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CNN Live Event/Special

Trump Lawyer Cross-Examines Stormy Daniels. Aired 11-11:30a ET

Aired May 09, 2024 - 11:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

[11:00:16]

DANA BASH, CNN HOST: Stormy Daniels is on the stand still under cross-examination.

Attorneys for Donald Trump are trying to show inconsistencies between what she told the jury under oath and her prior statements about an alleged sexual encounter with Donald Trump.

Welcome back to CNN's special coverage of the former president's hush money cover-up trial. I'm Dana Bash in Washington.

ANDERSON COOPER, CNN HOST: And I'm Anderson Cooper in New York.

Susan Necheles, Donald Trump's attorney, actually asking Daniels right now about an interview that she did in 2018 with me for "60 Minutes."

We're back here in New York with Kaitlan Collins and Paula Reid.

During the break, Necheles has begun asking about the "60 Minutes" interview I did with her. This is from our reporters in the room. She's pressing Daniels about the interview.

"During the interview, Cooper asked Daniels if they went out for dinner. She says no. He asked if they had dinner in the room. She said yes. Daniels said it was dinnertime, but they didn't eat dinner."

Necheles has been, again, pushing any inconsistencies. Daniels says: "Yes, like I said, it was dinnertime in the room."

Necheles presses Daniels on this: "We did not have any food. I did not eat any food. I maintained that in every interview. That has not changed," Daniels says.

Necheles says: "When you said to Anderson Cooper, you didn't really mean you had dinner. You meant something else."

Daniels says: "We had dinnertime in the room."

Necheles then presses Daniels, saying, yes, like -- about the dinner, Daniels says: "Yes. Like I said, it was dinnertime in the room."

Necheles says: "So you're saying, when you said we had dinner, you didn't mean that, right?" Necheles asks.

Daniels again argues that having dinner doesn't mean they ate. Necheles continues to zero in what she argues is in an inconsistency in Daniels' story about whether she ate with Trump. Daniels testified appearing exasperated, that where she's from, going to someone's house for dinner doesn't mean you have to eat.

Necheles is now questioning whether Daniels walked to the hotel or took a car. "The details of your story keep changing, right?" Necheles says.

"No," Stormy Daniels says.

PAULA REID, CNN CHIEF LEGAL AFFAIRS CORRESPONDENT: So, this whole debate, the semantic argument over dinner, right, do you have to eat, is it dinnertime, the Trump defense team believes this is very important.

I believe Necheles just asked. She said: "Ms. Daniels, your words don't mean what they say they mean."

They believe, by drilling down on these seemingly innocuous details about what allegedly happened in Tahoe, that they are going to be able to upend credibility in her story of the entire account.

Now, right now, this is a -- this is a minefield. Now, Necheles continues to zero in on what she argues are inconsistencies in Daniels' story about whether they ate dinner or not. This is a minefield because we're going back to Tahoe.

And this is a sensitive subject for their client. We saw that outburst on Tuesday, when they talked about spanking. So I'm curious to see how specific they get throughout this. Did they go through line by line her testimony? They have got to be portions of this that they're going to skip, because, otherwise, the client is going to get mad.

KAITLAN COLLINS, CNN HOST: OK, but this feels ridiculous. They are trying to home in on whether or not she -- they had dinner and whether she's been consistent.

She has said all along she was going and was invited to his room to have dinner. She's always maintained that they didn't actually eat dinner. And so it's not clear why this is where the defense is trying to zone in on and to focus on this and whether or not that's resonating with the jury to undermine her whole story is.

She did say she took a car from a tattoo shop to Trump's hotel. She said she doesn't recall how the car was called. She has remembered such little details about this that, when I was in court on Tuesday and she was recalling this, she said that she walked halfway, that she was staying at a different hotel than Donald Trump was, that she was wearing uncomfortable shoes, which she later described as her hands shaking as she was trying to put them back on after her sexual encounter with Donald Trump.

She remembers details like that. And so they're trying to call her on whether she remembers how she got to and from Harrah's, where Donald Trump was staying, into his hotel suite, which feels like an odd line of questioning, when there are other ways to get at what she was saying about the actual moment and the tenor in the room and the vibe.

REID: And it could just be that Trump is more comfortable with the semantic arguments about dinner or not dinner, versus actually getting into the details of what transpired.

