s ok. They literally and figuratively grab people by the pussy and think it’s ok. And Stormy is the story of what happens when someone runs afoul of a guy like that.

Stormy Daniels has said that she will testify if called. If her testimony is as telling as the movie, I think the jury will be very interested to hear what she has to say.