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Before they had sex in a hotel room in 2006, Donald Trump told Stormy Daniels that she reminded him of his daughter Ivanka Trump, according to testimony from the adult film star during the former president’s hush money trial in New York on Tuesday.
Ms Daniels would later receive $130,000 from Mr Trump’s then-attorney Michael Cohen to ensure she would not speak about the encounter while Mr Trump was running for the presidency in 2016.
Their encounter in July 2006, one year after Mr Trump married Melania Trump, followed their meeting at a charity golf tournament in Lake Tahoe.
Ms Daniels said she had hoped to land an apperance on Mr Trump’s hit NBC reality series The Apprentice but doubted her business talent.
“You remind me of my daughter,” Mr Trump told her in the hotel room, according to Ms Daniels. “Smart, blond and beautiful. And people underestimate her as well.”
After meeting at the golf tournament, Mr Trump, then 60 years old, had invited the then-27-year-old adult entertainer to dinner.
“F no,” Ms Daniels remembers thinking.
“No, with an expletive in front of it.”
A friend ultimately convinced her to go, she testified. Ms Daniels remembered her friend ominously telling her: “It’ll make a great story, he’s a business guy. What could possibly go wrong?”
She later wound up at Mr Trump’s penthouse room at Harrah’s, Ms Daniels recalled. Mr Trump’s suite “was three times the size of my apartment,” she said.
Mr Trump would later reimburse Cohen for his payment to Ms Daniels in a series of monthly checks throughout 2017, while Mr Trump was president. Those checks were labelled as legal expenses across Trump Organization accounting documents, what Manhattan prosecutors argue is a cover up to conceal what were instead payments intended to influence the outcome of the 2016 election.
Mr Trump is charged with 34 counts of falsifying business records. He has pleaded not guilty.
Karen McDougal, a former Playboy model who was also paid so-called hush money payments after having an affair with the former president, has previously discussed being compared to Ivanka by Mr Trump.
Speaking on Anderson Cooper 360, she said, “He’s very proud of Ivanka, as he should be. I mean, she’s a brilliant woman. She’s beautiful.”
“He said I was beautiful like her and, you know, you’re a smart girl. And there wasn’t a lot of comparing, but there was some, yes. I heard a lot about her,” she said.
Ms Daniels’ testimony echoes what she told 60 Minutes in 2018.
n that interview, she recounted her encounter with Mr Trump: “He was like, ‘Wow, you — you are special. You remind me of my daughter.’ You know — he was like, ‘You’re smart and beautiful, and a woman to be reckoned with, and I like you. I like you.”
During her testimony on Tuesday, Ms Daniels recalled being annoyed by Mr Trump’s “arrogance” and his tendency to “one-up” everything she was saying, she said.
She recalled telling him: “Are you always this rude? You don’t even know how to have a conversation?” Ms Daniels told the court, He seemed to be taken aback by that.”
The adult film star then said she swatted him “right on the butt” with a rolled-up magazine. After that, he was “much more polite,” she said on the stand.
Mr Trump and Ms Daniels never ended up having dinner, she said. As she left the restroom at one point during their meeting, Mr Trump appeared in boxers and a T-shirt.
“At first I was just startled, like a jump scare,” she testified on Tuesday. “I felt the blood leave my hands and my feet, almost like standing up too fast. … I just thought, ‘Oh my god, What did I misread to get here?’ The intention was pretty clear.”
While testifying, Ms Daniels also posed to show what Mr Trump looked like horizontally on the bed, showing jurors that he had one hand on her head and one hand on her hip.
Mr Trump did not wear a condom, she said.
Afterward, he reportedly said, “That was great. Let’s get together, honeybunch.”
She said she took a cab back to her hotel.
“I told very few people that we had actually had sex,” she said in her testimony. “I felt ashamed that I didn’t stop it, that I didn’t say no.”
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