Her name is forever associated with that of an American president and she herself once toyed with the idea of entering politics. Porn actress Stormy Daniels, at the heart of the case that is getting Donald Trump in legal trouble, has waged a determined legal and media battle against the Republican, who has revealed his sharp humor.
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Ambitious, visibly endowed with a strong personality, Stormy Daniels has also paid the price for her notoriety, with a number of derogatory comments on social networks. The best known being the one with which the Republican president at the time and as such the most powerful man in the world decked her out in 2018: “Horse face”.
Stephanie Clifford, her real name, was born 44 years ago in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Raised by her mother after her parents divorced, she recounts in a book that she was neglected by her family and sexually abused at age nine by an older man.
A good student despite everything and passionate about horses, she turned to striptease at a very young age and then played in porn films.
The buxom actress, director and screenwriter with long blond hair was already known in the porn world, which awarded her several prizes.
But it’s his relationship with Donald Trump that makes him a household name in the United States.
Meeting with Trump
In the summer of 2006, Stormy Daniels’ path crosses that of the real estate mogul in the idyllic setting of a luxury resort in Nevada, during a golf tournament on the edge of a lake surrounded by pine trees.
The actress just made an appearance in Judd Apatow’s comedy 40, Still a Virgin. Donald Trump has just had a baby boy with his wife Melania.
According to the account given by the actress, he notices her, invites her to dinner in his suite where he welcomes her in his pajamas on his sofa.
She assures that they then had a sexual relationship, he denies it.
What is proven is that Stormy Daniels received $130,000, just before the 2016 presidential election, to remain silent. And it is this payment which is at the center of the case which makes the former president tremble, the justice of the State of New York suspecting him of having violated the law on the financing of electoral campaigns.
Once the transaction was revealed in 2018, the actress began to tour television sets and asked the courts to cancel the confidentiality agreement she signed.
Popular culture
On the CBS 60 Minutes show, she says she wants to set the record straight.
First of all, she is not a “victim”, she stresses. And while she says she wasn’t attracted to him that night in Nevada, their relationship was consensual.
The actress is also lucid about the promises he would have made to her regarding a role in the hit show The Apprentice. Was it a way to lure her to him?
“Obviously. I am not blind. But at the same time, maybe it can work, ”she calmly says, saying that she saw in this relationship a potential transaction.
In the very public tussle that pitted her against the president, Stormy Daniels didn’t hesitate to hit back one by one on Twitter, responding to the invective with a biting wit. And since Donald Trump assured that he was going to be “arrested” in connection with the payment made to him, she has redoubled her very raw pikes.
She thus again drew the nickname she chose for him: “Tiny”, or “Little thing”, in reference to his male anatomy.
Sooo…tiny paid me to frame himself? You sound even dumber than he does during his illiterate ramblings. And I won’t walk, I’ll dance down the street when he is “selected” to go to jail. https://t.co/yVmLr858VH
— Stormy Daniels (@StormyDaniels) March 21, 2023
Although the affair has surely made her persona non grata with many Donald Trump fans, this notoriety does not seem to displease the one who had considered running for the United States Senate in 2010.
And she entered popular culture by playing herself in a sketch on the cult show Saturday Night Live, opposite an Alec Baldwin playing Donald Trump.
Stormy Daniels, who has one daughter, last year married porn star Barrett Blade, her fourth husband.