SARAH VINE: Trump’s downfall to Stormy Daniels would be biblical justice – I can’t help loving her

Stormy Daniels. I really shouldn’t, but I can’t help but love her. I realize that she is a porn star and I hate porn, especially online porn. Then again, I didn’t grow up in abject poverty in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and I haven’t been sexually abused since I was nine, so who am I to judge?

In any case, regardless of reservations about who she is and what she stands for, if she ends up being the person who ultimately brings Donald Trump to the book, all the credit goes to her. She will have done the world a favour.

For years, Trump has faced all sorts of murky questions about his behavior, from financial improprieties to his handling of classified documents to inciting a riot on Capitol Hill in 2021 following his loss to Joe Biden. But as much as these things may suck, they never seem to stick. Until now.

‘This p*** grabbed right back!’ is what Daniels said after the news that Trump, 76, must turn himself in to New York prosecutors on Tuesday or be arrested.

It’s a stark but witty assessment of Donald’s situation, a reference to the notorious recording of him explaining his seduction technique. ‘I just start kissing them. It’s like a magnet. Just kiss. I don’t even wait. And when you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything… Grab them by the pussy.’

Now, apparently, he’s the one with his proverbial in a vice.

The allegation is that he falsified business records about his payment of $130,000 (£105,000) to Daniels in secret money after they allegedly had sex in a hotel room. Trump claims the match never took place, though he admits he gave her the money, which undermines his case.

Either way, the affair is proof of that old Nixon adage: It’s not the crime that gets you, it’s the cover-up.

As Daniels put it: “He fucked another hot chick, which he’s known for, and none of it is illegal.”

If he had admitted it at the time, this saga would have been long forgotten. But the fact that he paid her, and the way he allegedly paid her, now brings him to court.

The irony is that, in a way, the couple is a match made in heaven. Both have spent their lives in pursuit of fame and money: Daniels throughout her career as one of the highest-paid porn stars, writing, directing and starring in her own X-rated movies, but yearning for mainstream success.

In fact, the only reason she (supposedly) slept with Trump was because she thought he was going to cast her on his TV show The Apprentice, which he never did.

If you had kept your end of the bargain, none of this would be happening.

Instead, he made the mistake of thinking, like so many men before him, including Harvey Weinstein (to name just one), that he could get away with it, because Daniels was a woman, moreover, simply a porn star, therefore, just a piece of trash that you could throw away later, like a used handkerchief.

But the problem with women like Daniels, more familiar than most with the rock background, is that they have nothing to lose. They can put up with anything because they’ve probably dealt with worse. As Daniels says, “I can’t be embarrassed or threatened with nude photos, they’re everywhere.”

In the end, what brings politicians down is not incompetence, failed policies and bad governance, or even the brilliance of their political opponents (certainly not in the case of Trump). They are your personal weaknesses. Arrogance, money, laziness, stubbornness, arrogance, drinking, sex – the only thing their special advisors and supporters can’t protect them from is themselves.

Besides money and fame, Trump’s main vice is women, ideally flashy and vulgar blondes. Ergo, Stormy Daniels, vice-girl extraordinaire.

There is a kind of delicious, almost biblical justice in that.

Is Prince Andrew really planning a revealing memory? He already reported his actions to Emily Maitlis, and as far as I remember that didn’t go so well.

How brave, Rael, for defending your wife.

Huge respect to Rael Braverman for standing up for his wife, Home Secretary, in an interview in the Daily Mail yesterday. Unless he has firsthand experience of frontline politics, it’s impossible to understand what it’s like to have a loved one torn to pieces.

In the case of Suella Braverman, Gary Lineker compared her immigration policy to the Germany of the Third Reich, and has been portrayed by some as a crude caricature with no acknowledgment of the complexities of the person or situation.

“There have been mock images of Suella standing outside the concentration camps, laughing,” her husband said. ‘Well, I am a Jew. I lost relatives in those camps. I find it offensive.

Good for him. Sadly, it’s unlikely to make much of a difference to anti-Tory bastards who believe all Tories are ‘scum’. But hopefully it can remind some people that politicians, and their families, are human.

Kate’s titanic call

Congratulations to Kate Winslet, above, who won a major award for her role in the film as a mother desperately trying to stop her daughter from disappearing down the toxic rabbit hole of social media.

I found the film heartbreaking, especially since my own daughter’s experience of online abuse some years ago left me feeling powerless.

There’s nothing worse than watching your child get disemboweled online. Although it is not a physical assault, the emotional response is heartbreaking and the effects carry over into the real world.

Winslet said that “there has never been a more difficult time to be a parent” or “a more dangerous time to be a child in an online world.” She called for a ‘significant and seismic’ change in the new online safety bill. She couldn’t agree more.

The Italian government rarely gets much right, but last week it became the first country to ban ChatGPT over privacy concerns. Belgium may follow after claims that a young father took his own life after developing a relationship with a similar piece of AI technology. Maybe I’ve read too much science fiction, but I agree with Elon Musk: we need to turn these things off, before they turn us off.

Have we learned anything from the Gwyneth Paltrow court case, other than the fact that it costs a lot of money to ski in Deer Valley? I think so: that so-called ‘ordinary’ people don’t always have the best intentions, and that just because someone is rich and famous doesn’t make them bad humans. To be fair, we also saw this with Johnny Depp’s tests, but so far the message hasn’t sunk in.

It was cut, not runway!

Troll of the Week: Girlfriend of nine-year-old Olivia Pratt-Korbel shooter.

Kayleeanne Sweeney was in court for her murder conviction wearing a £350 pink coat and rocking expensive blonde highlights, an Instagram pout, acrylic nails and an unmoving expression.

It looked like she was auditioning for Love Island, not attending the trial of a child murderer. Still, now that her motherfucker boyfriend of hers is facing years behind bars, he’s going to have to find another way to pay for all those treatments…

There is a simple, eco-friendly solution to the problem of wet wipes clogging our waterways. It’s called a bidet. They were never to wash your feet, you know.

A new report shows that most high schools will not inform parents about their children’s desire to self-identify as non-binary or trans, with one arguing that it would be “illegal” under the Data Protection Act.

Since schools don’t even give a child Calpol or let them out early without parental permission, this is extraordinary. But it speaks volumes about how terrified the masters of the powerful trans lobby are (see ‘Decapitate TERFs’ et al) who compromise the fundamental principles of responsible safeguarding.