By Hook or By Crook
A Black Eyed Review of Stormy the Documentary
Stormy Daniels for Time Magazine
CONTENT WARNING* THIS ESSAY CONTAINS MENTION OF SEXUAL ASSAULT AND RAPE. READER/LISTENERS PLEASE BE ADVISED AND PLEASE CARE FOR YOURSELF AND SKIP THIS ONE IF YOU NEED.
Find an audio reading of this Black Eyed story above.
Nearly forty years ago, at a news conference on May 27th in 1987, Moral Majority segregationist racist sexist Christian nationalist leader, Jerry Falwell Sr, said this about the Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker, PTL Club & Heritage USA scandal:
He needs to come clean about Jessica Hahn and repent. He needs to acknowledge these homosexual problems dating back from 1956 to the present time as they’ve been alleged to us. And he needs to return the millions of dollars…
Jim Bakker called me on the phone Sunday night, May 17. Two months had passed. He said, ‘Jerry, I want to ask you to hand the ministry back to me, as you promised in Palm Springs on March 17.’
I said, ‘Jim,’ assuming it was being taped or someone might be listening in and it was for the record, I said, ‘Jim, here’ what I want to say to you: when I was there March 17 and confronted you with the story I heard that you had raped some girl in a Florida hotel, you advised me in a private meeting that you did not rape anyone but that in fact your wife at that time was in love with another man, and you were trying to win her love back and you were hoping to make her jealous, and that John Wesley Fletcher, per your request, brought a 19 year-old girl down from New York named Jessica Hahn.
You told me that when the door was closed and when you and Jessica were in that room that if anyone was raped – she raped you. She began to undress you. You were at that moment temporarily impotent, so obviously you could not have intercourse with her. You told me 15 minutes later you were in the shower saying – weeping and saying to God, ‘Oh God, I’ve been with a whore.’
Jim, since that time, I have learned that not only did you have sex with Jessica Hahn, so did your associate, John Wesley Fletcher, and a third person, a member of your team, went in with the intention of having sex with her and she was prostrate and on the floor and unable to respond and could not accommodate him.
And I learned, Jim, that two weeks after in Hawaii, you went to that person and asked the question, ‘Did you get her too?” And Jim, that made my blood boil.
Later, I have sat across the table from men who have told me of their – of your homosexual advances. And since then, of course, I have learned of the fiscal irregularities. And Jim, I must tell you that I would be doing a disservice to God—as much as I love you and care for you, and will pray for you—I would be doing a disservice to God and to the church at large to allow you to come back here now or ever.
Childhood Pictures of Stormy Daniels. Second clockwise is a photo of her as a child with her mother
Just over thirty years later, another leading Evangelical pastor and Fox News contributor, Robert Jeffress, responds to a breaking news sex scandal: Stormy Daniels' relationship with "Christian" leader Donald Trump. In particular he responds to the allegations that in the wake of the news, evangelical Trump supporters are being hypocrites:
Fox: What do you make of evangelicals being called hypocrites in the wake of these allegations?
Jeffress: Well, it’s absolutely ludicrous. Look, evangelicals know they’re not compromising their beliefs in order to support this great president. Let’s be clear: evangelicals still believe in the commandment, ‘Thou shalt not have sex with a porn star.’
He and the interviewer chuckle.
Jeffress continues: We’re still agreed on that. However whether this president violated that commandment or not is totally irrelevant to our support of him for two quick reasons: first of all evangelicals knew that they weren’t voting for an altar boy when they voted for Donald Trump.
Fox: Right.
Jeffress: We supported him because of his policies and strong leadership… But secondly, Sandra—this is more important—perhaps, evangelicals understand the concept of sin and forgiveness. Look we are all sinners. We all need forgiveness. That forgiveness is available through Christ for anyone who asks. And whether the president needs that forgiveness for this particular allegation—whether he has asked of it—is between him, his family, and his God…
I believe anything that Stormy Daniels has will not be enough to turn Red Republicans into Blue Democrats. This is about policies and issues.
from Peacock’s documentary Stormy
A year prior to the breaking scandal, during an interview at the Family Leadership Summit in Iowa, Donald Trump was asked: You used the word ‘christian.” Have you asked God for forgiveness?
Trump: That’s a tough question. I don’t think in term… I’m a religious person, shockingly cause people are so shocked when they find this out. I’m Protestant. I’m Presbyterian. I go to church and I love God and I love my church…
Trump then goes on and on about his pastor, Vincent Norman Peale and his sermons on positive thinking. The interviewer cuts in:
But have you ever asked God for forgiveness?
The audience chuckles. Trump does not.
Trump: I’m not sure I have. I just go and try and do a better job from there. I don’t think so. If I do something wrong I just try to make it right. I don’t bring God into that picture.
He goes on to say that he does take communion and its a form of forgiveness because it makes him feel cleansed.
Stephanie Clifford (Stormy Daniels) for Vanity Fair
After that interview, in 2016, Trump was a guest on Late Night with Stephen Colbert and Colbert asked him the same question:
Colbert: I also want to apologize to you because I said a few things about you over the years that are, you know, in polite company perhaps are unforgivable.
