21 million view Stormy Daniels on ‘60 Minutes’
The highly anticipated “60 Minutes” interview with adult film star Stormy Daniels on Sunday, during which she discussed President Trump, was watched by 21.3 million viewers, the CBS program’s largest audience since 2008.
Data from Nielsen showed that was the most viewers an episode of the newsmagazine has had since 24.5 million people watched Barack and Michelle Obama give their first post-election interview on the show Nov. 16, 2008.
In recent weeks, “60 Minutes” has been drawing about 10 million viewers.
In Sunday’s sit-down with correspondent Anderson Cooper, Daniels described the affair she says she had with Trump in 2006. She also said she was threatened with physical harm in 2011 if she went public with her story.
Daniels said that a few weeks after Trump’s attorney, Michael Cohen, learned that she had shared her story with In Touch magazine, a stranger approached her and her young daughter in a Las Vegas parking lot, told her to “leave Trump alone” and delivered a warning. “That’s a beautiful little girl,” she said the man told her. “It’d be a shame if something happened to her mom.”
In Touch did not publish Daniels’ story until January of this year, after the Wall Street Journal reported that Cohen had arranged to pay Daniels $130,000 just before the November 2016 presidential election in return for her silence.
Daniels has denied the affair in the past. She told Cooper that she was intimidated into signing nondisclosure agreements about the liaison.