COLLINS: But it's going to...

REID: Again, it's weird. It's weird.

COLLINS: It's going to open up for prosecutors -- the judge was uncomfortable and didn't want them to go in certain places.

COOPER: Right.

COLLINS: This opens up for judge -- for the prosecutors to revisit that when they get the chance to question her.

COOPER: Because there are, frankly, probably more details, gruesome details, that Stormy Daniels could talk about if she was pressed.

If the question is, how much does she actually remember, I don't know what other details she may remember, but that she hasn't really talked about. She hasn't gone into a lot of sordid -- sordid, very sordid details.

Necheles asked the judge if they're going to take a break. Merchan said he'd like to go a bit longer. Yes, so we will see where this goes.

[11:05:05]

COLLINS: It's also -- one thing on the inconsistencies in her story and how she's describing it and what they're trying to argue, they had the whole day yesterday to go through all of this.

REID: Yes.

COLLINS: And that is really what we were hearing from Trump's team that they were doing, listening to what she told you about how she described -- you know, the ways in which she described it, where, the other day, she was kind of saying that she was a little bit uncomfortable and couldn't believe the situation she got herself in, looking at how she described it to you, where she made clear it was consensual.

And now they're getting to the nitty-gritty of focusing on what happened when she entered Trump's hotel room. This is when they were having that conversation where she says she called Trump out for being arrogant and interrupting her. He'd ask her a question and then he'd start to talk while she was halfway through her answer.

I mean, she remembered exquisite detail about this encounter that I think, personally, will be hard for them to -- to discern and to question her on that. We will see what -- where they go with this. But she's saying that Trump did greet her in the front of his hotel suite. "I assumed he was watching television because he definitely wasn't getting dressed."

She says that Trump was wearing silk pajamas when she entered the room, that she made him go and change because she said he looked like Hugh Hefner. And she said that he did so. And so that's the question here of how this goes.

COOPER: Yes, Necheles had -- had questioned that Daniels had said that Trump was sprawled out on the couch watching television. Then he greeted her. Daniels said he did both.

"He greeted me in the foyer. I assumed he was watching television because he definitely wasn't getting dressed," Daniels responded.

Necheles asked that she didn't say that in the 2011 interview with "In Touch." Necheles says that Daniels didn't say that in the interview. "No, I did not. Like I said, it was a shorter interview" that she gave to "In Touch" in 2011.

Necheles also has said that -- I'm just reading directly from our reporters in the court: "You acted and had sex in over 200 porn movies," Necheles asked.

Daniels says: "About 150."

Necheles says: "But, according to you, seeing a man sitting on a bed in a T-shirt and boxer shorts was so upsetting that you got lightheaded. The blood left your hands and feet, and you almost fainted," Necheles asked.

"Yes. When you're expecting a man twice your age to be -- yes," Daniels says. "When you aren't expecting a man twice your age to be naked."

Necheles suggested: "You" -- OK, sorry, I'm ahead of what's on the side of the screen.

Necheles suggested Daniels sees naked men and women in these movies all the time.

REID: This is some tricky territory for Necheles.

COLLINS: Yes.

REID: Because we know where they're going, right? What really set them off on Tuesday was the idea that she suggested this may not have been consensual.

If you go back to her documentary, what she does is, she ties this encounter in Tahoe to sexual abuse that she survived as a 9-year-old girl. She said this encounter brought her back to that time. So, Necheles here is trying to suggest, you have sex all the time with strangers. What would bother you about a naked man?

She is potentially going to step on a land mine if Stormy Daniels decides to bring up her experience and the lens through which she views this now. Again, has her story been consistent? No, but this is trick -- really tricky territory, and it's not clear that this is going to benefit them by the time they're done.

COLLINS: And Stormy Daniels has not had any reservations about being up front about the world that she works in and her business.

She says that Trump was deeply interested in it and asked if they had a union and got residuals when they were having this conversation. So, trying to maybe embarrass her about what she does for a living doesn't seem to be a tactic that is going to work for Stormy Daniels on the cross-examination.

And Daniels is pushing back, saying: "If I come out of the bathroom and saw on older man in his underwear that I wasn't expecting to see there, yes."

Because that's when she says she went into the bathroom. She was kind of in there for a little bit. She tried to call a friend. She knew the products -- she remembered the products that were in Donald Trump's dopp kit.

