A relative of mine that has long left reality for the MAGAverse asked me “But what was Trump supposed to do when Stormy decided to lie and blackmail him?” in what seemed like a good faith attempt to defend Trump. But the more I think about it, the more is looks like taking Trump at his word makes him look worse.
To believe the blackmail version of the story is to believe that Trump is so stupid that when faced with a porn star demanding money he:
- He paid the blackmailer off rather than go to the police. Trump claims that he didn’t know Stormy-never met her and was being blackmailed by her. Did he go to the police to report an attempt to blackmail him? No. Rather than going to police he gathered a team to “take care of it” and did so in the most incompetent was imaginable.
- Did not stand up to a pornstar with no credible story. Blackmail is a crime but neither infidelity nor being blackmailed are crimes. When faced with a person who would have credibility issues, committing a crime, he turned tail and ran rather than stand up for himself. If he were innocent and there was no evidence he would have nothing to worry about. Any journalists looking into the story would be unable to corroborate the woman’s story showing him to be innocent.
- Required him to commit crimes to hide his not a crime. Trump claimed it was a normal NDA and not hush money. While it would be nice to hear some argument that there is a difference, it doesn’t actually matter. Why would you disguise the payments? Trump paying someone out of his personal account to sign an NDA would not be a crime unless it were to conceal a crime. By choosing to pay Cohen back via campaign money, he was committing crimes to hide something that wasn’t actually a crime.
- He did it in way that cost him more than double and increased the number of people who knew of the blackmail. Why would a normal NDA involve so many entities? Every single new person brought into this scheme would be a person who could find out about this scandal. He claims he was trying to keep a salacious story from hurting his reputation and he involves the guy who runs a supermarket tabloid. Besides increasing risk of being exposed it increased the cost of the scheme. Trump’s claim that he was the victim makes no sense here. He did nothing to hide this was happening from his inner circle.
Trump’s version of events paints a picture of Trump as stupid, easily manipulated and easily scared. It is a version of Trump that panics and acts in erratic and reckless ways when accused. So incompetent that in his panic he creates a mess of criminal antics around him. This is a man that was afraid of a porn star and needed his team to defend him. From her.
This is bending over backwards to put Trump’s argument in the best possible light and it makes him look bad.
@NotKarlPopper furthermore, in this version of the story trump is still just as guilty of the charges he was convicted of, just that the crime being covered up (by him) would be extortion (by her). He's still doing all of the falsifying and covering up (which is what he was convicted of)