Just
after 11 p.m., amid a few half hearted cheers from the hundred or so
patrons and a gaggle of her fellow dancers, Daniels — whose legal
name is Stephanie Clifford — emerged from behind the curtains,
officially kicking off her “Make America Horny Again” strip club
tour Saturday night in the heart of Trump country.
Making
her first public appearance since news of the alleged affair first
broke, Daniels gamely worked her way through a medley of songs,
including an odd cover of "Like a Virgin," a big smile
frozen solidly on her face. Within minutes the performance was over,
and the DJ was vigorously promoting a two-for-one hourly couch dance
special. There were commemorative t-shirts for patrons who bought a
lap dance — or who happened to find one discarded at the bar.
For
the past week, the 38-year-old adult film star has found herself at
the center of what is arguably the slowest mushrooming scandal of
Trump’s presidency, following a Wall Street Journal report that she
received $130,000 in the weeks before the 2016 election in exchange
for keeping quiet about a sexual relationship she'd had with Trump a
decade earlier. Further details of the alleged affair were revealed
Friday with the release of a 2011 interview with In Touch magazine,
in which Daniels detailed her sexual encounters with Trump, and
confidently declared she could pick his genitals out of a line up if
necessary.
In
another universe, a public striptease from an alleged former mistress
of the president of the United States would have been a major event,
drawing throngs of people eager to celebrate her courage, or judge
her sternly for bringing shame to the nation's highest office.
But
this is Trump’s America now. And for better or worse, as the
president celebrates the anniversary of his inauguration and the
government is shut down, such a spectacle barely merits notice, let
alone elicits emotion.
“Why
would I give a fuck? Have you seen the stock market,” said a union
sheet metal worker, who for obvious reasons asked not to be named.
“Why would I fucking care who he gets a blow job from?”
Other
patrons, who similarly did not want to be identified as strip club
patrons, were frustrated by the $20 cover charge, which was
significantly higher than the Greenville Trophy Club's usual Saturday
night fee. Even the other dancers didn’t realize who Daniels was at
first. “At first I thought she was just a featured dancer,” said
Autumn Edwards, one of club's regular performers.
A
few people had clearly come for the MAGA; one man in a crisp new
black cowboy hat used the improbable “Trump follows me on Twitter”
pickup line with one dancer, who smiled politely before turning back
to the bar.
But
the Trophy Club was very much a microcosm of the country itself,
gawking at the spectacle that has become the presidency, before
ultimately turning away with a shrug