Stormy Daniels 60 Minutes Interview Will Air, CBS Boss Says

CYBERSPACE—The chief of CBS News confirmed on Monday that an interview with Stormy Daniels will air on an upcoming broadcast of the network’s iconic program 60 Minutes, but David Rhodes would not give an exact date for when the Daniels story would be broadcast on the show, according a report Tuesday morning by the entertainment industry news site The Wrap. Daniels allegedly had an extramarital sexual relationship with Trump in 2006 and 2007. Trump’s lawyer, Michael Cohen, paid Daniels $130,000 to sign a non-disclosure agreement, preventing her from talking publicly about the affair, shortly before the 2016 presidential election. Trump and his lawyers were reported over the weekend to be scrambling in a desperate attempt to block the Daniels interview from airing, perhaps even seeking a court injunction preventing CBS from airing the interview. But Rhodes said that the reports of objections to the Daniels interview from Trump played no role in the decision to go ahead with the interview, which Daniels recorded on March 8 with correspondent Anderson Cooper. “I haven’t seen such an injunction and I can’t imagine what the basis for that would be,” Rhodes said while speaking at a conference in Jerusalem, Israel. Instead, Rhodes said that the decision to air the interview was made solely on journalistic grounds—and the only reason that CBS has not set a specific air date is that there is “still a lot of journalism left to do.” CBS researchers are in the process of attempting to verify documents and other evidence handed over by Daniels, in addition to her interview, according to the Hollywood Reporter. Rhodes also declined to comment on what, exactly, Daniels said in the interview, adding that he had not yet viewed the footage of the conversation between Daniels and Cooper. He said he was “not sure” whether whatever Daniels said would prove damaging to Trump. But a report by the political news site Talking Points Memo on Monday reported that, according to sources, Daniels revealed in the interview that Trump, in the words of TPM editor Josh Marshall, “likes it when women aren’t nice to him, treat him in perhaps denigrating ways.” The revelation that he enjoys being sexually submissive could prove humiliating to Trump, who appears deeply invested in what he projects as a “tough guy, dominant and hyper-masculine image,” an image that is centra to his “brand,” according to Marshall. Daniels, through her lawyer Michael Avenatti, sued Trump last week to get the non-disclosure agreement declared null and void, allowing Daniels to speak freely about her alleged affair with Trump.  In what he called an attempt to settle the case, Avenatti said on Monday that Daniels would return the $130,000 payment in exchange for canceling the agreement. But Avenatti set a deadline of noon on Tuesday, March 13, for Trump to respond to the offer, and that deadline has now passed. After the deadline, Avenatti posted to his Twitter account, saying that Trump and Cohen, “purposely ignored our settlement offer, thus doubling down on their efforts to muzzle (Ms. Daniels) and prevent her from telling the American people what happened. Time to buckle up.”