Stormy Daniels | Messaging Matters

Trump is on trial, but what should we call it?

Written on April 17, 2024 by Messaging Matters in Democratic Messaging, Media Watch

Suggestion from the 2018 State of the Union

Donald Trump is on trial right now in New York City, facing criminal charges for “business fraud.” However, that term is really the last step that began with (1) having adulterous affairs (2) with porn star Stormy Daniels and Playboy model Karen McDougal (3) just months after Trump’s wife Melania gave birth to son Barron, then (4) covering up the Daniels affair by paying $130,000 in “hush money” to Daniels (5) through Trump’s lawyer Michael Cohen, as well as (6) involving the Trump-friendly National Enquirer in paying $150,000 to McDougal to kill the story of her affair with Trump, and (7) paying off a Trump Tower doorman who claimed to have a story about a child Trump allegedly fathered out of wedlock. According to the New York prosecutors, the covering up of such payments by Trump and others constitutes falsifying New York State business records. Ultimately, all of these actions were designed to influence the 2016 presidential election by keeping important information about Trump’s character and crimes out of the news. And while the cover-ups worked to some extent in 2016, presumably the facts are not hidden anymore.

Understandably, however, the news media have had a bit of a hard time describing the subject matter of Trump’s trial for purposes of short headlines or to appeal to the short attention spans of many readers and viewers. Thus, we have seen the trial described as:

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Tags: 2016 presidential election, Barron Trump, CBS, Donald Trump, Karen McDougal, media, Melania Trump, Michael Cohen, National Enquirer, New York, news, Playboy, Stormy Daniels

Trump vs. Biden

Written on March 7, 2024 by Messaging Matters in Democratic Messaging, Democratic vs. Republican Presidents, Republican Messaging

President Joe Biden

After Super Tuesday‘s results this week in both the Republican and Democratic presidential primaries, it is clear that Donald Trump and Joe Biden will have a 2024 rematch of their 2020 presidential election. Trump and Biden each won almost all of their Super Tuesday contests, with Trump losing only Vermont to Nikki Haley and Biden losing just American Samoa to someone named Jason Palmer. In the delegate count, Trump and Biden again are very well on their way to securing their respective party’s presidential nominations, with Trump thus far gaining 1,004 of the necessary 1,215 Republican delegates, and Biden getting 1,516 out of the required 1,968 delegates on the Democratic side. Haley has announced that she is abandoning her presidential campaign, but she refused to endorse Trump at this time.

Accordingly, as the nomination process now shifts to an early general election campaign between Trump and Biden, a key question is going to be: what is the 2024 presidential election about? The answer to that question may well determine who becomes our next president. For example, Trump and the Republicans will likely keep talking about trans bathroom use, and caravans of “migrants” (an apparent change from “immigrants” or “illegals”), because they either have the wrong policies or no policies at all on truly important issues such as the economy, climate change, healthcare, gun violence, etc. President Biden and the Democrats, in addition to running on their strong record of economic recovery and growth, have made “freedom” a centerpiece of their 2024 campaign thus far, which includes freedom from Republican government intrusion into women’s health decisions (i.e., abortion), freedom to vote, preserving our democracy and elections against Republican dictatorship, etc.

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Tags: 2020 Election, 2024 Election, abortion, climate change, delegates, Democrats, Donald Trump, E. Jean Carroll, economy, freedom, healthcare, immigration, January 6, Joe Biden, Nikki Haley, President, primaries, Republicans, Stormy Daniels, Super Tuesday, voters, voting

Republican overreaching may hurt them in 2024 elections

Written on April 14, 2023 by Messaging Matters in Democratic Messaging

Younger activists, a major Republican fear

Republicans have a predictable pattern: even with government nearly evenly divided, they get drunk with power, use their votes to overreach with extreme policies, and wind up alienating voters in the next election. In June 2022, for example, the U.S. Supreme Court, with three new right wing Republican justices courtesy of Donald Trump and Mitch McConnell, voted along party lines to take away the right to abortion that had been established in the Court’s Roe v. Wade decision nearly 50 years earlier. This decision set off a firestorm among voters, especially younger voters, who showed up to the voting booths in droves five months later and gave the Democrats considerably better results (retaining control and actually winning a one-seat majority in the U.S, Senate, barely losing control of the House, and gaining state governorships and state legislature majorities) in an off-year election where the party in power usually does much worse.

Republicans, however, did not learn the lesson from the 2022 elections, i.e., that their extremism scared away voters. Instead, the GOP has charged ahead with even more extremist actions that could hurt them in 2024. These include:

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Tags: 2020 Elections, 2022 elections, 2024 elections, abortion, climate change, Democrats, Donald Trump, GOP, Michael Cohen, Mitch McConnell, Republicans, Roe v. Wade, Russia, Stormy Daniels, Tennessee, Ukraine

Trump criminal arraignment will be test for news media today

Written on April 4, 2023 by Messaging Matters in Media Watch, Republican Messaging

New York tabloid coverage of Donald Trump

Donald Trump is being arraigned today on numerous criminal charges at the New York State Supreme Court in Manhattan. Thus far, much of the news media coverage of this process has focused on what Trump is saying and doing, e.g. his reaction to his indictment, his travel plans, and his plan to fly back from New York to Florida later today to give a speech, no doubt full of whining and complaining about being subject to the legal system. But today is really about what is being done to Trump, and what he faces, i.e. hopefully some modicum of justice. It’s also a teachable moment for many Americans, to find out this country was founded upon the principle that no one is above the law.