COOPER: Right.

COLLINS: I mean, she had that kind of level of detail.

And now Trump's attorney is asking her: "In your book, you had wrote that you had made him your" -- and Daniels agrees, basically trying to say that the way she portrayed the encounter is, what have I gotten myself into, I'm uncomfortable in this situation, was not necessarily how she had framed it before.

And she made that clear to you, though, in your interview, Anderson. I mean, she said, I'm not trying to say it wasn't consensual. She said it was consensual.

COOPER: Right. She said she's not a victim. She said that you put -- in her words, or paraphrasing, but she said what was going through her mind was like, you know what, you put yourself in a bad situation, you deserve this, was effectively what she says.

Necheles asked Daniels: "In your book, you had wrote, you had made him your B-I-T-C-H."

Daniels agrees with that.

Again, where this is going to go on redirect, it's hard to know.

REID: Yes, this is -- this is really risky.

"This isn't your first time -- the first time in your life someone made a pass at you."

I mean, Necheles is walking up to the line of, you asked for it, didn't you? And, again, this is not a sexual assault case. This is a case about falsifying business records to allegedly interfere with an election. We are so far afield from the material facts of the case.

Yes, the encounter is significant, but this very much feels like what I said at the beginning of the day. This is going to the audience of one, and one alone. And it is unclear how this is going to play to the jury.

[11:10:00]

COLLINS: And you know what it...

COOPER: She says: "No, but it -- it's not the first time somebody made a pass me, but it is the first time they had a bodyguard standing outside the door," Daniels said, adding Trump was twice her age and bigger than her.

Necheles is now confronting Daniels with what she told "In Touch" in 2011 about the encounter. In that article, Daniels said, Trump told her, "Come here," and they started kissing on the bed.

Again, Daniels has said repeatedly now that, essentially, the interview she gave to "In Touch" was limited and she didn't want to mention other people like Keith Schiller who were involved, she said, on the advice of her publicist.

(CROSSTALK)

COLLINS: This is all hard getting back to how Trump handled E. Jean Carroll.

This has strong reminiscence of that, in the sense of how they framed her, that she had written about sex a lot, her life, what her cat was named. This is still a defense that Trump used to this day until he had to owe her so much money for a -- after he was found libel for defaming her.

Daniels is confirming that Trump did say, "Come here," and then a response -- repeating herself for their court reporter, so the court reporter can make sure it's all in the transcript.

But this is exactly how his attorneys, a different legal team, handled the E. Jean Carroll case, basically saying that she was not some kind of victim, that she wasn't innocent, talking about what she had written.

And they're going back to Stormy Daniels' work and her past and all the men that she's had sex with and the fact that she dated someone who was a cameraman on her documentary. It is a very similar tactic to what they used with E. Jean Carroll.

COOPER: Different lawyers, similar tactic.

Interesting to know -- maybe we will never will -- how much of this is coming from Donald Trump kind of pushing for this kind of line of questioning.

REID: I mean, this is...

COOPER: "You made it all -- you made all this up, right?" Necheles asks. "No," says Daniels.

REID: Trump has been as well-behaved in this court as he has been in any of the other trials that we have seen over the past six months.

Necheles said that Daniels didn't say Trump stood up in the "In Touch" interview. This is an abbreviated version. But one of the ways that you get him to sort of behave is you have to make sure that he feels heard, that he feels seen, same as with any client, but this one, bigger bully pulpit.

So part of this -- again, this is all client management, but this is really, really getting up to the line of what's a good idea -- Trump is looking in Daniels' direction -- in terms of alienating the jury or throwing their sympathy to her.

COLLINS: I mean, and to speak back to who the attorneys are performing for, I mean, that's always the difficulty in being Donald Trump's attorney.

It was the same with his impeachment trial. It was the same with his civil fraud trial. It's the same situation here of what he wants and what they think is the best strategic decision. Trump in court on Tuesday was about as angry as I had ever seen him.

And I covered him inside the White House and on the campaign trail and after he lost the election. But the look on his face -- and there was a camera right there, so you can -- you have a very good view of it as she is testifying.

I mean, that speaks to -- when they have these breaks, as they're about to take one, he goes into a side room with his attorneys. And when they were in the middle of her questioning, before they got into the cross-examination on Tuesday, he was essentially seething about what had just -- he just had to sit there and listen to.

