Stormy Daniels under oath is history. She reveals how Donald Trump is unqualified to be president

Echo opinion by Joan Vennochi published in the Boston Globe:

As Stormy Daniels testified about the alleged sexual encounter she said she had with Donald Trump in 2006 – and that he denies – the former president did not hide his fury. In a sidebar that took place during her testimony, the presiding trial judge told Trump’s lawyer that his client was “cursing audibly and he is shaking his head visibly and that’s contemptuous.”

Stormy Daniels tells her story under oath about the sexual encounter with Donald Trump.

Trump’s confrontation with the adult film star brought something he abhors: “The process makes him accountable – having to sit there and face her in a dingy courtroom in New York, silent, facing detention in an even dingier holding facility,” Nancy Gertner, a retired federal judge who teaches at Harvard Law School, told me.

If Trump’s anger over that is unsurprising, so is the fact that it stands in sharp contrast to his willingness to weaponize sex and politics. Remember when right before his Oct. 2016, debate with Hillary Clinton, Trump showcased some of the women who had accused Bill Clinton of sexual misconduct?

With that, he not only tried to neutralize the infamous “Access Hollywood” tape that had just come out, he tried to hold Hillary Clinton accountable for her husband’s alleged transgressions.

“The layers of irony and hypocrisy surrounding Donald Trump’s actions seem boundless,” said Colette Phillips, a Democratic activist who supported Hillary Clinton.

The Bill Clinton accusers who showed up at Trump’s pre-debate press conference included Juanita Broaddrick, Paula Jones, and Kathleen Willey. Another woman who attended had allegedly been raped by a man Hillary Clinton defended when she was a lawyer. At the time, Trump described them as “four very courageous women.”

Trump is now facing women who, by that definition, should also be considered courageous. A year ago, a jury found Trump responsible for sexually abusing writer E. Jean Carroll and then defaming her by saying she made-up the story that he sexually assaulted her in a Manhattan department store in 1996.

In January, another jury awarded $83.3 million to Carroll after Trump continued to attack her on social media.

In the ongoing hush money trial, Trump is accused of covering up a $130,000 payment that was made to Daniels in Oct. 2016, in exchange for her silence about their alleged sexual encounter. Prosecutors say the purpose of the payment was to suppress a damaging story, and with that, undermine the integrity of the 2016 presidential election.

Daniels’s testimony was seen as a way to establish Trump’s motivation for the reimbursement of the money paid to her, and the subsequent falsification of his business records.

As he sulks in that Manhattan courtroom, Trump may well be wondering why anyone thought Daniels’s story needed to be bought and squelched in the first place. For all the panic over the Access Hollywood tape, he beat Hillary Clinton in 2016.

Meanwhile, Bill Clinton had already proven that voters care more about policies than they do about moral principles – at least if the candidate is a man.

Clinton won the White House despite rumors about sexual liaisons and accusations of sexual misconduct. In his second term, he was impeached for lying under oath and obstructing justice to cover up an affair with Monica Lewinsky, a White House intern.

He ignored calls to resign and the Senate eventually acquitted him. Throughout Clinton’s presidency, women continued to support him, including prominent feminists like Gloria Steinem and he left office with an official exit approval rating of 66 percent.

While the recent #MeToo movement put a new spotlight on some of that old Clinton history, it didn’t stop President Biden from inviting Clinton and former president Barack Obama to join him recently at a big Radio City Music Hall fundraiser.

Yet Hillary Clinton has frequently been called upon to address her husband’s behavior, and asked to distinguish it from Trump’s. And she likely paid a higher price for it. After all, she lost the presidency to Trump.

Erin O’Brien, an associate professor who teaches a course on “Women, Politics, and Policy” at UMass Boston, said in an email that “research shows voters make female candidates ‘pay’ more for violating feminine stereotypes such as being demure, faithful, etc. Bill Clinton’s considerable transgressions were, for many in the Trump coalition (evangelicals, gender traditional) evidence of her having too much ambition and not keeping Bill Clinton in line – too much outward ambition and not taking care of the marriage.”

As for the impact of Daniels’s testimony, O’Brien said she doubts it will change many minds. Evangelicals and those she describes as “gender traditionalists in the Trump coalition” long ago decided “to look the other way on issues of fidelity with Trump because he delivered on striking down Roe and they see him as the vessel to a federal abortion ban.” Meanwhile, “the immoral woman is a temptress old as time.”

For sure, putting Trump on trial comes with risks. So if he’s not convicted, what will that face-to-face with Daniels mean?

“I fear it will be an empty gesture, if the jury hangs, as it might,” said Gertner.  (IMO disagree with Gertner, check out the column by Maureen Dowd- "Donnie After Dark", in The New York Times.)

Still, because of Daniels’ courage, Trump’s moment of accountability is now part of history.