Therefore, the news media have a choice today: will they correctly focus on what is happening to Trump, including booking, fingerprinting, reading of the charges against him, analysis of the legal process going forward, the potential for prison time, etc.? Or will the media continue to base their coverage on Trump’s own statements and travels? In particular, will the news media fully cover the rather meaningless Republican circus of Trump’s Florida speech tonight, letting him once again set the agenda? If so, then we will know that the media will cover the 2024 presidential elections, like the 2020 elections, in the most superficial and damaging way.

Trump and the Republicans have a Michael Cohen problem

Written on February 28, 2019 by Messaging Matters in Democratic vs. Republican Presidents, Republican Messaging

House Oversight and Reform Committee Chairman Elijah Cummings (D-MD)

Republicans are having some major difficulties with former Donald Trump personal attorney Michael Cohen‘s testimony before the U.S. House Committee on Oversight and Reform yesterday. Cohen sat for over 7 hours, giving testimony about the workings of the Trump Organization that was riveting, and at times stunning. Notably, the committee Republicans rarely if ever attacked Cohen’s specific allegations about Trump wrongdoings and illegal acts. Instead, they, and Republicans in the media and elsewhere, simply painted Cohen as “a liar” based on his guilty plea in two previous cases, one of which involves scheming with Donald Trump to cover up hush money payments to porn star Stephanie Clifford a/k/a Stormy Daniels, as well as lying for Trump about efforts to build a Trump Tower in Moscow. Apparently, these Republicans realize that they face the following problems regarding Michael Cohen:

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Tags: Allen Weisselberg, Congress, Democrats, Donald Trump, Donald Trump Jr., Michael Cohen, Moscow, Mueller, Republicans, Russia, Stephanie Clifford, Stormy Daniels, Trump Tower

Trump’s great border wall distraction

Written on February 22, 2019 by Messaging Matters in Democratic Messaging, Media Watch, Republican Messaging

Climate change, one issue that gets less focus in favor of immigration

If you follow major news stories for the past few months or longer, you might think the biggest issue of our time is illegal immigration, and specifically Donald Trump‘s desired border wall. After all, Trump and the Republicans created the phony “caravan” issue before the 2018 midterm elections. Then, in December, Trump shut down the federal government over his inability to convince Congress, and the American people, to approve his wall. The shutdown was so disruptive that it forced the news media and the voters to spend more time focusing on the wall and immigration. After the Trump Shutdown hurt Trump and the Republicans in the polls, and amidst the threat of a second Trump Shutdown, Trump caved to the Democrats regarding funding for border “fencing.” However, Trump then declared a fake “National Emergency” as a ploy to circumvent Congressional approval and steal money from other taxpayer funds, such as disaster relief, to try to fund his wall.

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Tags: border, border security, border wall, climate change, Donald Trump, government shutdown, healthcare, illegal immigration, immigration, Russia, Stormy Daniels, Trump Shutdown

Sean Hannity’s giant conflict of interest

Written on April 17, 2018 by Messaging Matters in Fox "News" Watch, Media Watch, Republican Messaging

Fox News, completely removed from “news”

Yesterday, in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, Michael Cohen‘s attorney was forced to reveal that Cohen has three clients: Donald Trump, former Republican National Committee Deputy Finance Chairman and donor Elliott Broidy, and Sean Hannity of Fox News. The reveal of Hannity as Cohen’s heretofore mystery third client raises some serious questions:

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Tags: Donald Trump, Elliott Broidy, Fox News, Michael Cohen, Republicans, Robert Mueller, Russia, Sean Hannity, Stormy Daniels, Trump Russia

What’s in a politician’s nickname?

Written on March 8, 2018 by Messaging Matters in Media Watch, Republican Messaging

U.S. Senator Raphael Edward “Ted” Cruz

There’s some big name news this week on the Republican side, involving both Donald Trump (and his alleged side woman, porn star Stormy Daniels), as well as Senator Rafael Edward “Ted” Cruz. The news brings to mind some of the nicknames politicians use, and why.

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Tags: Beto O'Rourke, CNN, David Dennison, Donald Trump, Peggy Peterson, Rafael Edward Cruz, Richard Nixon, Stephanie Clifford, Stormy Daniels, Ted Cruz

The Republican Party’s twisted masculinity

Written on January 18, 2018 by Messaging Matters in Republican Messaging

Republican U.S. Senate candidate and alleged child predator Roy Moore, dressed as a cowboy.

The latest revelations regarding Donald Trump‘s affair with and payment of hush money to porn star Stormy Daniels don’t seem to be fazing Republicans. The reaction seems to be no more negative within the GOP than when Trump was caught on tape bragging to “Access Hollywood” host Billy Bush about sexually assaulting women. Trump’s ex-wife, Ivana, even accused Trump of raping her, and some 19 women have also accused Trump of sexually assaulting or harassing them. This yawn from Republicans about Trump’s conduct toward women extends to many other Republican politicians as well. For example, U.S. Senator David Vitter was caught and admitted hiring prostitutes in 2007, and was re-elected in 2010. Likewise, Newt Gingrich has been a top Republican presidential contender and adviser for years, even though he is a serial adulterer who presented his first wife with divorce terms as she lay in a hospital bed recovering from cancer surgery. That these Republican men never seem to be punished by their supposedly “family values” base for sexual misconduct or mistreatment of women may be because the Republican Party thrives on a twisted notion of masculinity.

Tag Archive: Stormy Daniels