On January 18th, 2018, InTouch published the unedited 5,500-word transcript of its 2011 Clifford interview, giving the internet two instantly viral anecdotes: Trump described in bed as "textbook generic," and Trump ignoring Clifford to sit glued to a Shark Week marathon on Discovery Channel5. The same day, Mother Jones published 2009 emails from Daniels' political advisors claiming Trump had asked her to spank him with a Forbes magazine cover featuring himself, Ivanka, and Donald Trump Jr.2. Both details became recurring reference points in follow-up coverage from Uproxx, The Daily Dot, and Twitter Moments3.

The legal side of the story generated its own memeable beats. On March 6th, 2018, Daniels filed a Los Angeles lawsuit arguing that her hush agreement was void because Trump, using the pseudonym "David Dennison," had never signed the document that referred to her as "Peggy Peterson"6. On March 25th, Daniels appeared on CBS 60 Minutes with Anderson Cooper and confirmed both the Forbes spanking and Trump's alleged comment that she reminded him of Ivanka, spawning the #StormyDanielsDay hashtag on Twitter3. On April 9th, the FBI raided Cohen's office and hotel room, prompting Trump to tell reporters "Attorney-client privilege is dead" and setting off a fresh round of speculation about the case's connection to the Robert Mueller probe7.

Coverage stayed hot through spring and summer. On April 17th, Daniels released a police sketch of a man she said had threatened her, and Twitter users spent the next 24 hours joking that the sketch looked like Tom Brady, Tony Robbins, or Daniels' own husband3. On May 1st, new Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani told Sean Hannity that Trump had personally reimbursed Cohen for the payment, directly contradicting Trump's earlier denials and producing a widely circulated screenshot of Giuliani looking surprised that r/MemeEconomy and r/dankmemes turned into a template3. On August 21st, Cohen pleaded guilty to eight crimes and admitted he made the payments "in coordination with and at the direction of a candidate for federal office," and on November 9th, the WSJ reported that Trump had been briefed at every step of the hush-money process3.