Porn star Stormy Daniels confronted a dour Donald Trump with salacious details about their alleged tryst in Manhattan court Tuesday — delivering testimony that was so tawdry, even the judge warned her to tone it down.
Jurors in the hush money trial struggled to keep a straight face as the adult film actress — talking fast and gesturing wildly — described spanking the presumptive 2024 Republican presidential nominee with a rolled up magazine that had his face on the cover.
“I took it and turned him around and swatted him,” Daniels, 45, testified, causing at least two jurors to break into a smirk and Trump, 77, to reportedly mouth “That’s bullsh-t” to his lawyers.
Trump appeared to be silently steaming at the defense table, shaking his head when Daniels — born Stephanie Clifford — claimed he’d told her not to “worry” about his wife Melania because the two didn’t “even sleep in the same room.”
Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan later pulled aside Trump’s lawyer Todd Blanche — saying the ex-president was “cursing audibly” and “shaking his head visually,” and warning he needed to quit it or be held in contempt for possibly influencing the jury.
“You need to speak to him. I won’t tolerate that,” Merchan said during a sidebar at the judge’s bench.
Trump’s attorneys raised objections throughout the graphic testimony, with Merchan ruling in their favor several times, including as Daniels gave bawdy details about their alleged sex act.
The judge also scolded prosecutors that the “degree of detail” was “unnecessary” when Daniels described the tiles on the floor of the hotel where she said she’d slept with Trump in 2006 and what subjects the two of them had discussed.
But Merchan sided with prosecutors that Daniels should be allowed to tell jurors about her alleged one-night stand with the real estate mogul — in order to establish her “credibility.”
During testimony that seemed out of “The Jerry Springer Show,” Daniels testified that she had “brief” sex with Trump in the “missionary position.”
That drew an objection from Trump’s lawyers, which was sustained as the judge had ruled getting into specifics about the sexual act would be verboten.
Jurors did not visibly react as Daniels — wearing a hooded black kimono over a tight black shirt, with glasses sitting atop her messy coiffed blond hair — detailed the encounter, including how Trump was not wearing a condom, which she said concerned her, as male porn actors always did.
Daniels appeared to glance in Trump’s direction at times, though the two didn’t seem to lock eyes.
She recalled meeting Trump in 2006 in Lake Tahoe during a celebrity golf tournament, testifying that the two bantered and she was eventually invited for dinner with him, though they never wound up eating together.
Daniels testified about going to Trump’s luxurious hotel suite only to find him in Hugh Hefner-like “silk or satin” pajamas, before he politely changed at her request.
He showed her a few pictures, to which she responded, “Oh, what about your wife?” Daniels recounted, referring to Melania, who had married Trump the year prior.
“He said, don’t worry about that, we don’t even sleep in the the same room,” Daniels testified as she scrunched her nose, prompting Trump to shake his head in disgust.
Eventually, Daniels told jurors, “I’d pretty much had enough with his arrogance.”
She then told Trump that “someone should spank you.”
“Where did you swat him?” prosecutor Susan Hoffinger asked her.
“Right on the butt,” Daniels replied.
Daniels said she didn’t tell her then-boyfriend and former publicist about the sexual encounter because she was “ashamed.”
She also claimed Trump made sexual advances toward her the next year after inviting her to the Miss America beauty pageant in Los Angeles, but she told him she was on her period to get out of it.
Blanche, Trump’s lawyer, requested a mistrial over Daniels’ “prejudicial” and vivid testimony, arguing it could influence the jury against Trump.
Merchan denied the bid, but acknowledged “there are some things that would’ve been better left unsaid.”
Still, Merchan said in fairness to prosecutors, “I believe the witness was very difficult to control.”
Before her testimony resumed after the lunch break, prosecutors took Daniels into a side room, where they implored her to stay “focused” before she got back on the witness stand. She spoke more slowly after that, and alternated looking at prosecutors and jurors.
Trump’s attorney Susan Necheles, during cross-examination, quickly got Daniels to admit that she hates Trump and wants “him to be held accountable.”
Necheles grilled Daniels about tweeting that Trump was an “orange turd” in Nov. 9, 2022 — but Daniels fired back she made the comment because “he made fun of me first.”
During the combative inquiry, in which Daniels appeared to grew increasingly frustrated, Necheles pressed her on making money off of her claims about her hook-up with Trump.
“You have been making money by claiming you had sex with Donald Trump for more than a decade, right?” Necheles said at one point.
“I have been making money by telling my story,” Daniels shot back.
Trump, joined in court by son Eric — who sounded off on X about the case during the breaks — reclined in his seat between his two other lawyers during the cross-examination.
Earlier, Daniels described how Trump and his former lawyer and “fixer” Michael Cohen wanted to buy her story in a “catch-and-kill” scheme to keep her quiet about their alleged tryst in October 2016, after the infamous “Access Hollywood” tape was leaked.
“They were interested in paying for the story,” she recalled of her manager approaching her about their proposal.
Daniels testified that it seemed like the “best thing” to happen “because then I’d be safe and the story wouldn’t come out.”
Trump is charged with having Cohen pay off Daniels and then attempting to cover it up in a bid to “corrupt” the 2016 election. He has denied wrongdoing and blasted the case as politically motivated.
Daniels, who is set to continue testifying Thursday, told jurors how she’d been considering selling her story to media outlets before the payoff.
“My motivation wasn’t money,” she insisted on the stand. “It was to get the story out.”
On his way out of court, Trump told reporters the case against him was “totally falling apart.”
“They have nothing on books and records and even something that should bare very little relationship to the case,” he said of prosecutors. “This whole case is a disaster.”