Trump: Almost…
Colbert: Almost unforgivable.
Trump: —and some nice things.
Colbert: I don’t remember saying anything nice.
The audience roars with laughter. Trump thinks they’re laughing with him. They are not.
Colbert: But anyway, I hope you’ll accept my apology.
Trump accepts the apology with a nod.
Colbert continues: And I just want to give you the opportunity – is there anybody you’d like to apologize to yourself?
Trump: Ah..no.
The audience laughs that awkward laugh we all do when we are shocked but not surprised, appalled but flabbergasted by something we’ve just seen or heard. Trump does not try to redeem himself.
Colbert: No?
The audience quiets, relieved that Colbert is saying what everyone there is thinking.
Trump: Maybe the audience? How about the audience.
There’s a wink-wink in his voice, then he says: No…no apologies.
Stormy Daniels instant New York Times’ bestselling memoir
In another 2016 interview after his Iowa appearance at the Family Leadership Summit, CNN’s Jake Tapper asks him:
One of the potential attack lines has to do with an answer that you gave months ago when you said that you’d never asked God for forgiveness. Do you regret making that remark?
Trump: No I have a great relationship with God. I have a great relationship with evangelicals, in fact nationwide, I’m up by a lot. I’m leading everybody. But I like to be good. I don’t like to have to ask for forgiveness and I am good. I don’t do a lot of things that are bad. I try to do nothing that’s bad. I live a very different life than probably a lot of people would think and I have a very great relationship with God and I have a very great relationship with evangelicals that’s why I’m doing so well with Iowa.
Tapper: The life that you have now, when you say that you try to do good, that sounds very different from decades of tabloid media coverage in New York in which some of your wilder escapades were…
Trump: Well, I’m talking about over the last number of years. When you know, I’m leading a very good life. I try to lead a good life and I have. Frankly, the reason I’m doing so well in Iowa and leading the polls—including the CNN poll…
And Trump descends into a rant comparing his poll numbers to Ted Cruz’s, deflecting the original question because he doesn’t give a shit about God’s forgiveness.
Or, it could be he knows God’s forgiveness is, to use one of his favorite words, a hoax because the asking of forgiveness—ie repentance—that Falwell wanted to witness in Jim Bakker didn’t include a 19-year-old, Christian virgin girl named Jessica Hahn whom he and one his employees raped, and another attempted to rape. The forgiveness that Pastor Jeffress and Fox News freely and consistently extended to Trump was never extended to the countless women he bullied and maligned, or to the countless ones he bragged about assaulting by kissing them and then grabbing them by their vaginas without consent. It certainly didn’t include E. Jean Carroll whom a judge definitively declared Trump raped.
And let’s talk about consent.
In the Peacock documentary Stormy, Stormy Daniels waves consent away in regards to her encounter with Trump because that’s what many survivors of childhood sexual abuse do: relent, taking the higher road as a way of having some control over an abuser. It’s a familiar kind of disassociation common among sex workers.
After Trump cornered her in his hotel suite and pushed her onto the bed, she said, “Just give me a second.”
As an adult who survived sexual abuse and misconduct as a child, I know all about that second: a second to renegotiate what is happening to you even if you can’t stop what is happening to your body.
Of course, that’s just my take. But here’s Daniels’ take:
I don't remember how I got on the bed, and then the next thing I know, he was humping away and telling me how great I was… It was awful. But I didn't say ‘No.’
from Peacock’s documentary Stormy
In a 2018, 60-Minutes interview, Daniels said: “This is not a ‘MeToo… Well, you put yourself in a bad situation and bad things happen, so you deserve this.”
And Falwell/Bakker/Jeffress/Trump and the evangelical patriarchy agrees. And so do millions and millions of the rest of us because:
Sarah’s body will always be more pure than Hagar’s
Bathsheba will always be an exhibitionist who caused David to stumble
Tamar will always be a sneaky, conniving temptress
Jezebel and Delilah will always be femme fatales
Esther will always be lucky to have been picked
Vashti will always be disobedient
Rahab will always be a happy hooker with a heart of gold
Gomer will always be an unrepentant, heartless harlot
The Unnamed Dismembered Concubine will always be forgotten
The Samaritan woman will always be a whore by her own making
The Unnamed adulteress woman, whom Jesus saved from a stoning, will always be a home-wrecker who was caught in a bed with a man she willingly chose.
And Mary – Mother Mary will always be blessed. Even if the whole ordeal was completely done before she could even give her consent. It’s fine. She sang a song thanking God for using her body.
Too far?
But these are the stories we’ve been told. Stories men wrote about these women. And we can trust them, right? We can trust the men to tell their stories because the writers and the scribes and translators wouldn’t lie.
I hope you can feel the heat side eye 😒.
It is hard to press the like button. But if it was a truth button, if it was a “you revealed it” button, YES! 🔥. I hope the right people feel the heat!
Friend, you BROUGHT IT! With receipts!
I am sick to death of people not believing women! I say good for Stormy Daniels and Monica Lewinsky and every other woman who has figured out how to move on with her life after being assaulted and humiliated by men in power. The way we, societally, have treated them is abhorrent and they deserve better.