So, yes, he does want his attorney to get up there and undermine every little detail about dinner and what she says.

COOPER: It's interesting that Necheles early -- a few moments ago asked the judge, are we going to take a break?

REID: Yes.

COOPER: And the judge said he'd like to go a little bit longer. I don't know if she wanted to take a break to kind of regroup and see where they're going.

REID: I'm thinking that's exactly it. She probably wanted to convene, right, with the rest of the legal team. How much further do we have to go? Do we really have to get into consent? How's everything going?

And get a sense of, how is this playing with a jury, because she can't always see them. Yes, I have a feeling she wanted to reassess -- reassess her strategy. She will be almost two hours in by the time they get the break. I think any lawyer in her position would definitely want a reprieve.

COOPER: Daniels says on the stand: "It was a nice, intelligent conversation, yes," agreeing with what she told "In Touch" magazine in 2011 about her conversation with Trump.

Dana, let's go back to you.

BASH: Thanks, Anderson.

And joining us here on the panel is Michael Dubke, who is a former Trump White House communications director, served very briefly in the Trump White House...

(LAUGHTER)

BASH: ... as people are wont to do.

Before we -- I want to get your take on this. But, before we do, as we watch and listen to and kind of absorb what is happening on the stand with Stormy Daniels right now, I want to bring our viewers into a conversation that we were having here off camera while our colleagues in New York were talking.

And the question is about this line of questioning. Obviously, the Trump defense is trying to undermine her credibility. That goes without saying. But the way that they're doing that, you used a term earlier.

NIA-MALIKA HENDERSON, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: Yes, I use the term slut-shaming, because that is what is happening here.

And you can see the lawyer there for Donald Trump asking her, how many men did you sleep with? Is it 200? And Stormy Daniels comes back, and I think she says something like 150. How could it be that a woman who slept with so many men could then be sort of startled by Donald Trump, who was sitting there on the bed in his boxers or naked or whatever it -- whatever it was?

And she said, yes, there was a -- there's, I think, a bodyguard that was out there. That was kind of intimidating to her. So this is what they're doing. And this is what I think Donald Trump is kind of known for, trying to just...

(CROSSTALK)

[11:15:02]

HENDERSON: ... down.

BASH: And, Jamie, Necheles confirms that Daniels told "Slate" in 2018 -- quote -- "There was no abuse with what happened with President Trump and you were not a victim?"

"Yes," Daniels says. In the 2018 interview, Necheles says that Daniels said the worst thing that Trump did was break promises he never believed he would fulfill. JAMIE GANGEL, CNN SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT: So, I do think this is a key

point, because, the first day, when she was being questioned by prosecutors, she used the phrase blacked out.

And the testimony, at the very least, was confusing about whether this was consensual, completely consensual, whatever that line is. So I do think this is a point that is worth...

(CROSSTALK)

BASH: Yes, "Nothing about a power imbalance or scared because of a bodyguard?" Necheles Trump's lawyer asks Daniels. And we're going to wait for the answer.

And, as we wait, please continue. And then I want you to jump in, Kasie.

GANGEL: But I do think -- and I have heard from a number of defense lawyers that they do think that most of this cross has -- quote -- "gone too far, is not relevant" and, someone said to me, "makes her more sympathetic."

BASH: "You didn't say anything about feeling faint." That was the question from Trump's attorney.

Her answer: "No, because the question was what Mr. Trump did, and Mr. Trump did not drug me. That was how I felt."

I mean, again, it used to be not that long ago that, in various cases that have to do with a woman testifying about a sexual encounter, this line of questioning was very powerful and it worked with juries. And, societally, things have changed.

GANGEL: Right.

BASH: The question of -- is whether or not they have changed as it relates to this specific case.

Daniels says she meant -- meant at the time, "The worst thing he did was lie about getting her on 'Celebrity Apprentice.'" Daniels says she maintained she -- quote -- "was not physically or threatened or drugged."

Necheles asks Daniels about her testimony on Tuesday, when Daniels said Trump's actions made her feel like she had to have sex.

(CROSSTALK)

BASH: "My own insecurities made me feel that way."

