I’ve interviewed Stormy Daniels twice in Raleigh. Her Trump trial stirs old memories.

In the last 30 years, I’ve interviewed a one-armed juggler, a psychic who finds lost pets and a man who ate 27 chili dogs in less than an hour.

But none of those make quite as compelling a story as this:

I’ve interviewed Stormy Daniels twice. Both times in Raleigh. Both times in a strip club. And both times about national politics, her answers delivered with candor and astuteness.

I bring this up now not to make light of a former president on trial, nor to weigh in on either side legally or politically, but only to recall a pair of encounters forever wedged in my brain.

Forgive me, but it seems impolite not to share.

A potential US Senate race?

In 2010, my then-editor at The N&O:

1. noticed an advertisement for Stormy Daniels performing at was then called The Men’s Club on Yonkers Road in Raleigh;

2. remembered reading that the adult-film actress was scheduled to announce on that very day whether she would run for the U.S. Senate.

Why would Daniels consider a bid for national office?

You may recall a scandal of that era involving an escort service run by the “D.C. Madam,” whose phone contacts included U.S. Sen. David Vitter of Louisiana. The Republican senator, up for election in 2010, would eventually admit his involvement in a prostitution ring.

Though widely considered a gag at the time, the “Draft Stormy” movement launched an online campaign. But Daniels, a Louisiana native whose real name is Stephanie Clifford, chose to take it seriously and traveled the state on a listening tour, expecting to be heckled but instead winning praise for her honesty.

Daniels switched her party affiliation to Republican, called for creative thinking and entrepreneurship and pledged to make a final decision on her candidacy by April 15 — in the middle of her Raleigh Men’s Club stint.

Sipping Sprite while waiting for a strip club interview

Once inside, I learned that Daniels would speak to me, but only once she finished her performance, which involved a Little Red Riding Hood suit bathed in purple light. I’ve never been a big strip club fan, but I spent four hours waiting, sipping Sprite on-the-clock.

But once she finished, Daniels graciously explained why she was bowing out of politics — a decision she thought unfortunate but necessary.

“I thought I would be accused of making a mockery of the system,” she said, a stud twinkling in her cheek. “But you can be blond and sexy and ... not be an idiot. For some reason, our society equates sexuality with stupidity.”

She continued while fans lined up for autographs.

“It’s expensive,” she said. “I actually found that very sad. The cost of running for office keeps the best people from running. You need someone to represent the average person, and the average person can’t afford to run. You get this vicious cycle of Ivy Leaguers.”

The next day, Daniels officially announced what I had in my notepad:

“I have become a target of the cynical stalwarts of the status quo,” she wrote, comparing herself to Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin after her failed vice-presidential run. “Simply because I did not fit in their mold of what an independent working woman should be, the media and political elite have sought to relegate my sense of civic responsibility to mere sideshow antics.”

Whenever I’ve told this story, both in The N&O’s pages and to people I knew, the comments I heard rarely involved antics and nearly always focused on the adult actress being well-spoken.

Stormy Daniels and Donald Trump

This quality would rise again in 2018, when she Daniels would allege both an affair and a hush-money deal with President Donald Trump, statements she repeated on the Manhattan witness stand Tuesday.

By then, Daniels was on seemingly every TV screen, and a Raleigh newspaper reporter like myself stood in line behind Anderson Cooper and “60 Minutes.”

But in June of that year, Daniels returned to The Men’s Club in Raleigh and found an entirely different crowd, including Jimmy Creech, the former United Methodist minister defrocked for marrying same-sex couples, seated that night with his wife, the late Chris Weedy.

Just in front of me, they waited three hours in the front to cheer on the stripper performing in a star-spangled thong, whom Creech called “an American hero.”

“We just admire her willingness to challenge the dishonesty of Donald Trump,” he said. “To call him out on that and take it as far as it can go.”

“I don’t frequent these kinds of places,” Weedy added. “But it’s important to me to support Stormy because she’s standing up for herself and she has integrity. She’s articulate. In that (“60 Minutes”) interview, you could feel her integrity.”

I got far less time speaking with Daniels that night, and I doubt she remembers either of our interviews. But as she signed “Team Stormy” T-shirts for fans, she told me, “The fan base is now completely different. Lots of gay men taking forays into strip clubs, and lots of women. Angry, angry women.”

Time and the jury will tell where all of this goes next.

But if Stormy Daniels performs in Raleigh for a third time, I predict a full house.