• Stormy Daniels, the porn star who says she had an affair with Donald Trump before he took office, performed multiple shows in Washington, DC, this week.
  • While Daniels’ performances were widely covered by reporters, the Washington news cycle was just too fast for it to make a dent.

WASHINGTON – The porn star who says she had sex with Donald Trump in 2006 visited the nation’s capital – and it was hardly the biggest thing to happen this week.

Stormy Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford, has been on a cross-country tour in which she performs at strip clubs in major cities. But when she came to Washington for a round of shows on Monday and Tuesday, it did not draw much attention to what had been a media frenzy around her and her lawyer, Michael Avenatti.

Daniels’ Monday show was covered by a big group of journalists, who were apparently the bulk of the crowd at a new strip club in Washington called Cloakroom, a nod to the private chambers for members of Congress. It was a ticketed event, with general admission going for $50 a head and increased prices for additional VIP services.

Outlets such as the Associated Press and the libertarian Reason magazine covered her Monday-night performance, noting her dancing and how the crowd was filled mostly with other journalists and a few people looking to get a laugh out of it.

The Tuesday-night show was similar. A few dozen patrons lined up early and went to the show. A handful were regulars at the club looking to see an extra-special performance, while some wanted to bask in the "historical" nature of the show.

A patron, who would not give his name because, after all, he was at a strip club, told Business Insider that the building had historical value because the previous location for the strip club collapsed in 2014 during a construction accident. He also said Daniels' presence was historic because she was the "first porn star to sleep with a president."

But he seemed more focused on waiting for Daniels' performance than on partaking in traditional strip-club activities. He even wore headphones and listened to an audiobook for the couple of hours before Daniels took the stage.

Her performance, titled "All Things Revealed," was short, only a few songs, and largely the same as that of the night before. The room was poorly lit and smelled like the perfume section of a mall, only much more pungent. The stage is atop the bar, and there are booths around the walls for VIPs. Cash was thrown all over the place, with one customer using a small plastic gun that dispenses dollar bills at a rapid pace.

Daniels has dominated the news cycle at times, but her performances were hardly the biggest thing in Washington this week.

Trump nominated Judge Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court and then left for a tumultuous NATO summit in Brussels, while Congress returned from recess with a laundry list of issues to tackle. Daniels actually made bigger headlines upon leaving Washington, when she was arrested outside a similar performance in Columbus, Ohio, on Wednesday night.

Daniels' ongoing legal fight with Trump and his former lawyer Michael Cohen had consumed media and Washington. But it appears the moment has passed, and for this week at least, there was little attention paid to a porn actress who says she slept with the president, whose lawyer had her sign a nondisclosure agreement days before Trump shocked the world and defeated Hillary Clinton. The news just moves too fast.