How Stormy Daniels Out-Trumped Trump

"Others have come at Mr. Trump with indignation, righteousness and appeals to decency. Ms. Clifford swatted Mr. Trump with a rolled-up network newsmagazine.

Speaking to Anderson Cooper, Ms. Daniels was direct and conversational. She had playful one-liners. (“You didn’t even buy me breakfast,” she told Mr. Cooper.) She told a story. (Describing how she said Mr. Trump awaited her on the edge of a hotel bed — “perched” — she mimed his sitting position and bearing.)

But most important — most, dare I say it, Trumpian — she was unapologetic.

There’s a familiar script for discrediting women who accuse powerful men. They’re attacked as opportunistic and promiscuous, out to make a buck. If they deny any of that, it still ends up making the moral conversation about them.

Ms. Clifford owned her story and her life. Yes, she’s stripped and had sex on camera for a living, a “legitimate — and legal, I’d like to point out — career.” Yes, she’s gotten job offers from her publicity: “Tell me one person who would turn down a job offer making more than they’ve been making.”

That should sound familiar. Running for president, Mr. Trump jiu-jitsued facts that would have ended other candidacies into selling points. Did he give money to candidates he later attacked? That meant he knew how to work the system, and thus could fix it. Did he avoid paying income taxes? “That makes me smart.”

His brazenness was the brazenness of reality TV, the argument of a finalist in a “Survivor” tribal council who tells the jury to hate the game, not the player.

Just so, Ms. Clifford has used unshamability and quick-draw ripostes as a force field. When a critic on Twitter told her that “dumb whores go to hell,” she shot back, “Glad I’m a smart one.”
read the analysis by JAMES PONIEWOZIC