A wide-ranging interview with former adult-film star and purported Trump mistress Stormy Daniels published in InTouch magazine – a supermarket tabloid – produced many notable soundbites – “Trump is afraid of sharks” “I could describe his junk in perfect detail” – was virtually ignored by the mainstream press on Friday, just like initial reports about a payoff involving a prominent Trump lawyer were buried by “shithole-gate” the week before.
But that didn’t stop the New York Times from sending one of its White House reporters to Greenville South Carolina to cover the beginning of Daniels’s “Make America Horny Again” national strip club tour – the 38-year-old’s attempt to cash in on her newfound notoriety.
Daniels was stripping at the Trophy Club in Greenville Saturday; she had also made an appearance at the Women’s March in Greenville, accompanied by anti-Trump signage.
Trophy Club owner Jay Levy bragged to the Times about the event’s affordable cover charge: Only $20 – just double the price of regular, non-Stormy evenings.
“Pigs get fat. Hogs get slaughtered,” said Jay Levy, the Trophy Club’s owner, explaining the relative bargain for guests. “I’ve got to take care of my people. I’ll take advantage of the situation, but not my people.”
Daniels appeared to have a good grasp of the relative value of her situation…
“Nobody wants to be seen with me right now,” the performer, known as Stormy Daniels, said in a brief interview, laughing softly behind an assemblage of nude pictures of herself. The line at her table belied the point.
The Trophy club is located close to the airport and, as the NYT pointed out, had finally claimed its piece of the Trump story.
And so it was – on the anniversary of the inauguration; with a government shutdown consuming the capital; with cities across the country, including this one, hosting women’s rallies condemning President Trump as an emblem of misogyny – that this national moment delivered a glut of customers, journalists and a notable adult film actress to a perhaps inevitable fate.
The music came on. The clothes came off. And an airport strip club claimed its piece of the American presidency.
The idea of a bunch of New York City-based reporters hanging out at a southern strip club is an amusing one, so, unsurprisingly, the NYT’s reporting yielded many hilarious tangential details like this one:
Dancers pawed playfully at their prey, flipping their hair at patrons like a fishing line.
“All right – one,” a member of the news media relented eventually, disappearing for a few minutes as a dancer led him to a back room. She returned a short while later to flip her hair at the other scribes.
One attendee – a woman – wanted Daniels to sign her copy of “Fire and Fury” even though Daniels wasn’t referenced directly in the book.
Other requests were less typical of the place. Suzanne Coe, 52, a local pub owner, hoped Ms. Clifford might sign her copy of “Fire and Fury,” by Michael Wolff, the lacerating, if error-specked, insider account of the Trump administration.
The club played up the Trump angle, and Daniels embraced the opportunity for merchandising.
Above the bar, festooned with balloons of red, white and blue, one TV was tuned to a Trump-themed panel on CNN, as a government shutdown clock ticked in the bottom right corner. Beside the stage, the president’s face looked out from an old picture, mugging beside Ms. Clifford.
“HE SAW HER LIVE,” an ad for the event read, using the same image. “YOU CAN TOO!”
Still, with the government shutdown halfway through its second day, this story will likely get lost in yet another tumultuous weekend news cycle as everybody waits to see if Congress and the White House will agree to a deal before markets open Monday morning.
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