Get It Right: It's Not About "Stormy"...It's About The Crime | MELANIE MCFARLAND writing in Salon

Her situation isn’t terribly dissimilar to other women who have since gone public with accounts of politically powerful men who they allege to have sexually abused or assaulted them. . .

Daniels’ case differs in that she maintains that the sex with Trump was consensual although she didn’t want it, a statement that implies caveats. As she describes in the documentary, she’d met Trump in his hotel room in 2006 to discuss the possibility of her appearing on “The Celebrity Apprentice.”

“He told me that I reminded him of his daughter . . . I thought we had this mutual respect,” she said, “which is why it was so crazy when having no red flag whatsoever in a conversation, I came out of a bathroom to find myself cornered.

“I don’t remember how I got in the bed, and the next thing I know, it was humping away and telling me how great I was,” Daniels continued. “It was awful. But I didn’t say no.” (Trump has always officially denied having any relationship with Daniels.)

Stormy Daniels doc shows how disbelieving one woman can be a blueprint for our democracy under Trump

Don't be distracted by Stormy Daniels. As Rachel Maddow observes, “The issue is not her. The issue is the crime”

By MELANIE MCFARLAND

Senior Critic

PUBLISHED MARCH 19, 2024 1:30PM (EDT)

Stormy Daniels in "Stormy" (Peacock)

Throughout “Stormy” we’re shown the many ways Stormy Daniels has been co-opted to suit others’ purposes. To right-wing bullies, she’s a safe target for venom and death threats.
To her one-time lawyer Michael Avenatti, she was a ticket to the national stage.
For a time, she was a symbol of the #MeToo movement and a great hope for white feminists battling Trump, despite her being a registered Republican.
At this moment, she’s at the heart of a New York criminal trial charging Trump with falsifying business records connected to paying off Daniels to remain quiet about their 2006 affair during his 2016 campaign. It was set to go to court this week but was delayed for another month.
No matter the time or context, Daniels is an effective distraction. . .

The hush-money charges are among the 91 felony counts Trump is currently facing, and one of several cases in which women play a prominent role either on the prosecutorial side or, in Daniels’ case, as a star witness. He has relished threatening their lives and professional reputations. . .

People want to believe what they want to believe, no matter what, she says. And many do. Among those who appear in the documentary to speak on her behalf are Seth Rogen, whom she befriended while working on “Knocked Up” (a film by Judd Apatow, an executive producer on “Stormy”), and Jimmy Kimmel.

If Trump is serious about taking revenge on his enemies, "Stormy" is one version of what that looks like.

Believing doesn’t necessarily translate to supporting the woman’s account. As my Salon colleague Amanda Marcotte has pointed out the MAGA faithful is entirely fine with Trump having assaulted women or his extramarital affairs because, to them, powerful men dominating women is the natural hierarchy upended by the feminist and the civil rights movements.

“Stormy” brings us inside a few headlines we may have forgotten in the blur of Trump outrage between 2016 and 2020, courtesy of footage from journalist Denver Nicks. . ."

"Stormy" is now streaming on Peacock.

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