Under examination that frequently veered hostile, Daniels was quick on her feet, toeing a tight line between tenacity and vulnerability as jurors watched the defense deride her career and assail her credibility.
She clapped back for hours during the most intense testimony yet in the criminal trial, which centers on whether a $130,000 hush money payment to Daniels was fraudulently covered up with the intent of influencing the 2016 presidential election.
Trump lawyer Susan Necheles insisted repeatedly through her questioning that Daniels, 45, had fabricated her story of a one-off sexual encounter with Trump.
"You made all this up, right?" the counsel asked at one point, prompting Daniels to respond with an emphatic "No."
Several moments saw Daniels accuse Necheles of putting words in her mouth: "You're trying to make me say it's changed, but it hasn't changed," she said, referring to her account of events.
Team Trump vied to cast Daniels as money-grubbing, sleazy and deceptive.
Necheles grilled Daniels over her decision to pen a book that included depictions of the encounter, and her decision to promote branded products.
"Not unlike Mr. Trump," Daniels quipped back.
In one of the more offbeat moments of the nearly eight hours of testimony, Necheles brought up interest by Daniels in tarot cards and the paranormal, in an apparent bid to cast her as unhinged.
She then moved to present Daniels as a fabulist, mocking her work as a screenwriter and director of pornographic films while alleging that it makes her good at twisting the truth.
"So you have a lot of experience in making phony stories about sex appear to be real?" said Necheles.
"Wow, that's not how I would put it," Daniels said.
"The sex is real. The characters names might be different. But the sex is very real. That's why it's pornography," the witness continued.
If the story with Trump were untrue, she said, "I would've written it to be a lot better."
- Mistrial denied, again -
At the close of her marathon testimony which lasted approximately eight hours over two days, the defense asked Daniels if she knew anything about Trump's bookkeeping -- the actual crux of the case.
She said she does not.
But that wasn't the point of calling Daniels to the stand, one prosecutor said later -- she was there to detail why Trump would've wanted to cover up her story at the finish line of his White House bid.
That reasoning came up after jurors had been dismissed for the day, during a motion hearing that saw Team Trump try once more for a mistrial.
It was again denied, but not before Judge Juan Merchan skewered Trump's lawyers in front of him.
"I disagree with your narrative that there is any new account here. I disagree that there is any changing story," he said, audibly irritated.
In his extraordinary dressing down of the defense's lawyering, Merchan said their very insistence that Daniels had made the encounter up cleared the way for the prosecution to include evidence -- much of it salacious -- to the contrary.
Necheles spent much of her cross hammering on the very details they were holding up as grounds for a mistrial, Merchan said, "drilling it over and over and over again into the jury's ears."
"I don't understand the reason for that," he said during his dramatic critique, asking why the defense had not objected to the presentation of those details during direct questioning.
And that Trump's team has been attacking Daniels from the very beginning, including during opening statements, "pits your client's word against Ms. Daniels' word," Merchan said.
"That, in my mind, allows The People to do what they can to rehabilitate her and corroborate her story," he said, using a term for the prosecution.
"Your motion for a mistrial is denied."
In Wisconsin, Biden seeks gain from Trump's economic misfire
Racine, United States (AFP) May 8, 2024 -
President Joe Biden visited crucial US battleground state Wisconsin Wednesday and announced a $3.3 billion artificial intelligence datacenter -- drawing contrasts with rival Donald Trump, whose pledged mega-project at the same location fizzled.
"On my watch, we make promises and we keep promises," the Democrat said as he highlighted a major investment by Microsoft in Racine, a city on the shores of Lake Michigan.
Microsoft will build a new AI datacenter built right where Trump, Biden's predecessor and likely rival again in November's presidential election, had vowed with great fanfare to build a giant factory for Taiwanese manufacturer Foxconn.
That project, touted as creating 13,000 jobs and which Trump declared would be the "eighth wonder of the world" during the site's inauguration in 2018, never materialized.
The Republican tycoon came there "literally holding a golden shovel," Biden told several hundred people in Racine County.
"Are you kidding me? Look what happened. They dug a hole with those golden shovels and then they fell into it... Foxconn turned out to be just that: a con."
The datacenter will create 2,300 union construction jobs, followed by 2,000 permanent jobs, the White House said in a statement.
"Everything that we're doing, here ... is also benefiting directly from the work of this White House, of this president," said Brad Smith, Microsoft vice chair and president.
Racine and Wisconsin lost manufacturing jobs during Trump's 2017-2021 presidency.
Since Biden took office, nearly 4,000 jobs have been added in Racine -- roughly a third in manufacturing -- and 177,000 jobs have been added in Wisconsin, according to White House figures.
The upper Midwestern state, whose economy is based both on farming and industry, is an epicenter of this year's fierce US election battle.
A Quinnipiac University poll released on Wednesday puts Biden in the lead there, with 50 percent to Trump's 44 percent in a two-way race.
But the gap shrinks to almost nothing when expanded to include three other potential candidates, including independent Robert F. Kennedy.
Wisconsin is among the handful of swing states -- including Arizona, Michigan and Pennsylvania -- that hold the key to presidential victory in 2024.
It is no coincidence the Republican Party has chosen to hold its nominating convention this summer in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
Biden has already made multiple campaign stops in the state this year.
His Democratic Party, meanwhile, will hold its national convention in August in Chicago, Illinois, where Biden is headed for a fundraising visit on Wednesday.
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