LONDON — President Donald Trump is “a man who has gotten in over his head,” Stormy Daniels said as she explained her decision to pull out of a British TV reality show.
The adult movie actress also revealed that she often feared for her personal safety, carried a gun and was escorted by armed bodyguards.
Daniels, 39, who claims she had an affair with Trump more than a decade ago and is suing him, did not appear as planned on “Celebrity Big Brother” in the U.K. on Thursday.
She had been due to spend a week on the show, living among the other longer-term contestants.
However, Daniels — whose real name is Stephanie Clifford — said she withdrew because of a sudden development in her ongoing divorce battle regarding her 7-year-old daughter.
“I told producers I was uncomfortable spending the night in the ['Big Brother'] house. Being a mom comes first and I wanted to be able to talk to her,” she told ITV's "Loose Women" talk show in an interview that aired Monday.
She insisted that there had been no disagreement over money, and that she had agreed to donate her appearance fees to charity. “It was never about the money,” she said.
Daniels described Trump as "a man who has gotten in over his head.”
While she is concerned that the court case will harm her daughter, Daniels said does not regret her actions.
“I fear that her life is going to be changed forever in a negative way,” Daniels said. “I want to be someone she can be proud of. I feel like owning it and standing up and saying, ‘I will not be bullied.’”
Asked what she hoped to achieve, Daniels replied, “That one day it becomes known that I am not a liar that, that one day my daughter looks up to me and says, ‘I’m proud of what you did.’”
Daniels alleges in a civil lawsuit that she and Trump had an intimate relationship that lasted from summer 2006 "well into the year 2007" and which included meetings in Lake Tahoe and at the Beverly Hills Hotel.
The White House denies Trump had an affair with her.
But Trump's private attorney, Michael Cohen, admitted in February he had paid her $130,000 — which she says was to buy her silence over the "intimate relationship."
NBC News reported in April that Daniels is cooperating with federal investigators as part of their criminal investigation into Cohen.
In May, Trump said Daniels was paid to stop "false and extortionist accusations" she made about a sexual encounter with him.
Daniels has filed two lawsuits against Trump, one to get out of a nondisclosure agreement she signed in October 2016 ahead of the November presidential election in exchange for the $130,000, and another for defamation.