"Whether you like it or not, Stormy is here."
Jimmy Kimmel opened his post-State of the Union episode of ABC's Jimmy Kimmel Live! defending his decision to have former porn star Stormy Daniels as a guest on the show.
Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford, has been making headlines recently about an alleged extramarital affair with Donald Trump, after the Wall Street Journal reported that she was allegedly paid $130,000 through Trump's lawyer to keep silent and an old interview with In Touch magazine in which Daniels went into salacious details about the alleged affair was resurfaced. Daniels has claimed this month that the affair never took place.
In her actual appearance, Daniels remained coy. In the show's cold open, Kimmel presented Daniels with a Donald Trump puppet and urged her to show what Trump had done with it. In response, Daniels held up a puppet in her likeness with duct tape over its mouth. The interview didn't reveal much more.
Kimmel asked Daniels about a letter from her denying the affair again that was released before her appearance Tuesday, pointing out that her signature looked different than on previous statements and on signed photographs. But Daniels wouldn't confirm or deny that the statement was hers.
The host also pressed Daniels on the In Touch interview, asking if she said what was published. "Not as written. ... I honestly haven't seen the whole transcript, I'm too scared to look at it." When Kimmel started to read the transcript, Daniels interrupted, "I thought this was a talk show, not a horror movie."
When Kimmel continued and asked "is any of that true?" Daniels simply replied, "Define true."
Although Kimmel couldn't get her to say anything definitively about the alleged affair, she did definitively say that she thought it was "dirty" for Trump to bring women who had accused Bill Clinton of sexual misconduct to a debate during the 2016 election.
When asked if she felt guilty, Daniels said that she feels "guilt towards my family," and expressed concerns about what her daughter would read about her on the Internet.
Kimmel later brought the puppets back out for a game of "Never Have I Ever," so that Stormy could use it to answer the questions without violating the "NDA you don't have." The puppet didn't talk, either.
Daniels will also be appearing on ABC's The View on Thursday.
