Trump ‘in love’

Imagine if Nawaz Sharif as prime minister or Asif Zardari as president were to be exposed by women appearing on national television to talk of sexy details of their alleged affairs with the highest in the land. Unthinkable, would you not say? While our TV talk show hosts can openly accuse the two gentlemen of big-time corruption, but holding forth on their immorality, read sex lives, is a taboo subject, as yet unexplored by anyone in the media. It’s not the done thing. Period. But American media is a different animal!

Television viewers last week were ‘entertained’ by two women professing to have had intimate relations with Trump in 2006.

Karen McDougal, who was Playboy’s playmate of the year in 1998, told CNN, “Through the ten months they were seeing each other, Trump always told me he loved me.” During her two-hour interview, Karen was convinced that Trump loved her. She said she too loved Trump. The net result: both were smitten by each other during their steamy love affair. When reminded by her interviewer that Trump was simultaneously having intimate relations with a porn star named Stormy Daniels, McDougal said she thought she was Trump’s only girlfriend at the time, but now she knows that Trump was two-timing her, apart from cheating on his wife, Melania, who had just given birth to their son.

Enter Stormy Daniels. In a front-page New York Times news story headlined: “Stormy Daniels, Porn Star Suing Trump, Is Known for Her Ambition: ‘She’s the Boss,” NYT praised porn star for being a woman in charge who could even bring down Donald Trump’s presidency: “To many in the capital, Ms Clifford, 39, has become an unexpected force. It is she, some in Washington now joke, and not the special counsel, Robert S Mueller III, who could topple Mr Trump.” Oddly enough, writes NYT, unlike most perceived presidential adversaries, about whom President Trump is rarely shy, Stormy Daniels has not been the subject of his single tweet. Trump appears to be scared of this woman.

Last Sunday Stormy Daniels sat for a much hyped ‘60 Minute’ interview on CBS television. Some 22.6 million viewers tuned in to the interview with Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford. During the interview, Daniels spoke publicly for the first time about her alleged 2006 tryst with Trump. Giving salacious details of their first encounter, Daniels said she did not find Trump attractive. But she says she scolded Trump when he began boasting about his success by showing a cover of a magazine featuring Trump. “Someone should take that magazine and spank you with it,” she told Trump. She told him to “turn around, drop ‘em.’ So he turned around and pulled his pants down a little — I just gave him a couple swats.” The joke going around in Washington, DC, is that Trump who gives insulting nicknames to his adversaries has now a new name courtesy Stormy Daniels.

Trump’s new name is “Spanky!”

In 2011, Stormy agreed to sell her story of her affair with Trump to a magazine, but the story never ran. Trump’s attorney threatened to sue the publication. Daniels was also threatened. She was approached by a man in a Las Vegas parking lot. “A guy walked up on me and said to me, ‘Leave Trump alone. Forget the story. And then he leaned around and looked at my daughter and said, ‘That’s a beautiful little girl. It’d be a shame if something happened to her mom.’” Trump through his spokesman has denied these allegations. He tweeted the next day “So much Fake News. Never been more voluminous or more inaccurate. But through it all, our country is doing great!”

No, the US is not doing “great.” Trump’s sexual affairs have taken over the national discourse, highlighting the vulgarity and obscenity of the man leading the ‘free world.’ Welcome to new America!

Published in The Express Tribune, April 1^st, 2018.

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