KASIE HUNT, CNN CHIEF NATIONAL AFFAIRS ANALYST: Well, and so this -- my big -- big picture question here is, does today make this jury feel more sympathetic to her?

And she goes on to say: "He did not put his hands on me. He didn't give me any sort of drugs or alcohol. He didn't hold a weapon. He didn't hold me or threaten me."

I think the question is going to be for the jury and, to a greater extent, the public, do they feel like they can put theirself -- themselves in Daniels shoes, or do they know someone in their own lives, if they're a man, if they know a woman, who has been in this kind of a situation before, where they felt like basically the price of female ambition is a situation like this, right?

And that, I think, is a lot of what we explored during the MeToo movement, when women did come forward and say, hey, there are these situations where powerful men take the power that they have and they hold it over you. And if you are so aggressive as a woman as to want something from them, which she did -- I mean, she wanted to be on "Celebrity Apprentice," right?

She was looking for some things from him, that the price of that is what happened to her in this hotel room. And, again, my sense of her first day was that she had -- when she first came out, she tried to make the jury laugh a couple times. She had a couple lines that didn't seem to really land.

GANGEL: Right.

HUNT: But then today, with this, it really does feel like they are kind of dragging her through the mud.

BASH: And Necheles, on that note, questions why Daniels didn't say that Trump stood in front of her in 2018.

Again, this is about her credibility, Laura.

"In 2018, you didn't tell the 'Vogue' writer that President Trump said that to you, did you?' Necheles asks.

LAURA COATES, CNN CHIEF LEGAL ANALYST: Well, first of all, two quick points.

Remember, it's interesting that they're raising these points. This was the subject of their mistrial motion just two days ago, that they thought that the bell could not be unrung because there was this intimation that she was saying it was no longer -- it wasn't truly consensual.

The judge essentially said -- look, he criticized the defense for not objecting more, saying that he had to, they call sua sponte, on his own actually object and said that cross is the effective remedy here. They're doing this.

But then here's what happens. When they're trying to cross her on this very point, she is not only clarifying, again, I'm not a victim. This -- I'm not saying it was not consensual. And then she humanizes herself with that statement. "My own insecurities made me feel this way."

When she made -- and she says that her story has not -- has -- Necheles is saying, your story has completely changed, she will likely say that that's not in fact the case.

Here's why it's important. The cross has tried to establish her as a shrewd, scrupulous -- unscrupulous businesswoman who is motivated solely by money who would have stopped at nothing to get this story out.

BASH: And you're -- as you predicted, Daniels, with a look of exasperation and a smile, raises her voice saying: "No."

[11:20:01]

COATES: Yes.

BASH: And that was no to the question of her story changing.

"You're trying to make me say that it changed, but it hasn't changed."

COATES: And, again, so you have -- so you have invited her to rehabilitate herself as somebody sympathetic about having insecurities, that she has confirmed yet again that, no, she's not changed her stories, and that, yes, she is unscrupulous. She wants money. And she would have gotten the story out.

Isn't that precisely the person that you would be incentivized to pay to shut up before an election?

BASH: So, you think that the defense is just going way too far here?

COATES: I think they're helping the prosecution unnecessarily.

ELIE HONIG, CNN SENIOR LEGAL ANALYST: So...

BASH: And if you're the prosecution, do you feel helped right now?

HONIG: I do.

This cross-examination resumed at 9:30 this morning. It should have been over at 9:45 this morning. There's a way to do this cross- examination in a way that's palatable, that's clear, that's concise, that makes an impact.

Instead, they're all over the map. Two things. First of all, they're back at the hotel now in Tahoe. You don't want to be there as the defense. There's no winning there. And this is going quite poorly.

The other thing is, the things that they're trying to impeach Stormy Daniels on, show that -- her prior inconsistencies, are penny-ante B.S. It's, OK, you sat at dinner. You were in a restaurant. Did you eat dinner or not?

The jury doesn't care about that. What the -- did the invitation come from Donald Trump himself or the bodyguard? You are at the margins of the margins here.

BASH: And...

HONIG: I see there's an update.

BASH: Yes. Necheles is now asking Daniels about her meeting with Trump and Ben Roethlisberger...

HONIG: Yes.

BASH: ... at a nightclub, questioning how long the meeting lasted.

HONIG: All right, Ben Roethlisberger, of course, a Pittsburgh -- former Pittsburgh Steelers quarterback...

