Stormy Daniels says her legal battle against President Donald Trump has had dramatic consequences, such as receiving death threats so frequently that she has had to hire multiple bodyguards, moving hotels in the middle of the night, and taking her daughter out of school and hiring a tutor because a man tried to photograph the 7-year-old.
“We’ve been in a couple car chases,” she told New York Times reporter Amy Chozick in a Vogue magazine profile published Tuesday. “We’ve had people put notes under the door, which means they know what hotel I’m in, which means we’ve had to change hotels in the middle of the night.”
Daniels, who received $130,000 from Trump’s longtime personal attorney and fixer Michael Cohen to prevent her from going public with allegations of a 2006 extramarital affair with Trump, has become a key figure in the growing scandals facing the president.
Cohen’s payments to Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford, and Karen McDougal to silence them during the 2016 presidential election have directly implicated Trump. Last week, he pleaded guilty to violating campaign finance laws at Trump’s direction.
Daniels has been hailed as a hero by Trump opponents but said she is sometimes uncomfortable with the praise.
“It’s funny. It’s actually easier for me to handle the negative stuff,” she said. “It’s not like I turned on Twitter today and was called a whore for the first time.”
But she also revealed a sense of humor about the matter. When Chozick noted that Daniels has been “on the run,” she compared herself and her lawyer Michael Avenatti to Thelma and Louise, the iconic duo from the 1991 movie.
“Oh, I’m a fugitive,” she agrees. “Do you want to be Thelma or Louise, Michael?”
“Who’s driving the car?” asks Avenatti, an avowed adrenaline junkie.
“Yeah, who decided to go off the cliff?” Daniels asks him.
“That was Thelma,” I interject.
“But was she driving?” Avenatti asks us.
“No,” Daniels and I say in unison.
“I want to be Louise,” he says.
“Which one of us gets Brad Pitt?” Daniels says.
Daniels also detailed how her years in the notoriously difficult adult film industry have made her “a strong person” who knows how “to study people.” But she said she objects to being referred to as a “porn star.”
“It wouldn’t be ‘librarian Stormy Daniels,’” she said. “It’s only ‘porn star’ because it’s sensational.”