The Bigly Stormy Testimony

Donald's hush money trial rumbles on.  Yesterday It was Stormy Daniels Testimony.  It seems to me that Donald's best defence is still to question the mens rae.   That is argue that "Yes I did make the payments but to spare Melania's feelings rather than to help my election prospects" so Stormy's testimony that he & Melania didn't actually sleep together is the most devastating thing here.  There's one person who's conspicuously absent at this trial and that is Melania.  Whether or not Trump actually slept with Daniels it's pretty obvious there was some kind of emotional affair going on.  

We have campaign finance laws in the UK but they're usually about how many leaflets have been printed, I still find this argument that paying to hide damaging information about yourself is a campaign finance violation odd because it's arguably not proactively about directly influencing voters.  Unfortunately Trump's defence team seem to have abandoned that defence in arguing that "there's nothing wrong with trying to influence an election".  As Edmund Blackadder once said shouldn't people fight elections "on issues not personalities"?  The highly personalised nature of US Presidential campaigns seems a bit odd here ... You vote for one person to head the whole government?  Perhaps there's a point in King Big Ears after all?  Many other countries have Presidents but although elected they are often largely or semi-ceremonial positions.  Contrastingly the US President wields real and enormous power. 

 Perhaps they should change their system so it doesn't vest so much power in one person?  Not that it's my business but here where we vote for MPs who then select the PM the system is more about parties... Voting for a single person to be head of state is a different dynamic... I better stop here before I turn into English Bob in Unforgiven.

Never-the-less my mind keeps coming back to the question... if Trump had paid her out of his own pocket would that be okay?  The problem seems to be he paid her off through a company which seems like a technicality.  All of this mess looks to me as if it was created by Trump trying to get out of paying Cohen... He tried to stiff one creditor too many...

I do understand the prosecution's position but the fact it takes me about a minute to explain it to someone else is a problem.