March 26, 2018

Stormy Daniels Is a Master Troller

60 Minutes

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Am I obligated to write about the Stormy Daniels interview on 60 Minutes last night? I am? Fine: I didn’t really learn anything new. She mostly repeated the basic story that InTouch published a couple of months ago, and added that she never wanted to go public but was forced to after the Wall Street Journal published a story about the hush money agreement. After that, well, if you’re going to go public, you might as well do it right. And she’s doing it right: the ratings for 60 Minutes were up 111 percent last night compared to last week.

In any case, there was really nothing new to learn anyway. At this point, I don’t think anyone doubts that the affair happened or that Donald Trump was well aware of the hush money agreement. However, we did get our first sustained look at Daniels in an interview. And she did well. She doesn’t sound rehearsed or evasive and she doesn’t sound embarrassed. She mostly sounds annoyed about the whole thing.

In any case, the great thing about the Stormy Daniels story is that Trump has really met his match. She’s trolling him just as loudly and just as relentlessly as Trump trolls everyone else. She’s not intimidated and she doesn’t really seem to care that Trump is president of the United States. What’s more, her lawyer seems like an easy match for Trump fixer/lawyer Michael Cohen, who is surely one of the more obnoxious figures to invade our TV screens in recent memory. Inae Oh has more about that here. Apparently he’s promising everything short of a blue dress to prove that Stormy Daniels is telling the truth. I guess we should all keep our popcorn poppers warmed up.

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WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

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Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

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