Courtesy of
HuffPo:
What’s important here is the way Trump and his circle of enablers went about trying to cover up these (alleged) affairs, while Trump himself was seeking the top political office in the country.
Trump’s personal lawyer and his allies at the National Enquirer used nondisclosure agreements to silence these women, taking a page from the corporate playbook.
NDAs are already far too common in the business world, used to paper over a host of misdeeds, most crucially sexual harassment and discrimination. Disgraced Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein is perhaps the most egregious abuser of NDAs, which allowed him to harass and assault women for decades.
“Donald Trump is acting like he personally owns this information, as though he can act like a king and take any measures to control the way people talk about him,” said Heidi Kitrosser, a professor of constitutional law at the University of Minnesota Law School. “You can’t do that when you’re acting with the power of the federal government.”
Now I will admit that is important to learn, but not so much because it reveals that Trump is a misogynist who controlled women with threats of lawsuits or used his wealth to buy their silence.
But what is most important about that is
what Vox reported late last night:
Stormy Daniels’ 60 Minutes interview was, in its way, fascinating. But it ultimately failed to shed light on the two most interesting questions posed by this entire imbroglio, presumably because Daniels herself doesn’t know the answer.
- How many other sexual partners has Trump paid hush money to?
- How many foreign intelligences services know about one or more of those women?
Trump has secrets that Trump regards as worth keeping.
And while that put Daniels under pressure, it means that entities with more power and sophistication than an adult film actress can use those secrets to put pressure on Trump. The president has successfully cultivated an image as so flaky and incompetent, that his many baffling decisions on the world stage — from leaking Israeli intelligence to the Russian foreign minister to undercutting his own administration’s policy on Qatar to mysteriously leaving Japan off a list of allies exempted from steel tariffs — generally get written off as evidence that Trump is flaky and incompetent, rather than being actively manipulated by foreign actors.
Exactly!
Now I alluded to this last night in the comments section, because that is the truly relevant point that is being revealed with this interview, and the one Karen McDougal gave a few days ago.
Donald Trump's careless lifestyle has rendered him vulnerable to blackmail, and manipulation by just just about ANYBODY. And that includes foreign governments.
I am still in the first 100 pages of David Corn's book "Russian Roulette" but I have already learned that Donald Trump went to Russia a variety of times in the 80's, 90's, and 2000's, at least once at the invitation of the Kremlin.
We know that the Russian government has a habit of gathering embarrassing information on American celebrities and politicians that can be used later, yet Trump seems to have clumsily wandered into that lion's den on multiple occasions.
What's more, according to the book, Trump bragged to friends and associates that the Russian women were "without morals," which indicates to me that his interactions with them were less than dignified, and may in fact have been truly pornographic.
And of course all of this was talked about in that Christopher Steele dossier which the conservatives are so desperate to dismiss as "fake news."
So do I think there is a "pee tape?"
Hell, I think the pee tape might only be the first course in a depravity riddled sequence of DVDs which Donald Trump is desperate to see left buried until long after he has shuffled off this mortal coil.
And it was THAT probability which was driven home last night during this interview with Stormy Daniels.
P.S. By the way I would suggest that the trolls simply give up on trying to shame Stormy on social media.....
....it simply doesn't work.
