Stormy Daniels, Donald Trump and '60 Minutes': Shame is so over

Jill: Hush money and threats and laws that might be broken, this Stormy Daniels interview about President Trump is serious business. But oh my, that amazing pink … blouse, and the equally amazing dish, right from the start.

I kept gasping, as if anything at this point could be a surprise. She said she spanked the man who would be president — with a magazine that had him on the cover. She said he told her he and Melania slept in separate bedrooms.

And she became the second woman in a matter of days to say he compared her to his gold standard for women, his daughter Ivanka: "He was like, 'Wow, you — you are special. You remind me of my daughter.'" 

60 Minutes' Anderson Cooper: You were 27, he was 60. Were you physically attracted to him?

Stormy Daniels: No.

Anderson Cooper: Not at all?

Stormy Daniels: No.

Anderson Cooper: Did you want to have sex with him?

Stormy Daniels: No. 

Any other guy, you might feel a tiny twinge of sympathy. But then you remember that just before the start of a 2016 debate with Hillary Clinton, Trump hosted a live stream with four women who had accused Bill Clinton of sexual harassment and assault. I think he's made his bed, so to speak.

David: How far we have come from the days of the 1990s when James Carville said, "If you drag a hundred-dollar bill through a trailer park, you never know what you'll find." 

Sex scandal inflation has gone so far you have to drag $130,000 through a porn studio to get a rise out of the American public. But maybe that has more to do with the cost of living in Arkansas compared to Manhattan.

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At least one other thing has changed since then, too. Outside of those who are paid to deny that Donald Trump had sex with a porn star, few among Trump's supporters are going to doubt that Stormy is telling the truth. The days when the "nuts and sluts" defense is going to obscure the facts are over. And that's a good thing.

But what really struck me is one thing that stayed the same from the sordid mess of the Clinton years to the sordid mess that is our now: How little actual sex there is in the sex scandals. Stormy and the Donald had sex once. Paula Jones was merely propositioned for sex, but her lawsuit revealed another relationship in which there wasn't sex sex, only oral sex. It was lies about the oral sex that led to Clinton's impeachment.

I agree with you that this is big. As the 60 Minutes piece made clear, this barely any sex scandal could bleed into the Russia investigation and play a role in doing major damage to the president. 

Jill: You're right about the tiny amount of actual sex involved. So much ado about one encounter. Do I believe Stormy was, as she said, scared of Trump and his fixers? Do I believe she did this CBS interview because she didn’t like people calling her a liar and an opportunist? Is she out to clear her name, or make sure everyone knows it? Is this, in fact, an incredible opportunity for a woman who seems smart and entrepreneurial?

Who knows. But there are a couple of definitive takeaways.

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First, Stormy knows how to hit someone where it hurts. Her humiliating description of her "affair" with Trump would be excruciating for any man to hear. How unbearable it must be for a self-styled tough guy who admires authoritarians and has adopted machismo as the organizing principle for his administration.

Second, Trump has met his match. Here I’ve got to hand it to Stormy. She doesn’t have a top-rated TV show and she’s not the leader of the free world. But now she is a celebrity, and count on her to know what to do with that. When the legal storm rains down on Trump, her case could stick. And even if it doesn’t, she could end up being in the small club of people who force Trump to reckon with the way he’s lived his life.

David: I have a hard time seeing Stormy as much of a winner in this. If you are on the news talking about the details of sex you didn't want to have with someone you weren't attracted to, but nevertheless consented to, you are not winning.

And there is little a porn star can do to make Donald Trump reckon with the moral train wreck that is his life any more than a young intern could make Bill Clinton reckon with the moral train wreck that is his life. 

There are only two people who could have brought a reckoning to Clinton, his daughter and his wife. Both Hillary and Chelsea decided to stand by their sorry excuse for a man. Now as we learn more and more about the real Donald Trump, we'll see if Melania and Ivanka will stand by theirs.

David Mastio, a libertarian conservative, is the deputy editor of USA TODAY's Editorial Page. Jill Lawrence, a center-left liberal, is the commentary editor of USA TODAY. Follow them on Twitter @DavidMastio and @JillDLawrence.