Anderson Cooper, a host at CNN, was extremely surprised by some of the explicit testimony in Donald Trump’s hush money trial in New York on Thursday and struggled to find an appropriate way to discuss it on TV.
CNN reporters were talking about the cross-examination of adult actress Stormy Daniels, who claims she had a sexual relationship with Trump from 2006 to 2012 while he was married to Melania Trump. Prosecutors believe that Trump’s “fixer,” Michael Cohen, paid Daniels $130,000 to keep quiet about the affair during the 2016 presidential campaign and that business records were falsified to cover up the payments in order to interfere with the election.
During cross-examination, Trump’s lawyers attempted various lines of questioning to undermine Daniels' credibility, looking for inconsistencies in her past statements and motives like a dislike of Trump or an attempt to profit from publicity.
During cross-examination, Trump's lawyer Susan Necheles presented Daniels with a social media post from March in which she referred to someone as “the best person to flush the orange turd down.” Daniels explained that she was responding to someone who insulted her, calling her a “human toilet.”
Daniels clarified that the term 'orange turd' referred to President Trump, not just Trump.
Cooper then had to summarize this on television.
Cooper expressed his astonishment, saying, 'I never thought I’d ever say this sentence, but they’re actually arguing over who the orange turd is. She says, ‘Oh, I absolutely meant Mr. Trump,’ so Stormy Daniels has now clarified that is, in fact, who she was talking about flushing an orange turd down the toilet.'
Some have questioned the tactic of questioning Daniels about multiple topics, including her negative social media posts, and there have been reports that Trump is pressuring his lawyers to be more aggressive in attacking the credibility of witnesses so people won’t believe he had a sexual relationship with Daniels.
Cooper addressed these criticisms.
“It’s going to be interesting to hear… how ultimately, if jurors ever speak, how effective they think this kind of level of cross-examination of Stormy Daniels has been,” said Cooper. “There’s obviously a danger of spending a lot of time in the weeds on tweets.” He added that the line of questioning may have been “client maintenance… essentially what Donald Trump wants them to do, not necessarily what they may have wanted to do.”
On Tuesday, Daniels described how she met Trump at a golf event in 2006, how he complimented her and invited her to dinner, and how he cornered her in his hotel suite that night in order to have sex with her. She said that he didn't threaten her directly but that she knew his bodyguard was outside the suite and that Donald Trump “was bigger and blocking the way” to get out. She said that Donald Trump told her that his wife wasn't sharing the room with him and shared a picture of her.
After the sexual encounter, Daniels stated, "It was very difficult to get my shoes because my hands were shaking intensely."
"He said, 'Oh, it was fantastic. Let's meet again, honeybunch,'" she added. "I just wanted to go."
Daniels said that Donald Trump's "fixer," lawyer Michael Cohen, approached her during the 2016 campaign and arranged to pay her $130,000 to stay silent about her relationship with Donald Trump, which lasted until 2012. She discussed the emails she kept that demonstrated them negotiating aspects of the supposed agreement.
This occurred shortly after the Access Hollywood tape – where Donald Trump boasted about feeling entitled to sexually assault women and "grab them by the pu**y" – dominated the news cycle, and his campaign didn't want another story of Donald Trump's sexual wrongdoing to receive media attention.
Trump is facing 34 fraud-related charges in this case. He has pleaded not guilty to all of them.
