Stormy Daniels: Trump Was 'Worst 90 Seconds of My Life'

When he was Donald Trump’s attorney, Michael Cohen was hellbent on silencing Stormy Daniels, even arranging a hush-money payment to the adult film star that landed him in federal prison. Now, Cohen is literally broadcasting Daniels' story—he interviews her in the latest episode of his podcast, Mea Culpa, and the AP has details:

• “My battle is just now starting,” Daniels tells Cohen, referring to litigation she said had been in a holding pattern before Trump left office. “People are really upset, and they’re just going to get more p----- off at me.”
• Cohen apologizes for “the needless pain" he put Daniels through when he arranged a $130,000 payment during the 2016 presidential campaign to keep her quiet about an alleged dalliance with Trump a decade earlier. Trump has denied the affair. “Both of our stories will be forever linked with Donald Trump, but also with one another,” Cohen tells her. “Thanks for giving me a second chance.”

• The hourlong interview also includes graphic descriptions of Daniels' alleged 2006 sexual encounter with Trump—details she said supports the veracity of her claims. She calls the encounter “the worst 90 seconds of my life, for sure, because it just made me hate myself.”
• While she did not feel “physically threatened,” she said she had not expected to have sex with Trump and, at one point, thought about how to escape the room, thinking “I could definitely outrun him.”
• She repressed details of the rendezvous for years, she said, adding the dynamics only came into focus after she saw the movie Bombshell about the sexual harassment women underwent in meetings with former Fox News executive Roger Ailes. “I didn't say anything for years because I didn't remember," she says.
• Daniels says she's braced for a “second wave” of controversy, including a defamation lawsuit she brought against Trump that she has taken all the way to the US Supreme Court. "If I could just wave a magic wand and make everything go back to the way it was before, I would absolutely do that.”

(More Stormy Daniels stories.)