Unapologetic Trump supporter Steve Cortez defended the president’s porn star payoff on Thursday, saying the president’s sex life is “irrelevant” to him.
Luckily, CNN’s Erin Burnett and Joan Walsh were there to remind him that it’s not necessarily his repugnant personal conduct that’s the main issue here. Instead, a campaign-season pay-off and coverup are the red flags every American should care about.
Video:
Trump Supporter Crumbles When CNN Reminds Him That The Porn Star Pay Off Was Probably Illegal #Trump #StormyDaniels pic.twitter.com/f97Bc4zfUQ
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— PoliticusUSA (@politicususa) March 9, 2018
A portion of the exchange between Burnett, Walsh and Cortez:
CORTEZ: What Donald Trump did as a private citizen, as a Hollywood celebrity a decade ago is pretty irrelevant to me. I think it’s irrelevant to most working Americans. What matters is what he did once he became a candidate and certainly what he has done once he became president.
BURNETT: You keep skipping the crucial thing. It matters if he violated federal election law by paying her off to win the election.
WALSH: He was a candidate. That was actually only a year and a half ago. No one cares about Stormy Daniels. At least it seems it was a consensual relationship, which some women allege he had nonconsensual relationships with. So we’re adults. Don’t care about porn stars. Do you care about coverups? Do you care about crime?
Despite what Cortez said, Trump was not a private citizen when his lawyer paid Stormy Daniels more than $100,000 to keep quiet about their affair – which happened while Trump was married to now-First Lady Melania Trump.
It’s the exchange of money – which happened just days before Election Day, when Daniels was threatening to go public – that matters more than the affair itself. As Erin Burnett noted during the exchange, paying off somebody to win the election is a violation of campaign finance laws.
This is a lose-lose for Donald Trump
There is no way to spin this in the president’s favor, as Cortez tried to do on Thursday. On a moral level, Trump’s behavior is despicable. From a legal perspective, this payoff deserves to be investigated thoroughly.
As Paul S. Ryan of the New York Daily News wrote this week, “The bedrock principle of our campaign finance laws is that Americans have a right to know who is paying for campaigns and how their money is being spent to influence our votes. Surely that includes the $130,000 that was funneled to adult film star Stormy Daniels by President Trump’s attorney and used to buy her silence days before the 2016 election.”
If only another Paul Ryan felt the same way.
Sean Colarossi currently resides in Cleveland, Ohio. He earned his Bachelor of Arts degree in Journalism from the University of Massachusetts Amherst and was an organizing fellow for both of President Obama’s presidential campaigns. He also worked with Planned Parenthood as an Affordable Care Act Outreach Organizer in 2014, helping northeast Ohio residents obtain health insurance coverage.
