Porn star denies she had affair with Trump
NEW YORK— A publicist for adult film star Stormy Daniels — who has both claimed and denied a 2006 extramarital affair with Donald Trump — canceled an upcoming appearance for the performer on ABC’s morning talk show “The View,” the show’s spokeswoman said Wednesday, just hours after Daniels demurred when quizzed about her allegations on late-night television.
The latest development in Daniels’ weekslong publicity tour follows the release by her lawyer, Keith Davidson, of a signed statement from the day before in which his client — whose real name is Stephanie Clifford — denied the affair ever occurred. That statement itself has become a source of intrigue after Clifford appeared to agree with talk show host Jimmy Kimmel, who compared her signature on it Tuesday night with other examples and offered that they didn’t match.
“That doesn’t look like my signature, does it?” Clifford quipped.
Clifford and her tale of what happened 12 years ago with Trump at a celebrity golf tournament in Nevada has become a point of fascination after The Wall Street Journal reported earlier this month that the president’s longtime personal lawyer arranged a $130,000 payment to Clifford in October 2016 to keep her from publicly discussing the alleged sexual encounter during the 2016 presidential campaign.
The lawyer, Michael Cohen, has denied there was an affair. Neither he nor Clifford has addressed whether she was paid $130,000, and, if so, why.
A publicist for Clifford, Gina Rodriguez, said she canceled Clifford’s scheduled appearance Thursday on “The View” after a previous guest questioned whether she should be making public appearances.
Since news of the six-figure payment broke, Clifford has dominated headlines, given a television interview, changed production companies and promoted strip club appearances with a risque play on Trump’s “Make America Great Again” campaign slogan.
On Kimmel’s show, Clifford ducked most of his questions about the alleged affair by either remaining silent or cracking jokes.
Rodriguez said in a statement that Clifford signed the statement denying an affair with Trump in front of her and the lawyer, Davidson.
Clifford’s allegation, first posted in 2011 by the gossip site The Dirty and then again a month before the election by the website The Smoking Gun, has resurfaced in the news after the Journal revealed Cohen’s role brokering the $130,000 payment.
A week after that report, In Touch magazine printed a 5,000word interview it conducted with Clifford in 2011 but never published after Cohen threatened the tabloid with a lawsuit.
In that interview, Clifford described a single sexual encounter with Trump in 2006 when he was recently married to his third wife, Melania, as well as a subsequent years-long relationship with the reality TV star. The magazine said it corroborated her account with friends and said she passed a lie-detector test