Porn star Stormy Daniels took the stand on Tuesday, offering bombshell testimony on her alleged sexual encounter with Donald Trump at a Lake Tahoe golf tournament in July 2006. Testifying at Trump’s hush money trial in Manhattan, Daniels recounted the salacious details, at one point mimicking a sexy pose Trump allegedly struck while perched on the bed of his hotel room.
The former president and current GOP candidate is facing 35 felony counts of falsifying business records to cover up hush money payments to Daniels to buy her silence about that evening in his hotel room.
At several points during her testimony, Trump seemed furious and disgusted.
Daniels will be back on the stand on Thursday, but for now, here are the top moments:
Why she met with Trump in the first place
Daniels testified that initially, she didn’t want to meet Trump for dinner.
“F–k no,” she said in response to the invitation, delivered by the then-future-president’s bodyguard.
Later on, though, she was convinced by her publicist.
“What could go wrong?” Daniels, wryly shrugging with a sad smile, remembered the publicist saying.
She ended up agreeing to meet him, thinking it could be a good business opportunity, as she wanted to get into film directing outside of porn.
Trump compared her to Ivanka
“You remind me of my daughter,” Trump told her, she said. “Smart and blonde and beautiful.”
Ivanka Trump and Daniels are three years apart in age. Trump, Daniels said in court, is about the age of her own father.
Trump added that he wanted to get Daniels on “The Apprentice,” she said — an idea he continued to dangle afterwards.
While she spoke, Daniels seemed a little jumpy at times, speaking rapidly, to the point where she was asked several times to slow down.
How she felt the moment she saw Trump in his boxers
Daniels testified she opened the bathroom door to find Trump sitting on the side of the bed stripped down to his boxers
Daniels remembered how, after leaving Trump to use the restroom, it was “like a jump scare” to see him stripped down and waiting for her.
“I felt the room spin in slow motion,” she said. “I felt the blood leave my hands… almost like when you stand up too fast.”
Daniels just “stared at the ceiling”
Daniels said she just “stared at the ceiling” during sex, and that Trump didn’t wear a condom.
“Was that concerning to you?” asked prosecutor Susan Hoffinger.
“Yes.”
“Did you say anything about it?
“No.”
“Why not?”
“I didn’t say anything at all.”
It was “brief,” Daniels testified.
Daniels said she blacked out during sex
“I had my clothes and my shoes off. I removed my bra,” she said. “We were in missionary position.”
Merchan cut her off here, asking prosecutors not to go into graphic detail.
After, she felt “ashamed”
She told “very few people that we had actually had sex.”
“I felt ashamed that I didn’t stop it,” Daniels said, “that I didn’t say no.”
She didn’t tell her husband until the news broke years later.
Trump’s lawyer challenges Daniels
During a more tense moment in the courtroom, Trump lawyer Susan Necheles asked Daniels about a 2011 meeting with lawyer Gloria Allred that she wrote about in her book. Daniels responded that she gave Allred an “abbreviated” version of her encounter with Trump, leaving out the sex.
“You’re making this up as you sit there,” Necheles said Daniels responded after a long pause, looking almost repulsed: “No.”
Cross-examination was at points contentious as Daniels pushed back on the idea that she got involved with Trump because she was after money.
The “orange turd” comment
Necheles had Daniels read aloud, to Trump’s face, brutal posts about the former president.
“I don’t owe him shit and I’ll never give that orange turd a dime [laughing emoji],” Daniels wrote on Twitter in Nov 2022.
Necheles accused her of “calling him names,” which Daniels agreed she did, “’cause he made fun of me first.”
“I will go to jail before I pay a penny,” she wrote in another tweet from March 2022, related to legal fees she’s ordered to pay after she lost a 2018 defamation lawsuit against Trump.
Daniels admits hating Trump
“Am I correct that you hate Donald Trump?” Trump’s lawyer Susan Necheles asked during cross-examination.
“Yes,” Daniels replied.
“You want him to go to jail?” Necheles asked her.
“I want him to be held accountable,” Daniels replied.