Donald Trump's attorney attempted to shame Stormy Daniels for appearing in adult films and dancing nude, but a legal expert said those efforts likely "fell flat" with the jury.
The adult film actress testified for more than seven hours over two days about her brief sexual relationship with the former president, who is charged with falsifying business records in an effort to pay for her silence ahead of the 2016 election, and MSNBC's Lisa Rubin told "Morning Joe" that she held her own against aggressive cross examination.
"Stormy Daniels is the rare witness who's better on cross-examination than she is on direct," Rubin said. "She really held her ground, that's an understatement against a withering attack by the defense. One of the things that I think is interesting about yesterday's cross is ... what they didn't attack her for. Really, the core of her story about her sexual encounter with Donald Trump was not among the things that they tried to peel away or attack. They asked her, for example, for seven pages in the transcript, to clarify whether they did or did not have dinner. They also tried to make her say that her story about whether she walked to dinner was or was not inconsistent. But the core of the story remained intact."
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"The most that [defense attorney] Susan Necheles did was say that it was incredulous (sic) to her that Stormy Daniels, having acted in 150 to 200 pornography movies, would be scared or surprised to come out of the bathroom and find Donald Trump on the bed for her," Rubin added. "Of course, Stormy Daniels had a nice retort to that, which is to say, 'Look, if it had been my husband, I see my husband naked all the time, but to open that bathroom door and to find Donald Trump lying on the bed for me at 60 years old, more than twice my age, and much larger than me, yeah, that was surprising to me,' and so the implication that they were trying to make throughout the day that because Stormy Daniels has been an exotic dancer or adult film actor, that she should have seen this coming and indeed would not have been shocked by it, I think fell flat during the day."
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