Stormy Daniels - Full Disclosure

After the first commercial break, they sat me in the middle of the table, with Michael sitting to my left. Joy Behar asked me why I came there knowing I was under the threat of President Trump suing me for twenty million dollars if I talked. “I’m tired of being threatened,” I said. “I’m done being bullied. I’m done.”

“Will you have to pay the twenty million?” she asked.

“I’d have to get twenty million first,” I answered. The crowd roared. I smiled. Meghan didn’t.

They asked why I attended Michael Cohen’s court hearing. I said I wasn’t sure if they were going to be discussing my case, and I wanted to be prepared.

Meghan paused for a second before going in. “It seems like a publicity stunt on some level,” she started. Good girl, I thought. Say what you want. She finished with “I hadn’t heard your name until all this happened and now you are literally live on The View giving an entire interview to us.”

I was grateful she gave me the opportunity to talk about this. “This isn’t what I want to be known for,” I said. “As a matter of fact, I hid for quite a while, and it’s overwhelming and intimidating and downright scary sometimes.” I mentioned the cost to my family, but also the literal cost of bodyguards. “You don’t want to know their food bill, because I have to feed them three times a day and they are big.” My dragons hated that and made me feel guilty about it for weeks!

When Joy tried to deflect the question, I returned my attention to Meghan. “Meghan has a very, very good question, and if I were her or anyone else, that’s what I would be saying. A lot of people have.”

I liked that she grew some balls and asked it. Especially with her war-hero dad watching at home. I have crazy respect for her, because up until then I thought maybe she was just going to be all bark. Afterward, people brought it up to me, saying things like “She should have kept her mouth shut. You were a guest in her house.”

No. She wanted to know the answer to something that bothered her, she was told not to, and she did it anyway. I gave her my answer, and she listened. She sat there, open-minded, and she was a big enough person to accept my answer.

When it was over, she shook my hand again and this time there was a mutual respect, if not regard.

“Maybe you’ll come back,” she said.

“I would like that,” I said, meaning it. I appreciate that the other women were so kind to me, but I knew they supported me from the beginning. Either because they understood the law of the case or had a natural sympathy for anyone standing up to Trump. Meghan I had to win over. I don’t think I changed her opinion of me wholly, and I definitely don’t think I changed her opinion of porn. All I care about is that she wouldn’t allow herself to be silenced.

When I go back, I am most excited to see her again. Maybe she’ll change my mind about something.

President Trump must have been watching along with Senator McCain, because he broke his Twitter silence about me. We do know he loves his TV time. On the show, Michael and I presented a sketch of the man who threatened my daughter and me in the Las Vegas parking lot. “A sketch years later about a nonexistent man,” he tweeted at six in the morning on April 18, probably from the toilet. “A total con job, playing the Fake News Media for Fools (but they know it)!”

Never mind that the sketch was done by renowned forensic artist Lois Gibson, whose sketches have helped law enforcement ID 751 criminals and secure more than a thousand convictions. Lois has said she was inspired to study forensic art after she was attacked at age twenty-one by a brutal rapist. He almost killed her, repeatedly strangling her until she passed out, laughing each time. Back then, she was a model and dancer in L.A., and she was afraid to go to the police. Just the kind of person Trump and Cohen would write off. But Lois and I believe in each other, because honest people can spot honest people. And liars.

Two weeks after Trump said I was running a “con job,” Michael Avenatti filed a defamation lawsuit against him. “Mr. Trump knew that his false, disparaging statement would be read by people around the world,” Michael wrote in the lawsuit, “as well as widely reported, and that Ms. Clifford would be subjected to threats of violence, economic harm, and reputational damage as a result.” Translation from legalese: If you come for us, we’re ready.

People have been coming for poor Michael in more inventive ways. Ever since he’s been on TV, he’s had all these people sending him naked pictures—hundreds of pictures. Of all types of women. He’s anything but stupid, and we both think they’re setups to get him in a room to say he was a john or accuse him of assault. We were talking on the phone while he was in L.A., and I made him screen-shot one for me.

When I saw the picture, I immediately recognized the girl as a porn star from the UK. Despite the fact that the girl had sent him an unsolicited message saying she lives in Woodland Hills, giving him an address and trying to lure him to “come over.”

We both agreed that everywhere you turn in this case, someone is trying to fuck us over.

We were getting ready to land when the flight attendant passed me the folded note. He looked at me and nodded, then left before I could open it. In blue ink, he had written the words “Stay Strong.” He had perfect timing, because I had just read the most horrible, untrue thing about myself, the latest in a series, and I needed that lifeline. For some time, I had felt like I was caught in a tornado. I was swirling in this mess, at the mercy of every news alert, think piece, hot take, and court filing. I used to click all the stories about the case, but then I would get all bent out of shape over stuff that wasn’t from a legit source. Which I think describes a lot of us.

So I stopped reading about Stormy Daniels and focused on being Stormy Daniels. Besides, I was busy. People all over the country want to pay me more to do the shows that I have always loved doing. People might criticize that, but why am I not allowed to honor that great tenet of American capitalism: supply and demand? With my schedule, most of the world finds out about developments in my case at least half a day before I do. On April 27, two days after Michael Cohen pleaded the fifth in my lawsuit saying the NDA was null and void, a judge granted him a three-month postponement in my civil case because, as His Honor put it, Cohen will “likely” be indicted in a criminal case. The media jumped on it and talked about it all day, but I didn’t know until I was sitting in my makeshift dressing room, the manager’s office of Fantasies strip club in Baltimore. I was half dressed between shows, my feet up as I finally got around to Michael’s emails of the day. I trust Michael as an advocate for me, and I am no longer on my own.

I needed breaks from engaging in the national conversation about me, so I relied on the small, personal encounters I had meeting people in clubs across the country. I have been writing all of this to you in the mornings on the road, waking up in hotels, or on my tour bus. I write before anyone in the circus wakes up: my two dragons, Brandon and Travis; and Denver, who I am grateful for dropping out of his life in New York to give me the day-to-day normalcy of always having a true friend around. And now there’s Dwayne, my old roadie from years ago. A couple of months ago, something told me to call him. “Hey, do you want to be my tour manager?”

“I just started this really good-paying job at a sound company,” he said. “Let me talk to my wife.” He called me the next day.

“I’m in,” he said, and after a brief pause, added, “Are you gonna pay me?” He told me he felt like he was just supposed to come along. We picked up sweet Chris, my emcee, at my gig at Country Rock Cabaret in St. Louis. He just seemed so capable that, again, I had the voice telling me to bring him along. “You’re coming with me,” I said.