Fake Storm

Published 10:31 am Wednesday, March 28, 2018

by Michael Reagan

So now it’s collusion with Stormy Daniels?

The obsession by some in the media with the affair that Donald Trump allegedly had with a porn star 12 years ago shows how desperate his haters are to drive him from office.

For the anti-Trump forces in the media, Stormy has become the Joan of Arc that will bring down the president who was elected in large part because everyone hated Hillary.

But don’t bet on it.

I have no idea — and don’t really want to know — what Stormy did to become “an award winning American pornographic actress, stripper, political figure, screenwriter and director,” as Wikipedia describes her.

Stormy is now 39 and not the porn star she used to be. Maybe she’s launching a whole new career — going on “60 Minutes” and tattling on the famous people she had sex with.

I have no idea if she and Mr. Trump had a tempestuous affair, a one-night fling, or if they innocently shared a round of golf and split a case of Diet Coke.

I also don’t care. It was 2006.

Whatever it was, the Story-Trump deal was a private and consensual relationship.

The liberal media shouldn’t care about Stormy’s relationship with Trump, either, but they are drooling over her sex story and trying to weaponize her.

Is her story real news or fake? If it’s true, so what? It was 2006.

Does it disqualify Trump from being a good president or just prove he’s a lousy husband?

For Republicans, does it wash away the successes he’s had in office — tax reform, lower unemployment, deregulation, potential peace deals with North Korea?

I get tweets from people all the time who ask, “How can you support someone disgusting like Trump who was having all that sex and being unfaithful to his wife?”

People tell me I’m disgracing my father’s name with my support for Donald Trump.

“Wait a minute,” I say. “I don’t approve of what Trump may or may not have done with Stormy or anyone else when he was married. But I also don’t think it’s anyone’s business.”

On that score, I agree with my father.

In 1960 he knew the Republican National Committee and Richard Nixon were in possession of photos that showed the very married John Kennedy entering and leaving various hotels with young women who were not named Jackie.

When Nancy, my sister Maureen and I asked my father at dinner if the Republicans were going to use the photos to help Nixon win, he said, “No — and they shouldn’t.”

“It’s a private affair between a man and his wife,” he said. “It’s not a public affair, and it should not be made public.”

My father knew that JFK’s busy career as a philandering senator had nothing to do with whether he’d make a good or bad president.

Likewise, what Donald Trump did with Stormy Daniels in 2006 says nothing about his presidency. It says more about how our society has changed since the 1960s.

Back then, when it came to sex, Jack and Bobby Kennedy were as professional as Stormy Daniels – and almost everyone in Washington, Manhattan and Hollywood and the media knew it.

But back then people were allowed to have a less-than-perfect private life — even if they were from the other party.

Today it’s totally different.

Because of social media, there’s no such thing as privacy anymore.

Mainstream journalism has adopted the standards of the National Inquirer and when it comes to politicians, movie stars and athletes, the public has come to expect to hear the latest private dirt on them all the time.

People didn’t stop liking Frank Sinatra’s music when they heard about the things he did in his private life.

Nobody cared about what NBA superstars Kobe Bryant or Magic Johnson did in private as long as they performed on the court.

So when it comes to President Trump, maybe we should count the scoring he’s been doing in Washington — not the kind he did in private before he was elected president.

Michael Reagan is the son of the late President Ronald Reagan, a political consultant and the author of “The New Reagan Revolution” (St. Martin’s Press). He is the founder of the email service reagan.com and president of The Reagan Legacy Foundation. Visit his websites at www.reagan.com and www.michaelereagan.com. Send comments to Reagan@caglecartoons.com. Follow @reaganworld on Twitter.