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Donald Trump, Stormy Daniels. (Yahoo
News photo illustration; photos: Carolyn Kaster/AP, Gregg
DeGuire/WireImage/Getty Images) |
We do not know what the relationship between Porn Star Stormy Daniels (AKA Stephanie Gregory) and former President Donald Trump really was. She and prosecutors in the Daniels-Trump trial now underway in New York City claim the mutually beneficial relationship was not Platonic but sexual in nature. Trump denies committing coitus.
These claims will now be tested in a trial. Stormy is
perhaps the only person involved in the relationship who may benefit from the
trial, whether the jury accepts or rejects her claims. In matters of this kind,
it is nearly impossible to besmirch the character of an illustrious porn star.
It is possible to besmirch the
character of Trump, who likely will be the Republican Party’s choice as its
presidential candidate in the upcoming 2024 elections. Character assassination
has become a staple in American politics, but ethically unsavory relationships
between loose men and women have a long and sordid pedigree.
The record of American politicians adopting means of hiding
under the bed incidental sexual improprieties between women of questionable
character and politicians of questionable character during election periods is,
shall we say, spotty.
We now know that former President John Kennedy, the King
Arthur of an American Camelot, suffered from erotomania,
more common in women but more dangerous in men, as well as a bad back. To put
the matter in pedestrian terms, Kennedy was willing to flaunt his notoriety for
certain sexual favors, and he was less than cautious concerning his choices in
women. According to one scandal sheet, “Judith Campbell,
dubbed the ‘mob moll’ by the media, had a passionate affair with JFK, and fell
in love with him. She also became a conduit between the White House and the
mob.”
A very proper British Edwardian was once asked whether he
enjoyed coitus. His dismissive response was, “Sir, the posture is ridiculous.”
A blue dress bearing a telltale mark during Bill Clinton’s presidency
demonstrated to the world that presidential protestations of innocence may also
be ridiculous. Luckily, Bill Clinton was married to a forgiving wife with
political ambitions of her own. But for the dress, Clinton may have escaped
detection. He was impeached in the House but acquitted in the Senate.
Usually, such affairs are the special province of comics.
Aristophanes’ plays are full of hidden sexual references and sly charges of the
sexual improprieties of the rich and famous of his day. Nothing kills comedy as
quickly as a trial – see Oscar Wilde for confirmation – and the trial in New
York may prove to be a comedy assassin. All the actors, especially
oh-so-serious prosecutors and reporters, will become Edwardian gentlemen and
ladies turning their noses up at the very idea of coitus among willing
conspirators. Only Stormy will have the last laugh, and perhaps a lucrative
book deal in the bargain.
The most serious political question hanging over the trial now
underway in New York City, the very model of urban propriety, has little to do
with justice. Will the trial so damage the political repute of Trump as to
bring into the Democrat camp the votes of women less long-suffering than Bill
Clinton’s wife? That, as Shakespeare might say, is the question. How many
slings and arrows will it take to bury the Trump candidacy beneath mounds of
contumacious charges?
A prosecutor told jurors during his opening remarks at the
beginning of the trial, “This was a planned, long running conspiracy to
influence the 2016 election, to help Donald Trump get elected through illegal
expenditures, to silence people who had something to say about his behavior. It
was election fraud, pure and simple.”
George Bernard Shaw once said that “Every profession is a
conspiracy against the laity,” and no one in the courtroom, including the judge
and those seated at the prosecution table, would dare argue in favor of the
motion Trump’s prosecutors are not professionals. At its root, all
party politics is a conspiracy against the opposing party, and much of it is a
conspiracy against the laity.
Who will doubt that then Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi conspired
with her fellow Democrats to impeach then President Trump. Impeachments occur
in two stages. A bill of indictments is produced in the House and then sent to
the Senate for a hearing on the charges. The Senate, during a trial, affirms or
does not affirm the House charges. If the charges are affirmed in the Senate,
the indicted public official is removed from office, the sole punishment issued
in impeachment cases.
During both Trump impeachments – there were two -- the
President, indicted in the House but acquitted in the Senate, was not removed
from office, which allows fair-minded critics of the impeachment attempt to
conclude that the conspiracy to remove Trump from office had failed. Trump was
impeached a second time only two weeks before he was due to leave office, which
seemed redundant to some since the only punishment when charges are sustained
in the Senate is removal from office. His second impeachment did not result in
a conviction in the Senate.
Moving on, Democrats have attempted to deny voters the right
to cast votes for Trump by removing the former President from the ballot in
several states. Some watchful reporters and commentators view the effort as a
conspiracy to influence the upcoming 2024 presidential election, and they have
not been silent. They charge that Democrat leaders are engaged in a long
running election fraud effort. Because polls show Trump leading his Democrat
counterpart by significant margins in several key states, the Democrat Party
opposition is getting fidgety and now has ventured that any means, fair or
foul, to rid the nation of Trump – an enemy of “our democracy” – is
appropriate, including the imposition of absurdly high half billion dollar
bonds and the imposition of a gag order that will not allow Trump to question
statements often made publically by Michael Cohen, usually referred to
by the anti-Trump media as the former president’s “fixer.”
Released from prison last November after having “pleaded
guilty in 2018 to a host of charges tied to tax evasion, as well as lying to
Congress in its investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election
and his role in funneling payments to silence two women who alleged that they
had had affairs with Trump,” Cohen, the prosecution’s star witness pledged, “I
will not cease my commitment to law enforcement. I will continue to provide
information, testimony, documents and my full cooperation on all ongoing
investigations to ensure that others are held responsible for their dirty
deeds.”
This political Grand Guignol cries out for an Aristophanes
to immortalize its absurdities in a short play or documentary certain to be
denounced by every politician in the land of the free and the home of the
brave.
But Aristophanes is dead and no belly laugh has issued from
his grave during the past 2,410 years.
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