BASH: Steelers, yes.

HONIG: ... who had all sorts of trouble.

(CROSSTALK)

BASH: All sorts of.

(CROSSTALK)

BASH: Daniels testified: "It was about 10 minutes." Necheles says she wrote it in her book.

HONIG: Right.

BASH: She wrote in her book that it was an hour.

HONIG: Perfect, perfect example.

BASH: Credibility.

HONIG: Who cares?

And Nia made a good point. Nia said there's slut-shaming going on here. I agree. And they don't need to do this. You have plenty. You can impeach this witness on, I hate Donald Trump. I want him to go to jail. I had a financial incentive.

That's it.

(CROSSTALK)

BASH: Daniels clarified on the stand that Trump left after about 10 or 15 minutes, but she stayed with Roethlisberger.

The court is taking a brief morning break. OK.

(CROSSTALK)

BASH: I left you for last here.

MICHAEL DUBKE, FORMER TRUMP WHITE HOUSE COMMUNICATIONS DIRECTOR: I know. I know.

BASH: I left you for last here. Just so our viewers know, you worked in the Trump White House...

DUBKE: Yes.

BASH: ... briefly, a -- how many Scaramuccis did you say?

DUBKE: Ten Scaramuccis.

BASH: Ten -- so, it's like 100-and-change days.

DUBKE: About 104 days.

BASH: Yes.

(CROSSTALK)

BASH: As White House communications director. Your thoughts.

DUBKE: Just -- just -- just weighing in on a little bit of this, there's two juries here, really, that we're talking about.

There's the jury -- and you're right. If we were only talking about the jury in that New York City courtroom, they should have been over at 9:45. But there's the jury of the American people. We are now witnessing a presidential campaign being run out of a courtroom by Donald Trump and his campaign.

And so I think a lot of what we see today has more to do with the American people and the campaign than it does to do with the jury.

BASH: I'm sorry to interrupt.

Daniels avoided looking at Trump's table as she left the witness stand. Trump is leaving the courtroom.

Michael, you have dealt with sort of the communications aspect of not this kind of thing, but just Trump in crisis, or Trump trying to get his message out there. There's probably little question in your mind that he is using, as you kind of just alluded to, his -- this -- this legal forum, which is a high-wire act, to push back for his own political strategy on the campaign trail.

DUBKE: Look, the president...

BASH: But is that going to be helpful in the courtroom?

DUBKE: Well, as the -- maybe the only nonlawyer sitting here on this panel...

BASH: I'm not either.

DUBKE: OK.

(CROSSTALK)

HENDERSON: On that side. On that side. DUBKE: I get all the lawyers on my side?

(CROSSTALK)

DUBKE: Yes.

BASH: You answer the comms.

(CROSSTALK)

BASH: And these guys...

(CROSSTALK)

DUBKE: But from a comms point of view, my guess is what happened is, Tuesday night, the defense felt like they had done a really good job with the cross-examination of Stormy Daniels.

And the president came into the room and said, that was awful. That was terrible. I need you to do X, Y and Z. And what you're seeing here this morning is exactly what the president wanted them to do. It is a high-wire act. He's a very accomplished performer on the high wire.

And this -- as I said earlier, I think this is more for the campaign than it is for the defense. At the end of the day, when we look at all of this, we're still not getting back to the central question that this panel and other panels have said earlier than days past.

How is the Manhattan district attorney tying this all together to a -- to campaign violations?

BASH: Well, we haven't heard from Michael Cohen yet.

DUBKE: Well, we haven't heard from Michael Cohen yet, but the fact that they're letting it rest on Michael Cohen's testimony?

GANGEL: We don't know that. We don't know that.

(CROSSTALK)

DUBKE: We don't.

But I'm saying from -- if I was sitting in the defendant's room, they're now looking at this testimony and saying, OK, we scored the points we needed to with the jury on Tuesday. This might be unseemly today, but he's got another audience as his objective.

[11:25:00]

HUNT: But doesn't this go to why he would want to pay her off, why he wouldn't want her to tell the story?

DUBKE: But it doesn't go to the underlying thing.

Paying off, fine, but was he doing this as a campaign violation, or was he doing this because of his family, which is the underlying issue that I think they need to answer that they haven't yet.

HUNT: But if...

