If you were a little horrified to find that #GoldenShowers is trending on Twitter today, we’re here to help explain why. And yes, it involves President-elect Donald Trump.
BuzzFeed reported Tuesday that a dossier “making explosive — but unverified” allegations has been circulating for weeks among elected officials, intelligence agents and reporters. It alleges that the Russian government has been “cultivating, supporting and assisting” Trump for years. (Update: Trump has called the allegations “fake news.”)
CNN reported Tuesday both President Barack Obama and Trump were given a two-page synopsis of the report, which sounds pretty awkward, when you hear what it’s about. It includes what BuzzFeed calls “specific, unverified, and potentially unverifiable allegations of contact between Trump aides and Russian operatives, and graphic claims of sexual acts documented by the Russians.”
Those include this one:
“According to Source D, where s/he had been present, TRUMP’s (perverted) conduct in Moscow included hiring the presidential suite of the Ritz Carlton Hotel, where he knew President and Mrs OBAMA (whom he hated) had stayed on one of their official trips to Russia, and defiling the bed where they had slept by employing a number of prostitutes to perform a ‘golden showers’ (urination) in front of him.”
(Update: In a news conference Wednesday, Trump indirectly addressed the “golden showers” claim, saying, “Does anyone really believe that story? ‘I’m also very much of a germaphobe, by the way. Believe me.”)
The report also said Trump’s behavior in Russia over the years had provided authorities there with enough “embarrassing material” on the president-elect to “blackmail him if they so wished.”
Is it true? Like BuzzFeed said, it’s “unverified, and potentially unverifiable”… but it’s also so outrageous an image that it’s taken over Twitter in the last few minutes.
And now we’ll probably be unable to avoid thinking about it as we watch Obama deliver his farewell address in just a couple of hours. Ugh.