(Luis Cornelio, Headline USA) Real Time host Bill Maher has spotlighted former porn star Stormy Daniels’s statements from 2018, which directly contradict her recent testimony in the Manhattan criminal trial involving former President Donald Trump.
During Friday’s episode of his HBO show, Maher labeled Daniels a “bad witness” for dismissing her previous claim that her alleged brief affair with Trump wasn’t linked to the #MeToo Movement.
“You say it’s not a MeToo case,” Maher reminded Daniels during the 2018 interview.
“It is not a MeToo case,” Daniels concurred, adding, “I mean, I wasn’t assaulted. I wasn’t attacked or raped or coerced or blackmailed.”
NEW: Show host Bill Maher calls out Stormy Daniels for lying by playing an interview he had with her in 2018
Maher noted that Daniels’ comments from 2018 were completely different than what she said in the New York trial last week.
In 2018, Daniels told Maher that she was *not*… pic.twitter.com/qCBF99QOEB
— Collin Rugg (@CollinRugg) May 12, 2024
In the same interview, Daniels appeared to criticize the MeToo movement, alleging that they attempted to “shove her” into furthering their agenda.
“First of all, I didn’t want any part of that because it is not the truth and I’m not a victim in that regard,” she asserted.
Despite these earlier assurances, Daniels has now changed her stance, six years later and 18 years after her alleged encounter with Trump, which remains unproven.
“That’s not what she’s saying now,” Maher pointed out on Friday, replaying the 2018 interview. “She was talking about, ‘He was bigger and blocking the way.’ It’s all the MeToo buzzwords. She said, ‘There was a power imbalance of power, for source.’”
Echoing Daniels’s recent claims, Maher noted that she recounted her hands “were shaking” and that she “blacked out.”
A seemingly skeptical Maher questioned, “‘Blacked out?’ She’s a porn star.”
Daniels first gained national recognition in 2018 when she, alongside her then-attorney Michael Avenatti, alleged that former Trump attorney Michael Cohen paid her $130,000 to keep quiet about her anti-Trump claims.
Notably, Avenatti has since disputed some of Daniels’ assertions from that time. He is currently serving federal time for, among other charges, embezzling funds from his clients, including Daniels.
The $130,000 payment lies at the center of a criminal trial in Manhattan led by the leftist District Attorney Alvin Bragg.
Bragg – a former federal prosecutor who campaigned on the promise to indict Trump if elected in 2021 – alleges that Trump ordered the payment and falsified business records to do so.
Bragg is pursuing these charges based on a widely criticized legal theory that his predecessor refused to pursue. Similarly, federal prosecutors also declined to bring charges against Trump.
The former president vehemently denies these allegations and has criticized Bragg as part of a broader legal campaign aimed at preventing his potential return to the White House in 2024.
