Was Trump Sex Scandal A ‘Fan Fiction’ Made Up On 4chan? [Opinion]

Reports have emerged that implicate Donald Trump in a perverted sex scandal before he’s even taken office. A Senate Intelligence Committee is even going so far as to hold hearings on allegations that Trump followed the president and the first lady to Russia, rented the same room the president had occupied, and then hired prostitutes to urinate in the bed they had slept in. But it turns out it might be little more than a bit of “fan fiction” that originated on the web forum 4chan.

Zero Hedge has published screencaps of archived posts clearly showing that a user who made up the story then forwarded it to Republican strategist and anti-Trump pundit Rick Wilson, who then gave the sex scandal story to the CIA. For his part, Wilson is denying the story is fake. Yet, the 35-page dossier, which has yet to be verified, is not a real intelligence report, according to WikiLeaks.

35 page PDF published by Buzzfeed on Trump is not an intelligence report. Style, facts & dates show no credibility.https://t.co/twa8pJMMtP

— WikiLeaks (@wikileaks) January 11, 2017

The first glaring problem with Trump’s sex scandal is that he is a known germaphobe. Even if the supposed prostitutes did not urinate on him, he would have been in the same room. This simply doesn’t mesh with Trump’s personality, nor with his aversion to germs.

The Daily Beast reports that in his first press conference since July, Trump reiterated this.

“I’m also very much a germaphobe, by the way… It’s all fake news. It’s phony stuff. It didn’t happen. It was gotten by opponents of ours. It was a group of opponents who got together — sick people, and they put that crap together. I read what was released and I think it’s a disgrace.”

The Daily Beast reports that Russia also denies that it has a dossier on Trump’s sex scandal. On Wednesday morning, a spokesman for Russian president Vladimir Putin brushed off claims of possessing blackmail materials.

“The Kremlin has no compromising dossier on Trump, such information isn’t consistent with reality and is nothing but an absolute fantasy.”

However, the media loves a good sex scandal, and so the story is circulating the internet like wildfire. In decades past, sex scandals were enough to force a politician to resign from office or to drop out of a campaign. During the 1988 presidential primaries, Colorado Senator Gary Hart was a favorite to win the Democratic nomination. Ultimately, Hart was forced to resign based on allegations that he had an affair with a young woman named Donna Rice. Hart discussed the current political climate with Vanity Fair’s Hive. He said the mainstream media’s increased intrusiveness into politician’s private lives had led to a lack of quality candidates seeking public office.

Already there exists a wealth of information against the president-elect that could potentially get him into hot water without resorting to a sleazy, alleged sex scandal, primarily his business ties that he was yet to sever. These are potential conflicts of interest and could lead to Trump making decisions that benefit himself at the expense of the American people. This is a more serious concern than any dossier the CIA might have on a supposed sex scandal.

The fact that an archived 4chan post and Wilson’s information given to the CIA are similar leaves little room for doubt that the forum likely trolled one of the most powerful U.S. agencies. So it begs the question, why is there even a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing on it if proof exists that it may not be true?

The Atlantic has published a long list of Trump’s very real potential conflicts of interest that could undermine the integrity of his job as president. Among his conflicts are an Emirati businessman who paid Trump handsomely for the right to license his name for a golf course in Dubai, a vineyard in Virginia that applied for temporary visas for unskilled laborers, and a labor dispute with Las Vegas hotel workers, which the National Labor Relations Board alleges Trump and business partner Phil Ruffin violated federal law by refusing to negotiate with workers who wished to form a union.

Another troubling feature of a Trump presidency is how deep the nepotism runs already. His children are front and center in many of his policy discussions and political affairs. Donald Trump Jr. met with a pro-Russian group in Paris to talk about the president-elect’s Syria policy, and Ivanka sat in on a meeting with Japanese dignitaries not long after the election. Clearly, a fabricated sex scandal is the least of Trump’s concerns.

Trump’s belief that climate change is a hoax, his willingness to approve dangerous pipelines such as the Keystone XL and the DAPL, his racist views on minorities and immigrants, and his history of sexism carry far more damning weight than any alleged Russian sex scandal could.

What the mainstream media and our federal government must do in order to regain some semblance of public trust is to ignore the outlandish, unproven sex scandals Trump was allegedly involved in and instead start publishing more hard-hitting reports on his conflicts of interest, bad policy decisions, and attacks on women, the press, and minorities. Regardless of the veracity of the 4chan story, the media must turn its attention to more pressing issues instead of an unverified Trump sex scandal.

[Featured image by Evan Vucci/AP Images]