The President and the Porn Star: A Story’s Slow Rise Above the Din

WASHINGTON — If a porn-tinged hush payment falls in a news din already torqued to maximum volume, does it make a sound?

It seems to be getting there, despite North Korean intervention. And this much is becoming clear: There is no hiding from the tale of the president and the porn star.

Stephanie Clifford has more than a few of those, actually (although an internet search for the particulars is not recommended). She also has leverage. Less clear, at this point, is how much — and how much President Donald Trump will be made to answer for it.

Comeuppance is a complicated subject in this presidency. Here is a leader who crowds out scandal with more scandal, who tends to insist that the buck stops elsewhere, who boasted of sexual assault on tape and got to the White House anyway. It is not quite that nothing sticks to Trump; it is that so much sticks that nothing stays visible for long.

For nearly two months, since The Wall Street Journal first revealed an October 2016 payment to Clifford (known on screen as Stormy Daniels), the story had subsisted on the margins of national consciousness — a consequence, it seemed, of both the daily Trumpian overload and a wide-scale confusion over what, exactly, the whole affair amounted to. Was it tragedy or farce? Serious or sideshow? Was it all of them, leaving us paralyzed by the choice?

“You almost could float two irreconcilable theories: It’s either too outrageous to be covered, or there’s just too much else that’s important,” said Nancy Gibbs, former editor-in-chief of Time magazine, leaning toward the second option. Either way, she noted, the episode had not blossomed into a mega-scandal.

The facts are these: Clifford was paid $130,000 just before the 2016 election in what she calls a “hush agreement” to conceal a sexual relationship that began in 2006. The White House has denied the affair. Trump’s lawyer, Michael D. Cohen, has acknowledged making the payment himself. Last week, Cohen secretly obtained a restraining order to prevent Clifford, who claimed that the agreement had been breached, from speaking publicly about Trump.

Despite the unrelated tumult of this week — tariff policy, staff turnover, nuclear intrigue — the ordeal has begun showing signs of an elusive longevity, coaxed by a lawsuit filed by her lawyer and an acknowledgment from Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the White House press secretary, that Trump’s side had pursued an arbitration proceeding against Clifford. The White House briefing room has been consumed by repeated questions about the payment. “Look, the president has addressed these directly,” Sanders told reporters. (Trump has not addressed this.)

Republican lawmakers have been left to grimace and nod in the halls of the Capitol, mostly begging off questions about Trump’s pre-presidency leisure activities. “This is no country for creepy old men,” Sen. John Kennedy, R-La., told reporters, declaring his opposition to sexual harassment generally but declining to comment on Clifford.

At one point Wednesday, CNN enshrined the times with a “We Didn’t Start the Fire"-style accounting across the bottom of the frame: “Cohn Resigns, Markets Rattled, Porn Star Lawsuit.”

The moment touches several crosscurrents of the Trump age: an administration defined largely by its chaos; the #MeToo movement; and a news media still grappling, nearly three years after Trump declared his candidacy, with how to cover his excess of excesses.

“Scandals run on shame. Trump is completely exempt from any shame,” Murphy said. “So instead of talking about the crime, we just score-keep.”

Whether the scandal breaks through broadly and whether it concerns the most loyal Trump voters are different questions.

In recent days, the president’s supporters have set off on occasionally contradictory defenses: that the reports are nonsense (Trump’s lawyer has confirmed the pre-election payment); that even if they are true, no one made a fuss over Bill Clinton’s relationship with Monica Lewinsky (Clinton was impeached); that it is not as if Trump stands accused of forcing himself on Clifford. (Allegations of groping and harassment trailed Trump’s campaign and, as Sanders noted while denying those allegations Wednesday, “the American people were aware of this and voted for the president.”)

Some have stood up for the president by changing the subject, pivoting to the Republican tax overhaul or the raft of policy victories for evangelical voters. “Evangelicals knew they were not electing an altar boy,” said Robert Jeffress, pastor of First Baptist Church of Dallas and a presidential adviser. “Forgiveness is part of the evangelical gospel message. We are all sinners.”

He clarified that Trump had denied the accusations and did not require forgiveness anyway. Then came another addendum. “Let me be clear,” the pastor said. “Evangelicals still believe no one should be having sex with a porn star. We have not changed our beliefs on that.”

John Dean, the former White House counsel and Watergate supporting player who has become a frequent author, wondered if Trump’s tenure — with so many maelstroms that a porn star payout can seem tangential — might compel historians to re-evaluate certain predecessors. “Richard Nixon’s presidency is going to be reappraised, and he’s going to be ranked a lot higher,” Dean said. “A lot of presidents will.”

Others have reached for history, or at least historical conspiracy theory, to dull the shock value. “Kennedy had orgies,” said Wayne Allyn Root, a Trump-boosting radio host who has spent time in the president’s company at Mar-a-Lago, appearing to allude to reports of an unverified FBI tip about Kennedy and his brothers. “But he was a damn good president. My point is, did the orgies matter?”

Root steered his case toward a perhaps inevitable conclusion: “Now, Donald Trump is not having orgies in the White House, is he?”