Trump 'Tried to Cover Up' Extramarital Affair With a Porn Star. But Did It Matter to His Supporters?

The cover-up is always worse than the crime, and the saying turned true for Donald Trump. Trump has become the first US president — former or current — to be charged with a crime. And in the end, the case isn’t about the tawdry details of the hush-money payments. It isn’t about the porn actor — Stormy Daniels — or Trump’s acrimonious relationship with his onetime lawyer-turned-government witness, Michael Cohen.

It’s about a presidential candidate using his money and influence to silence potentially damaging stories that might make voters choose another candidate, particularly as Trump’s reputation was suffering at the time from comments he’d made about women, as explained by the Associated Press.

First, Let’s Understand What Had Happened Between Trump and Stormy Daniels

At a key point in the 2016 presidential campaign, intense negotiations were underway behind the scenes to prevent the leak of embarrassing, and potentially crippling, allegations against Trump, as per an AFP report.

In August, The National Enquirer, an American tabloid whose owner is a Trump ally, paid $150,000 to a model, Karen McDougal, for the rights to her story about a relationship she claimed to have had with the billionaire. The objective was to prevent any word of her allegations from getting out — a technique known as “catch and kill” in the United States, where confidentiality clauses are common.

Meantime, Stephanie Clifford — a pornographic film actress who goes by the name of Stormy Daniels — was also trying to cash in on a relationship she says she had with Trump in 2006, a year after he married his current wife, Melania.

The tabloid put her in touch with Michael Cohen, one of Trump’s personal lawyers. Late in the 2016 campaign, Cohen, whose fierce loyalty to Trump had earned him the nickname of “the Pitbull,” arranged a payment of $130,000 to Daniels in exchange for her pledge of confidentiality. The payment was revealed by the Wall Street Journal in January 2018. Cohen and Trump dismissed the report, and the then-president repeatedly denied having had a relationship with Daniels.

But Should He Have…Denied It?

The key question here lies in whether Trump’s denial of the ‘affair’ would have even mattered to his key supporter base. In a Morning Consult/Politico poll conducted in the two days following CBS’ 2018 “60 Minutes” interview with Daniels, in which she revealed new details about the alleged 2006 affair, by a roughly 5-to-1 margin, voters had believed Trump had an affair with Daniels before he became president, but that the figures did not swing public opinion of him too much.

56 percent of respondents said Trump had an affair with the adult film actress. Only 9% of those polled said he did not.

Thirty-five percent were doubtful whether the affair occurred, with 54 percent of Republican voters saying they didn’t know or had no opinion, as per this Morning Consult report.

While Trump’s popularity rating among his self-identified supporters fell by 3 percentage points in that 2018 poll, he had still received approval from 84 percent of those polled, with 14 percent criticising his job performance in office. Extramarital affairs are ethically wrong, according to 76% of Trump voters, the report said.

However, the report pointed out that Americans have never placed much faith in Trump’s honesty or morality. According to a Morning Consult/Politico poll conducted in October 2016, 58 percent of respondents thought he wasn’t moral, and 52 percent said he wasn’t honest. According to the current poll, 55% believe Trump is not moral, and 53% believe he is not honest.

And that ties in with the most important thing for Trump voters – his agenda. A USA TODAY/Suffolk University Poll in December 2016 after the Daniels story came out also painted the same picture. While they did not believe his denial of the adult film star’s claim of her 2006 affair with Trump (the same year Melania Trump gave birth to their son Barron), it did not temper their ‘sky-high support for him,’ said the report.

According to the report, men also expressed a lack of shock over the businessman having an affair. “We know he’s no angel, and he didn’t become a multi-billionaire because he’s a nice guy. I got over the shock of presidential affairs after Kennedy and Clinton,” John Moon of Kamas, Utah told USA Today in 2016.

Now, Will Trump’s Trial Dent His 2024 Run?

Trials don’t let candidates put their best foot forward, however, it is not forbidden for them to run or be elected. Read more on this Now, as that is in the clear, let’s talk about whether this historic trial could dent his prospects.

According to an Associated Press report, for now it remains unclear how the development will resonate with voters. Polls show Trump remains the undisputed frontrunner for the Republican nomination, and his standing has not faltered, even amid widespread reporting on the then expected charges.

Trump’s campaign and his allies have long hoped an indictment would serve as a rallying cry for his supporters, angering his “Make America Great Again” base, drawing small dollar donations and forcing Trump’s potential rivals into the awkward position of having to defend him — or risk their wrath.

Indeed, Trump’s campaign began fundraising off the news almost immediately after it broke, firing an email to supporters with the all-caps subject line “BREAKING: PRESIDENT TRUMP INDICTED.”

At Trump’s first rally of the 2024 campaign, held in Texas over the weekend, supporters expressed widespread disgust with the investigation and insisted the case wouldn’t affect his chances.

“It’s a joke,” Patti Murphy, 63, of Fort Worth told the Associated Press. “It’s just another way of them trying to get him out of their way.”

Others in the crowd said their support for Trump had been waning since he left the White House, but the looming indictment made them more likely to support him in 2024 because they felt his anger had been justified.

At the same time, there is little chance a criminal trial will help Trump in a general election, particularly with independents, who have grown tired of his constant chaos. That has provided an opening for alternatives like DeSantis, who are expected to paint themselves as champions of the former president’s policies, but without all his baggage.

But there were no immediate signs the party was ready to use the indictment to move past him. Instead, Republicans, including members of Congress and Trump’s rivals, rushed to his defense en masse. In addition to DeSantis, former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, who has already declared her candidacy, blasted the indictment as “more about revenge than it is about justice.” Former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who is mulling a run, accused Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg of “undermining America’s confidence in our legal system,” while also sending a fundraising text off the news.

With reports from Associated Press

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