re: #101 Targetpractice

Necheles gave the performance that we were told earlier in the trial Trump was pissed that Blanche wasn’t providing him: angry, combative, and destructive. Instead of approaching Daniels as a fact witness and keeping the cross-exam short by focusing on inconsistencies in her testimony, Necheles instead spent her time trying to attack Daniels’ motives for testifying and restoring Trump’s reputation by ruining hers. The jury’s not there to judge her on her career choice or her reasons for going to the press with her story, they’re there to hear her confirm that the two had a sexual encounter and that he paid her for it.

Surely it’s irrelevant that Trump paid her for sex. What’s relevant is that Trump later on did all kinds of crimes to make a hush money payment to her from the wrong pot of money and then try to pass it off as a normal business expense.