Stormy Daniels’ lawyer Michael Avenatti says he may run for president

The lawyer of a porn star currently suing Donald Trump could pose a very real threat to the US president’s re-election in 2020, former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon has claimed.

Michael Avenatti burst onto the national stage earlier this year as Stormy Daniels’ attorney, “but he has since managed, through incessant appearances on cable TV news and a Trump-like Twitter habit, to thoroughly insinuate himself into our decaying national political life”, says John Daniel Davidson in The Federalist.

As public attention has shifted to allegations of sexual assault against Brett Kavanuagh, Avenatti has managed to stay in the national spotlight by staunchly defending his new client Julie Swetnick, who claims she witnessed the supreme court nominee sexually assault girls in high school.

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

It is this “fearlessness” and “fighter” mentality that has enamoured Avenatti to Bannon, who told late-night talk show host Bill Maher: “I think he'll go through a lot of that field, if he decides to stick with it, like a scythe through grass.”

“I don’t believe a professional politician is going to be there at the end of the day” Bannon added. “I’ve always said it’s going to be someone like Oprah, or Avenatti, or somebody that’s more media-savvy that’s going to be there.”

Maher and Bannon “don’t agree on much of anything when it comes to politics,” says MarketWatch, “but on the idea of Avenatti making a stir on the campaign trail, they do.”

“He could be the Trump of 2020, the guy who’s the outsider, who blows through the regular politician because he looks different,” Maher said.

Officially, Avenatti has yet to decide if he will run, although almost all pundits believe he will. He recently told CNN that he is considering it, and will make up his mind in the coming weeks.

In a sign that Republicans are starting to take the idea of an Avenatti presidential run seriously, the veteran trail lawyer has been subjected to a series of personal attacks from high-ranking party officials, “using the fact that he also represents Stormy Daniels, the porn actress who claims she had an affair with President Donald Trump in 2006, to discredit him” says Vox.

Senior Republican Senator Lindsey Graham last week characterised him as a “lawyer to porn stars,” while Senator Chuck Grassley said that Avenatti “wants to protect people that are involved in pornography.”

So does he have a chance?

“If you listen to Michael Avenatti hold forth in front of a live audience for long enough, you realise he is the Democratic version of Donald Trump”, says Davidson.

“There’s the rambling answers that morph into performance monologues. The casual arrogance and braggadocio. The celebrity aura. The vulgarity. And of course the undisguised contempt for his political opponents — most of all for Trump”.

In recent months, Senator Kamala Harris, Senator Elizabeth Warren, Senator Cory Booker, and former vice president Joe Biden have risen to the top of the discussion of Democratic front-runners.

But, says The Independent, “in a crowded field, [Avenatti] said he can distinguish himself by the form of someone who has never bent under the will of a straw poll or focus group”.

“It sounds like a formula that helped propel Mr Trump to office”, the news site adds, and might just work again in 2020.