Former President Donald Trump's attorneys on Thursday tried to get under adult film star Stormy Daniels' skin -- but legal reporter Adam Klasfeld says that those efforts were largely unsuccessful.
While watching Daniels undergo hostile cross-examination during the former president's Manhattan hush-money trial, Klasfeld observed that "Daniels is a lot more confident, wry, and controlled during this cross-examination than when her testimony first began.
He went on to add that "utterly gone is any trace of her evident nervousness and speed-testimony from Day One" and that "facing Trump's attorney, she seems in muted fight-mode."
Throughout the morning, Daniels answered questions about potential discrepancies between her sworn testimony about her sexual encounter with Trump and a magazine interview that she gave about it years ago.
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Daniels, by Klasfeld's account, batted away Trump attorney Susan Necheles' efforts to trip her up.
"They're trying to make me say that [my story] changed, but it hasn't changed," Daniels said at one point minutes before the court adjourned for morning recess.
After this, Klasfeld once again remarked on how controlled Daniels seemed throughout the entire exchange.
"Usually, after a friendly direct-examination, a contentious cross is where witnesses lose their cool — but with Stormy Daniels, the opposite has been true," he commented. "Unflappable. On Tuesday, Daniels had to be reminded several times — by both the prosecutor and the judge — to slow down for the court reporter. None of that today."
In addition to trying to trip up Daniels on seeming contradictions between her testimony and past statements, Necheles also grilled Daniels on her past disparaging statements about the former president, including one in which she referred to him as an "orange turd" that she would flush down the toilet.