Ever since word got out that porn star Stormy Daniels was poised to tell all about her alleged affair with Donald Trump a decade ago, the response from the right wing’s rank and file has basically amounted to slut-shaming her. In the process, they’ve only succeeded in making themselves look foolish.
For instance, former Trump campaign adviser Stephen Moore harrumphed that Daniels was merely trying to draw attention to herself–SOP for a porn actress. Trump’s Twitter loyalists have attacked her in the same manner they have attacked anyone who dares speak ill of their messiah–even though Daniels has loudly clapped back at them.
The latest attempt to attack Daniels comes from Jane Chastain of WorldNetDaily. In her younger days, Chastain was known as one of the first–if not the first–female sportscasters in the nation, thus paving the way for Robin Roberts, Jemelle Hill, Doris Burke, Erin Andrews, Jill Arrington, and other mainstays on our airwaves.
She was first hired in 1967 at WTVJ in Miami. Watch a clip from one of her 1976 broadcasts here.
Besides her work in Miami, she also called games for CBS, and was also a sportscaster at KABC-TV in Los Angeles. From the 1980s onward, though, she became better known for hard-right political commentary.
Just how hard right she is became clear in her latest WND column. She wags her finger at Daniels, whom she believes shouldn’t be trusted because she “has explicit sex in front of the cameras for money.” In Chastain’s book, that makes Daniels “a super-whore.”
Daniels is hyping an interview with “60 Minutes” that is slated to air on March 25–even though Team Trump appears to be tripping all over itself to derail it. They claim that she breached a non-disclosure agreement about her affair with Trump, and want her to cough up $20 million in damages. But Chastain thinks that even without that suit to consider, CBS and the American people should stay far away from this interview.
“If we stoop to watching that interview, if and when it airs, we are guilty of voyeurism. What does that make ’60 Minutes’? Little more than entertainment appealing to our most basic prurient interests.”
Really, Jane? You mean to tell us that when a man has an affair just a few months after being married, and just a few months after his wife gives him a baby, merely telling about that affair is “voyeurism” that appeals to “prurient interests”?
But Chastain has a ready explanation for that. She doesn’t think it’s a big deal because while it was no secret Trump “was no choir boy,” his misdeeds “were committed while he was a private citizen.” In contrast, Chastain reminds us that Hillary Clinton’s supposed misdeeds were committed while her husband, Bill, was president, and while she was a Senator and Secretary of State.
Chastain says she held her nose and voted for Trump, in part because she saw a man who “cheated on his wives” as a better choice than a woman who “cheated on her country.” As she put it, when you cheat on your country, “you don’t get another opportunity.”
Okay, Jane. I’ll play. So cheating on your country is disqualifying? Then how do you explain the evidence that Trump, at the very least, fostered an environment in his campaign in which senior staffers thought it was even remotely acceptable to solicit a hostile foreign power for dirt on Hillary?
Remember, American intelligence intercepts show former campaign chairman Paul Manafort asking Russian agents for damaging information about Hillary. And then there’s the now-infamous meeting at Trump Tower in which Manafort, Donald Trump Jr., and Jared Kushner sat down with Russians who were willing to peddle Russian-flavored “opposition research” about Hillary. Even if Trump was a “private citizen” at the time, the best-case scenario is that he was disengaged in a way that a major-party presidential candidate simply cannot be.
We also know that after the election, Kushner got the bright idea to ask Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak for a secret communications link between the Trump transition team and the Kremlin. Terrorism analyst Malcolm Nance believes that Kushner’s gambit amounted to espionage, an assessment shared by former CIA acting director John McLaughlin.
Once again, we have a case where, at the very least, Trump was disengaged in a way he simply could not be, given his position. And in this case, it happened when Trump was most assuredly not a private citizen anymore. So by your own definition, Jane, Trump should hang it up. After all, as you yourself said, “you don’t get another opportunity” when you cheat your country.
So with that out of the way, let’s consider the real reason Daniels should not be merely dismissed as a “super-whore” out for attention and money. It has been amply established there’s a rank odor surrounding the $130,000 payment Daniels received via Trump lawyer Michael Cohen. We now know that Cohen used his Trump Organization email to negotiate the payment–and did so in his capacity as Trump’s “special counsel.” And we also know that at least one other Trump Organization lawyer was involved in a matter that could have easily been handled by any of the myriad lawyers in Southern California.
That raises the possibility that the payment may have been an illegal campaign contribution–either an in-kind corporate contribution from the Trump Organization, or a personal donation from Cohen that far exceeded legal limits. As they say, it’s not the crime, it’s the cover-up–and the American people have a right to know if the president of the United States or his lawyers are involved in such a cover-up. Swing and a miss, Jane. Try again.
My compatriots at Daily Kos have long called WND “WorldNutDaily” because of the half-baked fare served up by its impressario, Joseph Farah, and his acolytes. Judging by this slut-shaming bilge from Chastain, the nickname is well deserved.
(featured image courtesy ASACP RTA, available under a Creative Commons-BY license)
