From s—hole to Stormy.
It’s been quite a busy week for our commander-in-chief, ending with the fallout over his reported crude remarks about Haiti and then revelations that his lawyer paid off porn star Stormy Daniels prior to the 2016 election.
For a normal politician, those kinds of s—storms might be enough to knock them out. For Trump they are glancing blows.
The report in the Wall Street Journal about the porn star isn’t shocking — there were rumors going back well over a year about a relationship between Trump and Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford.
Stephanie, uh, Stormy, is quite a star in the porn business. Her credits include roles in “Space Nuts,” “Good Will Humping” and “Porking with Pride #2.” She’s also been in non-porn pictures like “The 40-Year-Old Virgin” and “Knocked Up.”
Trump’s attorney, Michael Cohen, strongly denied the payment to Daniels and the porn star reportedly sent a signed statement also denying the affair.
On a normal week, the revelations might take up all the oxygen for a few days. It’s a salacious story and even includes a great porn star name. But with the Trump trash talk dominating the headlines, it barely made it onto CNN’s permanent “Breaking News” crawl.
So unless more evidence surfaces, the story is likely to be just another punchline for late-night talk show hosts.
Trump’s base won’t care about Stormy. And the base won’t be outraged about his reported comments about Haiti. A good percentage of Trump voters agree with him anyway.
The s—hole story does have more legs than the usual Trump controversy, but there are limits to how much real damage it can do. There’s no audio or video of the remark — at least now. Democrats will try to keep the story alive and are pushing to censure Trump. Censure him for what? Acting like a racist? A swear word that he denies?
And since Dems don’t control Congress, the censure resolution won’t go anywhere.
Gov. Charlie Baker is upset, saying Trump owes an apology to Haitian immigrants. Poor Baker — with his re-election coming up, he keeps having to respond to every Trump comment and distances himself further and further from the president. By November, Baker will be calling for impeachment.
But Trump has showed time and again that he can survive these media firestorms. Other politicians might be contemplating quitting while Trump just keeps going. And the economy keeps humming along.
On to the next outrage.