Stormy Daniels and the Comeuppance of Donald Trump

Sometimes I lie awake at night wondering whether Donald Trump is afraid.

Does he think he’ll go to jail? Lose his fortune? Does he sleep easier after ranting in ALL CAPS on Truth Social?

Surely I’m not the only one losing sleep over the threat this man poses to the country. But lately, as I perversely scroll through the news on my phone, I’ve had a comforting thought: Mr. Trump is probably obsessing, too.

His Truth Social account indicated as much last week. Mr. Trump posted a picture of a statement by Stormy Daniels, the erotic film star and a central figure in his hush money trial that is set to begin on Monday. In the statement, dated 2018, Ms. Daniels denies that the two ever had an affair (a statement she has since recanted). Mr. Trump, in his Truth Social post, writes: “LOOK WHAT WAS JUST FOUND! WILL THE FAKE NEWS REPORT IT?” (To be clear, Mr. Trump, the 2018 statement was widely reported at the time.)

Mr. Trump may be running for president of the United States, but it’s not American voters who are on his mind. Watching and listening to him for years now, reading him on social media and, more recently, observing his behavior in the face of criminal charges and civil lawsuits, I come away with the surreal yet frankly inspiring conclusion that this very powerful man has become consumed with the “nasty” women who are at long last holding him to account.

Letitia James. Fani Willis. E. Jean Carroll, and her lawyer Roberta Kaplan. And, of course, Stormy Daniels. The five women who are living rent-free in Mr. Trump’s mind these days.

If my middle-of-the-night Truth Social tours are any guide, Mr. Trump wakes up not infrequently to the thought of Ms. James, the attorney general of New York, and calling her names like “Peekaboo.” He seems to think about her, and the civil fraud case she brought against him, during the day, too — sometimes driven to post about her “big, nasty and ugly mouth,” or draft campaign emails about her “filthy hands,” which he seems to think are furiously casting a spell in the “witch hunt” against him.