May 10, 2024

Vol. 13, No. 2183

SEX, LIES, NO VIDEO: One of Donald Trump’s lawyers did her best yesterday to undermine the credibility of porn star Stormy Daniels in the former president’s trial on charges of falsifying business records to help win the 2016 election.

  Attorney Susan Necheles even got down to whether Daniels actually had dinner with Trump the night in 2006 that she said the two had sex in Trump’s Lake Tahoe hotel suite. Daniels had previously said she had gone to see Trump “for dinner” in what she said was a colloquial expression for the hour, not an actual meal. Necheles seemed to think that the absence of food was important to Daniels’ credibility.

  The defense spent more time with Daniels than the prosecution, an odd choice because Daniels knows nothing about the alleged crime itself, falsification of business records to cover her hush money payment. She did say that her story had more value close to the election when she was paid.

  Trying to make out Daniels as a sleazy porn actress who made 150 dirty movies and someone who makes up stories, Necheles had the following exchanges with the witness.  Necheles bruised her own knuckles.

Necheles: You have a lot of experience of making phony stories about sex appear to be real.

Daniels: Wow. That’s not how I would put it. The sex is real just like what happened to me in that room. The sex is real. That’s why it’s pornography.

Necheles: Now you have a story about having sex with Donald Trump.

Daniels: If that story was untrue I would have written it to be a lot better.

  In an important nugget for the prosecution, former Trump aide Madeleine Westerhout testified that Trump paid close attention to business and personal checks he signed even while in The White House. She spoke of a nearly $7,000 bill for a golf club membership that she asked Trump whether he wanted to pay, and he said “pay.”.

  The prosecution was effectively asking the jury to consider whether Trump would scrutinize a $6,000 check but asked no questions about the multiple checks for $35,000 paid to Michael Cohen.

BAD REVIEW: Days before the premiere of his new film “The Seed of the Sacred Fig” at the Cannes Film Festival, Iranian director Mohammad Rasoulof has been sentenced to a flogging and eight years in prison on charges of endangering national security. He’s also subject to a fine and confiscation of his property.

 At 52, Rasoulof is one of Iran’s leading directors. He had been under pressure by state authorities to pull his movie from Cannes. Rasoulof’s human rights lawyer said the chief reasons given for the punishment were his client’s public statements, and his continuing to make films and documentaries which the court described as “examples of collusion with the intention of committing a crime against the country’s security”. Among the accusations were that some of the actresses in “Fig” were not properly covered with a hijab.

THE OBIT PAGE: Pete McCloskey, the ruggedly handsome Korean war hero and former California congressman who rebelled against the Vietnam war and tried to knock Richard Nixon out of contention for re-election in 1972, died at home this week west of Sacramento at age 96. 

  McCloskey represented an area south of San Francisco for 15 years, ending in 1983. As a Marine in the Korean war, he was wounded leading a rifle platoon in a bayonet charge. He was awarded the Navy Cross, two Purple Hearts, and the Silver Star.

  Tens of thousands of Americans and Vietnamese were dying in a war McCloskey opposed. After visiting Vietnam three times, he described the war’s “cruelty and futility.” He decried the use of cluster bombs that killed or maimed anyone within 25 acres, and napalm strikes that burned people at 2,000 degrees. Tens of thousands of Vietnamese and Americans were dying in a war that could not be won, he argued.

  “To talk, as the president does, of winding down the war while he is expanding the use of air power is a deliberate deception,” McCloskey said. “I’ll probably get licked, but I can’t keep quiet.” 

THE SPIN RACK: Police early today entered a pro-Palestinian encampment at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and arrested about a dozen demonstrators. — Two backcountry skiers were killed and another rescued yesterday after an avalanche in the mountains area near Salt Lake City. The men were ages 23 and 32. —With artificial intelligence developing at breakneck speed and the November election on the horizon, the three major social media companies, TikTok, Meta, and YouTube have outlined plans to ensure that their billions of users can differentiate between content generated by machines and humans. — Donald Trump’s youngest son, Barron, who’s just graduating from high school, will join other family members as a Florida delegate to the Republican National Convention. Also to be delegates: Eric Trump, Donald Trump Jr. and his fiancée Kimberly Guilfoyle, and Tiffany Trump and her husband, Michael Boulos. — Since the Supreme Court threw power over abortion Law to the states, fewer new doctors are seeking residency positions in states that have banned or severely restricted the procedure, according to the Association of American Medical Colleges

BELOW THE FOLD:  The school board in Virginia’s Shenandoah County has voted to restore the names of two schools previously named for Confederate leaders, four years after those names had been removed.

  The schools will now be named after Confederate Generals “Stonewall” Jackson, Robert E. Lee, and Turner Ashby.“Remember that Stonewall Jackson and others fighting on the side of the Confederacy in this area were intent on protecting the land, the buildings and the lives of those under attack,” said one woman arguing for the change. “Preservation is the focus of those wishing to restore the names.”

  Yes, preservation of the lie that the war was not about maintaining slavery.

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