Earlier this week, I remarked on the lack of attention being paid to Karen McDougal, 1998 Playmate of the Year, and sometime playmate for Donald Trump, according to the New Yorker, thanks to the now standard avalanche of new scandals and disasters that now fill what we must call “Trump Time”. Why not at least five minutes of fame for Karen, along with fellow Trump buddy Stormy Daniels?1
Well, Karen is still out of the limelight, but Stormy is back in, in a big way, with repeated “scoops” regarding the $130,000 confidentiality agreement she signed, but Donald did not, earning Stormy a full column in the New York Times by Michelle Goldberg, and now updated by the Washington Post’s Phillip Bump in this “analysis” discussing an email regarding the payoff sent to Trump lawyer/factotum Michael Cohen using a “Trump Organization” email address. According to Phil, the latest dope “means that federal election law was almost certainly violated.”
Because Stormy had a confidentiality agreement with Trump—something that can be, and is, the basis for a lawsuit opening up all sorts of opportunity for “discovery”, she’s in the catbird seat.2 All poor Karen has is some sort of half-assed arrangement with the Daily Enquirer, that, being subject to all sorts of “editorial discretion”, is probably useless as the basis for a suit. But stay tuned! It ain’t over till it’s over!
- I was going to go with “Trump trollop”, which would be putting alliteration over accuracy, not to mention good taste, so I went with “Trump buddy” instead. It’s not that Uncle Donald isn’t generous, of course, but there’s no evidence that the girls were mercenary. ↩︎
- Supposed southern slang for “an advantageous position,” a catchphrase of once beloved now almost forgotten sportscaster Red Barber (for the once beloved now almost forgotten Brooklyn Dodgers), used by James Thurber in a short story of the same name, turned into the film The Battle of the Sexes in 1959 that starred Peter Sellers and Constance Cummings. ↩︎
