‘Do you worry about STDs?’: Stormy Daniels’ testimony on Trump affair off to cringey start | Stormy Daniels

At 10:30 a.m. Tuesday in a New York courtroom, five words changed the course of American history: “The people call Stormy Daniels.”

Daniels, now a household name, is an adult film actor at the center of an undercover money laundering case that could Donald Trumpthe former president and current Republican presidential candidate behind bars.

Manhattan prosecutors said Trump’s onetime lawyer, Michael Cohen, paid Daniels $130,000 to keep quiet about a sexual relationship in the weeks before the 2016 election; in turn, he claims to have described the payments to him as legal expenses in the business records.

But when Daniels entered Judge Juan Murchan’s courtroom this morning, dressed in black with matching eyeglass frames, her brass locks loose up, that discourse of ledgers, checks and bank records took a back seat.

Trump turned to look at her as she took her seat at the podium and then leaned back in his chair, a passive expression on his face. Trump’s son Eric, who was in the front row of the gallery behind his father, was looking at the wall. Alina Haba, Trump’s lawyer, who is not involved in the case, sat with her hands folded.

Then began the long-awaited legal battle between Daniels and Trump. Over the course of several hours, Daniels produced a tabloid-made mix of excitement and gossip detailing an alleged encounter with him some 20 years ago.

Daniels, who met Trump at a celebrity golf tournament in Lake Tahoe, walked jurors through the fateful night when she went to his hotel room thinking it was his dinner invitation.

“It’s going to make a great story,” said Daniels’ colleague as she weighed whether or not to go. “What could possibly go wrong?”

As Daniel put it, the answer would be a lot.

They decided to talk a little before dinner, she recalled. Trump repeatedly asked about Daniels’ work as an adult entertainer, prodding her with questions like, “What about the testing? Are you worried about STDs?” Has she been tested?

“Yes, of course, and I suggested it too,” she said. “He asked me, oh well, have you ever had a bad test, I said, ‘No, I can show you my whole record.’

At one point, Trump began showing photos of Daniels, including Melania. Daniels told Trump she was “very beautiful.” He said they slept in separate bedrooms.

They talked about The Apprentice, Trump’s reality show. Daniels said there was no way she would get into network television given her work in adult entertainment.

It was at this point that Trump appeared to compare Daniels to his daughter Ivanka.

“You remind me of my daughter, she’s smart and blonde and beautiful and people underestimate her too,” Daniels recalled Trump saying.

Several times after their conversation, Daniels went to use the restroom, which passed through a bedroom. When he came out of the bathroom, there was Trump – on the bed, wearing boxers and a t-shirt.

“At first I was just startled, like a jump scare,” Daniels told jurors. “I just thought, oh my God, what have I misread to get here? The intention is pretty clear if someone has stripped down to their underwear and is on the bed.

She tried to get out of the situation, but Trump stood between her and the door, but, she insisted, “not in a threatening way.”

“He said I thought we were getting there. I thought you were serious about what you wanted if you wanted to get out of this trailer park … ,” Daniels recalled Trump saying. “I was offended because I’ve never lived in a trailer park.”

Daniels said they stopped having sex. The scant details that followed — among them mention of a specific sexual position and condoms — sparked a flurry of defense objections. At times during Daniels’ testimony, Trump could be seen shaking his head.

Trump’s lead attorney, Todd Blanche, even asked for a mistrial based on additional marginalia in her comments. “We are proposing a mistrial based on the testimony this morning,” Blanche told Murchan after the lunch break. “We don’t think there’s any way to remove the bell.”

“Besides the sheer embarrassment,” said Blanche, these details only served to “inflame the jury.”

Murchan rejected that request, but defense attorney Susan Necheles did her best to make Daniels anything but a victim of circumstance. Why, Nekeles asked, after so many years did Daniels decide to come forward with his story in 2016?

“You wanted to extort money from President Trump, didn’t you?”

“False,” Daniels insisted.

“Well, that’s what you did, didn’t you?”

“False!” said Daniels, whose defiance during cross-examination contrasted with her apparent nervous discomfort earlier.

Her cross-examination is expected to continue on Thursday.

Hugo Lowell contributed reporting for this piece