MSNBC analyst Renato Mariotti said Tuesday that female jurors who’ve been appointed to participate in Donald Trump’s hush money trial in Manhattan don’t have to be porn stars to relate to Stormy Daniels’ experience with the former president.
“Not everybody is an adult entertainment artist, but everybody, and particularly women, have experiences with power dynamics,” Mariotti, a former federal prosecutor, said during a panel discussion on “MSNBC Reports.” “People — whoever you are — have the experience of being taken advantage by somebody who’s more powerful than you.”
Mariotti was answering a question about how the gender demographics of the jury, which includes seven men and five women, could impact jurors’ reactions to Trump and Daniels’ respective testimony and potentially the result of the trial. He said that “there’s definitely more of a danger of men stereotyping” Daniels for her line of work.
“I think that’s precisely why they’re trying to humanize her,” Mariotti explained of the prosecution’s line of questioning when the actress first took the stand Tuesday. “But I really think that Trump has to be concerned about women identifying themselves with Stormy Daniels.”
In his breakdown of the prosecution’s position, the analyst explained the realities of women often being subjected to gender-based power dynamics.
“Being in a situation where you’re uncomfortable and feeling like you have to go along and do something you’d prefer not to do but you feel like that’s the right thing to do in the moment or your only choice in the moment,” Mariotti said. “That is what the prosecutors are trying to do. To make her a human being, to make her someone everyone can identify with, particularly women who often, unfortunately, are put in situations and dynamics where men can take advantage of them.”
Trump’s hush money trial started on April 15, and covers Trump allegedly instructing his former lawyer Michael Cohen to pay off adult film star Daniels to keep her quiet about their affair before covering up the payments by falsely logging them as Cohen’s legal fees.
Watch the full “MSNBC Reports” segment in the video above.
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