Stormy Daniels says that Donald Trump’s arrest in New York shows “progress” for women in the United States and its judicial system.
The former president has pleaded not guilty to 34 charges of falsifying business records in relation to $130,000 in hush money paid to Ms Daniels over her claims of a sexual relationship.
Ms Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford, told Piers Morgan that she did not believe there was a double standard in the treatment of Mr Trump, a Republican, and previous Democratic politicians such as John F Kennedy, Bill Clinton and John Edwards.
And she rejected Republican claims that Mr Trump was specifically being targeted by prosecutors.
“That’s one way of looking at it. Another way of looking at it, if you want to look at the positive in this, is that we have made progress in our justice system and in our country and for women,” she told Morgan.
“If those other presidents had done today what they had done, would it be treated the same? Or is it specifically just people screaming this is a vendetta against Trump? Let’s for a moment pretend that it was another president, or Clinton today and this happened…”
Morgan told her he also felt that attitudes to historic sex scandals featuring male Democratic figures would be judged differently in 2023 following the “#MeToo” reckoning.
“That’s what I hope and believe,” added Ms Daniels. “People just trashed Ms Lewinsky and all the way back through history, and I would like to believe if those things happened now it would be different.
“Of course, he (Trump) is going to spin it and the Republicans and the MAGA people are going to spin it and say it like it is just him, but is it really?
“I am hoping it is just us moving forward and you can apply that to how racial crimes are handled. Hopefully, it is a sign of progress as a whole.”
And she added: “In this case, it is a sex scandal and a woman speaking out against someone in power and they want to say it is just because it is him (Trump). I would like to think it doesn’t matter that it is him, he just happens to be the one now.”
