It was bawdy. It was sordid. But will it matter by November?
Porn star Stormy Daniels‘ testimony about an extramarital sexual encounter with former President Donald Trump is the kind of thing that would sink a normal politician. But there was no indication on Wednesday that his Rolodex of congressional supporters or evangelical base was ready to ditch him over Ms. Daniels‘ X-rated narrative.
“After everything the public has ingested about Donald Trump over the past nine years, is this latest testimony the breath mint that will cause it all to explode? I really doubt it,” said Patrick Murray, the director of the Monmouth University Polling Institute in New Jersey. “Nothing has moved the basic polling numbers in the past.”
Still, in an election where the smallest margins matter, Ms. Daniels‘ salacious tale could sway undecided independents and suburban women being courted by both parties.
Ms. Daniels, in testimony Tuesday, said she didn’t expect to have sex after a dinner in Lake Tahoe at a golf tournament. She said Mr. Trump was “bigger and blocking the way, but I was not threatened either verbally or physically.”
Lori Goldman, the founder of Fems for Dems in Michigan, said there is a percentage of voters who will be disgusted by Ms. Daniels‘ testimony and compare it to situations where they faced a power imbalance and wish they’d handled it differently.
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“I think this taps into experiences most women over 40 have experienced in their lives — or even men who might have had experiences like this,” she said.
Whether that share is enough to decide a national election is a thornier question.
“I’m not counting on it being a lot. I’m really not,” said Ms. Goldman, whose organization promotes progressive candidates.
Mr. Trump is the first former president to face a criminal trial. He is also the presumptive GOP nominee in this year’s race against President Biden, so it was a remarkable scene on Tuesday, as Ms. Daniels detailed a sexual encounter with so much detail that it made the judge uneasy.
Mr. Trump denies the sexual encounter took place.
Ms. Daniels‘ claims and the related criminal charges against Mr. Trump, based on alleged efforts to conceal a hush payment, are several years old and were publicly debated before the 2020 election that Mr. Trump lost to Mr. Biden.
“It’s old news in a new wrapping,” said Ross Baker, a politics professor at Rutgers University in New Jersey.
Mr. Trump, he said, “rode out Access Hollywood and Charlottesville. In the eyes of his many supporters, he is a knight in shining armor.”
There are also signs that many voters aren’t putting much stock in the trial, despite the media circus in lower Manhattan.
A recent Suffolk University poll found that 44% of voters don’t believe the trial has been fair while 39% believe Mr. Trump is getting a fair shake, and 16% are undecided.
Another Suffolk poll from March, before the trial started, found a third of voters (32%) are not tracking the case at all, and an additional 22% are following it “not too closely.” Only 15% are following the case “very closely” and another 29% are tracking it somewhat closely, pollsters found.
The trial is now in its third week, however, and Ms. Goldman said folks in her swing state are rapt.
“Haven’t you seen the sales of popcorn going up?” she said. “You hear it on the radio, you see it on the front page. The local cashiers are making jokes about it.”
They’ll have more to talk about Thursday when Ms. Daniels resumes her testimony.
She is facing a withering cross-examination by Mr. Trump‘s lawyers, who argue Ms. Daniels shifted her story over time and effectively extorted Mr. Trump on the cusp of the 2016 election.
Things got so heated on Tuesday that state Supreme Court Judge Juan Merchan told Mr. Trump‘s attorneys to rein in their client.
“I understand that your client is upset at this point, but he is cursing audibly, and he is shaking his head visually and that’s contemptuous,” Judge Merchan told lawyer Todd Blanche during a sidebar conversation, according to transcripts. “It has the potential to intimidate the witness and the jury can see that.”
Prosecutors say they have less than two weeks of testimony left before the defense mounts its case.
Michael Cohen, who facilitated nondisclosure payments as Mr. Trump‘s lawyer in 2016 and sought reimbursements at the heart of the charges, will be the prosecution’s major witness when Ms. Daniels is done.
Defense attorneys are expected to rough up Cohen over his criminal record and whether he is a credible witness.
Congressional Republicans on Wednesday teed it up by prodding the Justice Department to investigate Cohen over allegations he lied to Congress in several pieces of testimony.
Reps. Jim Jordan, chairman of the Judiciary Committee, and James Comer, chairman of the Oversight and Accountability Committee, suggested that it should give pause to Alvin Bragg, the Manhattan district attorney who brought the case years after the payments were made.
“In short, to prosecute President Trump, Bragg has revived this ‘zombie’ case relying on a known — and convicted — liar and his testimony at a congressional hearing in which he lied at least six times,” the lawmakers said in a letter to U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland.
In the end, pollsters say a subset of key voters will decide the race based on issues like the economy and immigration, and not what happens in the Manhattan courtroom.
“Nothing in this trial is new news to voters, or at best they’re confused and chalk it up to just an attempt to take Trump off the campaign trail,” said Brent Buchanan, president of the Cygnal polling and analytics firm in Washington. “Feelings about Trump are already cemented and the deciding votes — less than 50,000 voters across five states — to swing the election won’t be because of trials, [but] rather the issues.”
• Stephen Dinan contributed to this story.