At Her Strip Shows, Stormy Daniels Has Become an Icon of the Resistance. She Comes to Portland in Two Weeks.

“She’s a real American hero.”

Stormy Daniels at AVN Awards Las Vegas 2012. (Michael Dorausch/ Wikimedia Commons)

Stormy Daniels is coming to town.

The nation's most famous porn star, who says she was paid hush money to keep an affair with President Donald Trump out of the election news cycles, has been traveling around the U.S. with an unlikely act for a political figure: performing a 15-minute strip show.

She made headlines again this week after former New York mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani, who recently joined Trump's legal team, said the president had reimbursed a $130,000 payment given to Daniels by his lawyer at the time.

Daniels will tour three Oregon strip clubs starting May 17 in Bend and will end in Beaverton on May 19.

This week, Mother Jones reported from a strip club in Pittsburgh that Daniels is not attracting the typical patrons for a porn star doing a set at a topless bar.

The crowds show up to see Daniels dance in a skimpy red-white-and-blue ensemble—but also to see an icon of resistance to the Trump presidency. The shows have become a night out for anti-Trump women—moms, Women's March attendees, self-declared Resistance supporters—who see the shows as an act of solidarity.

"I was going to bring her a thank-you card just for all she's done for the American public," Kris Arnold, told Mother Jones during a performance in Pittsburgh club called Blush. "She's a real American hero."

Related: A biopic of Portland's most famous stripper is a powder keg debate about sex work.

Judging from recent events, the Beaverton show could draw a similarly remarkable crowd. Last month, a crowd of cheering Portland progressives packed Revolution Hall to support an even more unlikely hero: former FBI director James Comey, who was promoting his book.


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