(CROSSTALK)

DUBKE: And this testimony today is nothing but slut-shaming, salacious, and all of that.

BASH: Well, can I just ask you?

DUBKE: But it will help him in a rally. I will tell you that much.

BASH: But will it? Will it?

OK, can I just...

HENDERSON: Explain that a bit.

(CROSSTALK)

BASH: Well, explain that, because I will tell you, OK, this is the Donald Trump who had not been president yet, going back to...

DUBKE: Yes.

BASH: ... after the "Access Hollywood" tape came out.

I remember vividly going as a reporter to some Trump events. Ivanka, his daughter was doing a series of events in the suburban collar counties around Pennsylvania. They were with women. They were suburban Republican women.

And almost to a person, each of them said, that's just Trump.

So -- and that was before it was really baked in...

DUBKE: Yes.

BASH: ... that this is who he was.

And so do you, just politically speaking, before we get back, as we're in a break here, think that this discussion could be different and could seem different among men and women who are trying to decide, do I want this guy back in the White House?

DUBKE: No, I think that's the core of it, because I think all of what's being discussed right now is a known quantity to the American people.

I think the real question is what you just asked. Do we want him back? Do we want to go through this again? Part of Biden's victory in 2020 was that we're going to take the drama out of the White House. I mean, I think that was part of the reason that he won.

I think that's a fair question. But all of these details, I mean, I think it's baked in on what the American people will accept from Donald Trump.

COATES: Can I ask you, what do you think is more important for this campaign in 2024, proving that he did not have a sexual encounter with her or proving that this is a weaponized trial?

DUBKE: Oh, I think both. I think both are important to him.

I think what he's going to say at rallies is that her story has changed. He will point to a couple of the inconsistencies that have been brought out today, and that will be the end of it. She can't tell a straight story. I'm telling you the truth. This never happened. So that's part of it.

And then the fact that this will probably be the only trial we see before Election Day is huge for him.

HONIG: You know, Michael's take here aligns with our reporting that Donald Trump wanted his team to be more aggressive, more extensive with Stormy Daniels.

It is hard enough for anyone sitting in the defendant's chair to be the case, to get an acquittal or a hung jury. I mean, the vast majority of criminal trials result in convictions. And now if his legal team is being pulled in this separate direction, away from what's optimal in the courtroom, and now having to think about rallies and how's this going to play, that's going to undermine and reduce his chances of beating this case.

HUNT: I mean, the thing that I just keep coming back to here is that, fundamentally, they are prolonging the experience that the American people are having with Stormy Daniels and the silk pajamas...

GANGEL: Right.

HUNT: ... and the day in the hotel room.

And that -- to me, I still just can't -- I get -- obviously, I mean, having covered Donald Trump, it makes complete sense, Michael, that he would have had this reaction, that he would have said to his team, I want you to do this differently. I want you to handle it this way.

BASH: We...

HUNT: But, again, I just -- it doesn't make sense to me.

BASH: I want to go to something that we have the sort of luxury of being able to see, which is sketches from our own Jake Tapper, who, as you all know -- and if you didn't before, now you see you do -- is a very talented cartoonist and artist.

And this is a new sketch that he just sent in. He is inside the courtroom. This is capturing some of the morning's cross-examination, Stormy Daniels in the witness chair, Susan Necheles, Donald Trump's attorney, doing the questioning.

And in this, you can see the back of Trump's head. I mean, it is really -- oh, and now they're zooming in. There you go.

(LAUGHTER)

BASH: And the way that the judge is clearly listening very intently with his hand under his chin.

HONIG: It's pretty good. Jake's no Christine Cornell, though. No.

(LAUGHTER)

GANGEL: Could -- could I just -- going back to what Michael was talking about, there has been testimony in direct that does speak to the end of this case, which is, did he do it because he was worried about his family, or did he think it would affect the election?

He -- she testified that he didn't seem to care about his wife, that he said they slept in different rooms, that he didn't wear a condom, which can have a big impact at the end of the day. He also at first didn't ask her to keep it confidential.

I think the other thing, big picture, is, does the jury walk away with the notion that this actually happened? And Donald Trump has been saying it never happened. So, that...

BASH: And why does that matter, when it comes to the...

(CROSSTALK)

GANGEL: Because it speaks to his credibility, because, if he won't say

[11:30:00]