MSNBC Legal Analyst Calls Trump’s Trial Strategy Against Stormy Daniels the ‘Nuts and Sluts Defense’
MSNBC legal correspondent Lisa Rubin chalked the Donald Trump defense team’s Stormy Daniels strategy up to a “nuts and sluts defense” after attending the former president’s hush money trial in Manhattan on Thursday.
Daniels concluded her testimony after a second time at the witness stand on Thursday. She was asked by Trump lawyer Susan Necheles about her background in pornographic movies. At one point the attorney asked Daniels if she had a “lot of experience making phony stories about sex,” prompting a tense exchange.
Rubin and Susanne Craig joined MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell and Chris Jansing on Thursday sitting through Daniels’ testimony from the overflow room. Rubin likened Trump’s lawyer’s strategy when cross-examining Daniels to a “nuts and sluts” strategy she said she saw deployed at two E. Jean Carroll trials.
The strategy, she said, was have shame Daniels for her work in pornographic movies and to mock her open belief in the paranormal.
“This was very much what I’d call a nuts and sluts defense,” she said. “There was a portion of the cross-examination where Susan Necheles was focused on the fact that Stormy Daniels now claims that she is a medium and that she communicates with dead people and has participated in a TV series about the paranormal where she explores things, including the fact that at one point an ex-boyfriend of hers was inhabited by spirits.”
Rubin praised Stormy Daniels and her handling of Trump’s lawyer on the stand.
“[Necheles] was mocking Stormy Daniels. She wants the jury to think Stormy Daniels is a liar and she is crazy,” she said. “And she also wants the jurors to judge her for her occupation and Stormy Daniels gave no ground on that.”
Rubin also credited Daniels with a “sick burn” moment after the adult film actress was accused of “selling” herself when she went on a tour dancing at strip clubs.
“She might be an exotic dancer and an adult film actor, but she was very clear,” Rubin said. “When Susan Necheles used the phrase ‘selling yourself’ to describe what Stormy Daniels was doing on a tour where she was making appearances at clubs, Stormy Daniels set her straight, [saying], ‘I was not selling myself, I was dancing.'”
Trump is facing more than 30 felony counts for allegedly covering up hush money payments issued out to Daniels to cover up an affair. The former president has denied the affair ever happened and that he was aware of any hush money payments.
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