Everything We Learned From Stormy Daniels' '60 Minutes' Interview

Stormy Daniels says she first met Donald Trump at a celebrity golf tournament in Lake Tahoe in July 2006. Meeting at his hotel suite, Daniels says he began the conversation by talking about himself and asked her if she'd seen his picture on the cover of a new magazine. Daniels responded by jokingly telling him, "Someone should take that magazine and spank you with it." A surprised Trump responded by saying, "You wouldn't." He eventually handed over the magazine to Daniels, who asked him to "turn around and drop 'em." So, Trump turned around and pulled his pants down, and she spanked him with the magazine.

After this exchange, Trump asked if Daniels wanted to join the cast of The Apprentice and the two had dinner in his room. Following the meal, they had sex in his bedroom. Daniels says, "I realized exactly what I'd gotten myself into. And I was like, 'Ugh, here we go.' [Laughs]. And I just felt like maybe—it was sort of—I had it coming for making a bad decision for going to someone's room alone, and I just heard the voice in my head, 'Well, you put yourself in a bad situation and bad things happen, so you deserve this.'"

Daniels says that she wasn't physically attracted to Trump "at all." Anderson Cooper asked if she wanted to have sex with him, and she responded, "No. But I didn't say no. I'm not a victim." Daniels says the intercourse was entirely consensual. She also added that he didn't use a condom and that she "honestly didn't say anything" during the interaction.

Daniels says that she and Donald Trump stayed in touch after their first encounter. Explaining to 60 Minutes that she wasn't told at the time to keep the information away from anyone, Daniels said, "This was not a secret. He never asked me not to tell anyone he called several times when I was in front of many people and I would be like, 'Oh my God, he's calling.' They were like, 'Shut up, the Donald?' And I'd put him on speakerphone, and he wanted to know what I was up to."

Daniels says that Trump kept dangling the possibility of an appearance on The Apprentice in front of her as a way for the two to stay in touch. "I thought of it as a business deal," she explains. "I mean, I'm not blind. But at the same time, maybe it'll work out, you know?"

A year after they first met, Daniels met Trump again at his hotel in Beverly Hills to talk about her potential appearance on The Apprentice. "I remember arriving, and he was watching Shark Week," she explains. "He made me sit and watch an entire documentary about shark attacks." Daniels says he wanted to have sex again: "He came and sat next to me and, you know, touched my hair, and put his hand on my leg, and referenced back to how great it was the last time."

Daniels turned down Trump's advances. She says, "I'd been there for, like, four hours. And so I then was like, 'Well, before, you know, can we talk about what's the development?' And he was like, 'I'm almost there. I'll have an answer for you next week.' And I was like, 'Okay, cool. Well—I guess call me next week.' And I just took my purse and left."

Daniels says she was threatened by a man in a Las Vegas parking lot in 2011. "I was in a parking lot, going to a fitness class with my infant daughter," she says. "Taking, you know, the seats facing backwards in the backseat, diaper bag, you know, gettin' all the stuff out. And a guy walked up on me and said to me, 'Leave Trump alone. Forget the story.' And then he leaned around and looked at my daughter and said, 'That’s a beautiful little girl. It'd be a shame if something happened to her mom.' And then he was gone."

Daniels notes that she was rattled after the interaction, but she would still recognize the person today: "100%. Even now, all these years later. If he walked in this door right now, I would instantly know." She says she didn't go to the police at the time, "because I was scared."

"I turned down a large payday multiple times because one, I didn't wanna kiss and tell and be labeled all the things that I'm being labeled now," Daniels tells 60 Minutes. "I didn't wanna take away from the legitimate and legal, I'd like to point out, career that I've worked very hard to establish. And most importantly, I did not want my family and my child exposed to all the things that she's being exposed to right now because everything that I was afraid of coming out has come out anyway.

Realizing that she's telling her story for free on 60 Minutes, Daniels added, "And guess what? I don't have a million dollars." Looking at Anderson Cooper, she laughed, "You didn't even buy me breakfast."

Former chairman of the Federal Election Commission Trevor Potter joined the 60 Minutes episode to explain just how messy of a situation all of this is for Donald Trump. Eleven days before the presidential election, Trump's long-time lawyer Michael Cohen paid $130,000 to Stormy Daniels to keep her quiet—which is more than he's allowed to give to a campaign.

"It's a $130,000 in-kind contribution by Cohen to the Trump campaign, which is about $126,500 above what he's allowed to give," Potter explains. "And if he does this on behalf of his client, the candidate, that is a coordinated, illegal, in-kind contribution by Cohen for the purpose of influencing the election—of benefiting the candidate by keeping this secret."

Stormy Daniels' attorney Michael Avenatti also joined to explain, "This is about the cover-up. This is about the extent that Mr. Cohen and the president have gone to intimidate this woman, to silence her, to threaten her, and to put her under their thumb. It is thuggish behavior from people in power. And it has no place in American democracy." Avenatti claims that Trump's lawyers are trying to intimidate Daniels: "You threaten someone with a $20 million lawsuit—it's a thuggish tactic. It's no different than what happened in the parking lot in Las Vegas."

Anderson Cooper asked Daniels why she denied the affair multiple times before eventually coming forward. "I felt intimidated and honestly bullied," she says. "And I didn't know what to do. And so I signed it. Even though I had repeatedly expressed that I wouldn't break the agreement, but I was not comfortable lying." Asked why we should believe her now, Daniels responds, "Because I have no reason to lie. I'm opening myself up for, you know, possible danger and definitely a whole lot of shit."