“I Know I Didn’t Say No, But I Also Know I Didn’t Say Yes”: Stormy Daniels opens up in US Vogue

A first. On Tuesday, April 4, the former US president, Donald Trump, was indicted in a New York court for three cases of illegal paymentsmade during the 2016 presidential campaign. He is accused of having bought the silence of his former concierge, who claimed to have information about a hidden child, of a former lover and of Stormy Daniels, a pornographic actress with whom he had been in a relationship affair in 2006. The latter was released in an important interview for US Vogue, published the same day as the appearance in New York.

If signing confidentiality clauses isn’t illegal, Donald Trump Listed These Three Expenses As “Legal Fees” in the accounts of his company, Trump Tower. ” However, they may correspond to campaign expenses. He therefore responds to 34 complaints for “falsification of accounting documents”. » explain our colleagues from FM TV.

In fact, ever since these payments occurred in the midst of the presidential campaignand with the aim of uniform candidate imagejustice can judge that they have influenced the vote. Since Donald Trump has pleaded not guilty, a trial is expected to begin in the coming months.

Vogue US gives the floor to Stormy Daniels

While all microphones were turned towards the former president at the conclusion of his appearance, US Vogue magazine published a long interview with Stormy Daniels. The one whose testimony has long been ignored or discredited, think back to this check received from Donald Trump, in a context as vague for him as for the rest of the public. Even today he pays the expenses and continues to receive multiple death threats from supporters of the former president.

But beyond this hidden gift case there is above all the story of a night, and a minute of absence. If she has so far refused to be classified as ” another #MeToo case study », not considering himself « victim “, the actress told Vogue US this brief moment of emptiness, this lapse of memory that lasted only 90 seconds. Enough to plant doubts in his mind about the true content of this evening.

“I know I didn’t say no, but I also know I didn’t say yes”

We are in 2006, when the path of Stormy Daniels crosses that of the businessman during a golf tournament. The latter invites her to dinner, she joins him, thinking they would eat in one of the restaurants of the hotel complex where Donald Trump is staying. But, the future president has other plans in mind.

He welcomes her in her pajamas, in her room. Nothing fundamentally alarming, she reports. This suite looks more like a large apartment, with a luxurious dining area, it would not be incongruous to order room service and enjoy the services of the place. She asks him to get dressed (humorously), he obeys. Dinner takes place without disturbances. Donald Trump asks him about his work, throws him the chance to appear on his reality show The apprentice…

Up to this critical point, which leaves room for some amazement:

“At one point, after talking for a few hours, I got up to go to the bathroom,” she recalled. “Then I walk out, and it’s like there’s 90 seconds that didn’t exist anymore. I do not know what happened. I’m there in the doorway, and suddenly he’s in his underwear, doing the worst Burt Reynolds impression in the world, and – this is what I can’t figure out – I don’t know how I left the door and found myself under him in the bed. He stops, takes stock. “I remember thinking: His bodyguard is right outside that door; what if i hit him? Will this bodyguard come to harm me? I remember him saying to me, “Do you want to go back to your trailer park? “He stops again.” “I never said we lived in a trailer park… I just said we were poor. […]

I don’t remember taking off my shoes, he continues. And that’s what bothers me. Because they were gold shoes, with buckles – kind of a pain to put on and take off, you know? I know I took them off because I had to put them back on. I specifically remember putting them back and wanting to leave.

I know I didn’t say no, she adds. “But I also know that I didn’t say yes. I wasn’t threatened… I don’t know. I do not know. »

Vogue US “Stormy Daniels on Trump indictment and what really happened in that Nevada hotel room”, April 4, 2023

As Vogue so aptly puts it, Stormy Daniels’ testimony is the very demonstration of how power and consensus can intertwine, to the point of obscuring, even for the victim, what is or is not sexual abuse and violence. The MeToo movement, in its first post-Weinstein incarnation, demonstrated this well.

However, Stormy Daniels was not called to testify by the Manhattan court and her word remains largely ignored today. And she’s not the first to raise her voice to denounce the former president’s actions.

But, impunity obliges, the lawsuit against him will not be about these sexual assault allegations.